Taylor Swift's docuseries, The End of an Era, is officially streaming on Disney+, and if you haven't had time to watch yet due to being busy with annoying things like your job / school / responsibilities, we're recapping allll the behind-the-scenes intel we learned from all six episodes.
Taylor Gave Her Team an Emotional Speech Before Their Last Show
Full details this way, but here's part of it:
"Everyone likes to talk about phenomenons like The Eras Tour almost like it was pieces falling into place in some sort of accidental confluence of events that just happened, right? When I'm thinking about the people that are in this circle, I don't think about it as pieces that fell into place, I think of each of you as like tectonic plates on the earth that took millions of micro decisions and forces of you pushing and pushing inch by inch closer together, and the Eras Tour wasn't when all the pieces fell into place, that was when every single one of us had done so much work to where this tour was when we all clicked together. It is our job to make this look accidental and it is our job to make this look effortless, but I just want every single one of you to know that I in no way shape or form look at this as the pieces falling into place. You put the pieces where they are. This was the biggest challenge everyone of us has ever done, tonight, we complete that challenge."
Two "Unpleasant" Things Lead to the Eras Tour
First up: the sale of Taylor's masters, which prompted her re-recordings. As she put it, "I decided to sort of defiantly re-record all of my music. You know, when you revisit something, you go back into that world, all this work is so indicative of the time I was in and my life. I feel like I'm reading my old diaries, thinking about all the different girls I was until I was this one, so that planted a little seed, inherently in my mind, the idea of celebrating your past."
Next up, the pandemic: "I clung to songwriting as a sort of life raft," Taylor said. "folklore came out three or four months into the pandemic, we put out evermore four months later. I hadn't toured in five years and the fans had created such demand for it. And I just thought to myself, 'what if I did a tour that celebrated all of these different moments in my life and career, where you have chapters divided up by albums and everything changes when the chapter changes?"
The Eras Tour Took SOOOO Much Hard Work
Taylor shared some of the renderings and visualizations, and they're incredible.
Taylor Cried When She First Met Her Dancers
The cutest and most genuine!
Taylor and Travis Call Each Other "Baby"
Which was revealed during a private conversation ahead of Taylor's first show at Wembley Stadium. Travis ended the call with "I love you so much baby, thank you for making my day better," and Tay replied "I love you so much...some people get a vitamin drip, I got this conversation." It was...very cute!
Taylor Felt "Hunted" and "Tracked" on Tour
She told Ed Sheeran ahead of her break, "I just need to do this show, remember the joy of it, because I'm a little bit just like...you know. I get two months off after this, which I need, I need more than I've ever needed. You've seen my schedule. I'm just going to go somewhere no one can find me. I just don't want to be tracked like an animal. I've felt very hunted lately."
Taylor Listens to Audiobooks to Relax
She was seen listening to a book with this segment: "...casting spotlights here and there across the ground. At a certain point, Tracy understood where they were going. Under normal circumstances she would have felt afraid. She was typically a follower...."
Which we figured out is The God of the Woods by Liz Moore!
Taylor's Post-Show Routine Includes Room Service and TV
"So basically what happens now, is like, I'll not be able to get to sleep," she said. "Because I can't come down. This is why people need drugs, but I don't do drugs, so I just let it ride. Like, go to sleep when I'm tired. But when I'm tired it's like four in the morning. I watch tons of TV, I eat room service in bed, I sign a box of 2,000 cds, and then I'm tired. And then we do the whole thing again!"
Taylor Put Together Her 'TTPD' Set on a Tiny Tour Break
They only had a small amount of time off between Asia and Europe, and and managed to secretly re-organize the tour and include The Tortured Poets Department.
Taylor's Tour Choreographer Was Recommended by Emma Stone
"With choreography, I asked one of my friends, Emma Stone, who's done a lot of work in dance in her films, 'You know, who have you worked with that you would recommend for this?" Taylor said. "And she was like, there's only one person that needs to be on your list: it's Mandy Moore."
Taylor Wanted Her Dancers to Represent the Audience
"People can get very opinionated with things looking very uniform," Taylor said. "That's not what I wanted to do with The Eras Tour. I feel like when you look up on stage as a fan, when you see people that look like you, your friends, the people you see in the world, that's, I think, much more emotional, and more connective, and more powerful. I really wanted everyone to look up on stage and think, 'I see myself in that person.'"
Taylor Explained Why She Gave Out So Much $$$ in Bonuses
"Bonus day is so important because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is so important to me because people who work on the road, if the tour grosses more, they get more of a bonus," she said. "And these people work so hard and they are the best at what they do, so every single person on the crew, I've hand-written them a note. It took me a couple weeks, but it's fun to write the notes. It's like fun to think about everybody's lives they're going to go back to, and the time off they're going to have, and the kids they haven't seen because they've been gone for months. Just making that worthwhile for them is, it feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you."
Her personal card was also read out loud, where she said "We've traveled the world like we set out to do, we've dazzled the crowds but we've missed family too. My full gratitude doesn't come from a bank, but here is [bleeped] dollars just so say thanks. Love, Taylor."
Florence Was Extremely Nervous About Her Eras Tour Appearance
Truly her vibes in this docuseries were iconic. Example, this screen shot of her right before going on stage:
Taylor's Reputation Bodysuit Didn't Fit Her at First
Tay tried the iconic gold version of her signature Rep bodysuit on during a tour break, and was dismayed when the top was in the wrong place, saying "It has to come up, because they think my boobs are here but they're here," and joking that "they put my boob cups on my ribcage."
Tay's genius team ended up fixing the garment, and it turned out to be one of her favorite pieces on tour.
Taylor Has a Grueling Workout
See for yourself!
Taylor Has Less Than Two Minutes to Change
It was revealed that Taylor's outfit changes on tour took 1:15 or less, and that the fastest change was 39 seconds "with her in the room."
Taylor Said Her Exes Haven't Treated Her as a "Human Being"
Direct quote: "Tortured Poets album is like this purge of just everything–everything bad that I felt for two years. It was a really rough time in my life, so the songs reflect that. Feeling like I'm not a person, I'm just this big conglomerate that no one sees as a really human being, especially not men that I date. And in the whole process just being like, nothing works. Nothing. There's no one for me in the world."
Later in the episode she added, "I went through two breakups on the first half of this tour and that's a lot of breakups, actually. The show was what gave me purpose and was what I could use to get me out of bed. The tour has never been the hard thing in my life, the tour has been the thing that has allowed me to find purpose outside of the shit that was going wrong in my life. Men will let you down. The Eras Tour never will."
Taylor's Mom Matchmade Her and Travis!
"I'm looking at the headlines and perusing around what's on the internet and I see that this guy came to your show and he brought a friendship bracelet and wants to meet you," Andrea Swift said. "And of course I call up my resident expert on the Kansas City Chiefs, my cousin, Robin. I go, 'Tell me about this guy named Travis Kelce.' And she goes 'Oh my god, he's the nicest guy, and you know what he really loves his mom!' I went, 'ding ding ding ding!' And I said, 'Now how in the world am I gonna get her to meet him?'"
Taylor added, "I'd been very non-athlete. Because I'm not one and I've always just been like, 'Well what would we talk about?' So you called me up with this tone of 'Hey, so I know you're gonna not react well to this but there's a guy...' You said something to the effect of, 'You gotta start doing something different.'"
We Got to See Travis Kelce Rehearse
So cute!
Taylor Kept Performing After Getting a Huge Cut on Her Hand
Travis Wrote Taylor a Romantic Letter Before Her Last Shows
"So many unbelievable memories on this tour but my favorite one is seeing you in concert for the first time, being mesmerized and swept off my feet by a woman who doesn't even know me," Travis wrote. "I selfishly say thank you for creating this legendary tour and to Robert for making you stop through Kansas City, Missouri. That night, too, in KC was the beginning of me meeting the love of my life...."
Taylor Revealed Why She Cried in Toronto
Taylor explained that she was reflecting on her family watching the tour—especially amid her backup singer, Kamilah Marshall, losing her mother.
She told her brother Austin, "You know what got me was Kamilah made this speech before the show where she was talking about how her mom died. Her mom died recently. And she was just saying how heartbroken she is that her mom never got to see the Eras Tour. Never got to see her do this. And I was just thinking about it all night. I knew that, and we always used to make eye contact on 'Marjorie,' me and Kamilah, because of her mom. But it put it in perspective the fact that mom did get to see it. And Travis got to see it. And dad got to see it. I just felt so lucky and that's what cracked me. It cracked me wide open."
Taylor Took Fans BTS of Recording 'The Life of a Showgirl'
"I started going to Sweden in between my shoes," she explained. "It just felt like the most exciting way to make a secret album. It would just be the three of us and we would write and we would record. Making the album while I was on the Eras Tour...I was in a place in my life where life felt so full of possibility and it felt like I was figuring things out, and it felt so romantic and passionate. And I wanted to encapsulate that feeling on the album."
Andrea Swift Doesn't Like Hearing Tay's Music Early
"I usually hear about new music within five minutes of it being written," she said. "That is the best thing I can possibly think of and also the scariest, because now I know something that nobody else knows other than the people who were in that room. And that’s a massive responsibility. It’s like, 'No, don’t send it to me. I don’t want it on my phone. No, no, no!'"
