Any fan seeing “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” won’t be in for a huge number of surprises when it comes to the movie setlist, which largely follows the template that was locked into place — with a few exceptions or switch-outs — through the entire five-month 2023 U.S. tour. But there are a few choices that couldn’t exactly have been predicted. (Scroll down to see the full movie setlist.)
On the positive side, fans finally learned at Wednesday night’s premiere in L.A. which pair of songs got picked to represent the tour’s nightly “secret songs” segment, and most were quite pleased at the choices.
There was a bit of a stir, meanwhile, over five songs being dropped from the movie that were performed each night in L.A. during Swift’s tour-capping six-night SoFi Stadium run. (The first three of the six shows at SoFi were filmed by director Sam Wrench’s camera crew.)
On the “secret songs” tip, those two tunes ended up being “Our Song,” performed by Swift on acoustic guitar, and “You’re on Your Own Kid,” on which she accompanied herself on piano. As noted in PvNew‘s film review, those two songs provide some “breadth and bookending,” as “Our Song” is a hit from her self-titled debut album while “Kid” is a deeper track — and fan favorite — from her latest release, “Midnights.” The former song was performed on her second night in L.A., and the latter got filmed on the third night.
Both these songs had been performed previously in the wild-card slot on the tour, semi-breaking her rule that she would not repeat any songs chosen for those spots unless she flubbed them the first time. Judging from the results, she may have felt it was worth bending the rules a little to get those in the movie. The other four songs she performed as wild cards in those three nights of filming that presumably could have been in the movie were “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” “Maroon” (both of these also repeated songs from earlier in the tour), “You Are in Love” and “I Can See You.”
So, which are the dropped songs that made at least some fans feel like they were suffering death from, like, five cuts?
Those were “The Archer,” “No Body, No Crime” (featuring Haim), “Long Live,” “Cardigan” and her condensed version of “Wildest Dreams.”
only three of those omitted tunes had been staples of the entire five-month tour: “Archer,” “Cardigan” and “Wildest Dreams.” “Long Live” had been added as a second song in the “Speak Now” portion of the set only upon the July 7 release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” “No Body, No Crime” was only ever performed on the 10 occasions in July and August in which Haim opened the show and was there to recreate the trio’s parts.
There were songs that had only been a part of a set earlier in the tour which did not make the movie either, of course. Those are “‘Tis the Damn Season,” which got played every night except when Haim was opening and it was deemed expendable in the service of adding “No Body, No Crime”; “Nothing New,” which only got performed the 12 times in which Phoebe Bridgers was on hand as opening act and able to sing her duet part in the main set; and “Invisible String,” which only got played the first five nights of the tour, before it was replaced by “The 1,” although it was brought back just once, for a May show in Nashville. (Swift said she was reviving it that night in honor of a bench dedicated to her being placed in Centennial Park, which is mentioned in the tune.)
It’s believed Swift dropped the five regular setlist songs that were presumably filmed in L.A. but not used to keep the running time for the movie manageable. The film clocks in at a breezy — well, breezy to Swifties — 2 hours and 45 minutes, versus the even more epic 3 hours and 25 minutes that some of the concerts ran to by the time the tour reached L.A.
Other, less noticeable nips and tucks were made to cut about 40 minutes out of the L.A. concerts. A nightly standing ovation after “Champagne Problems” that had grown to more than seven minutes by the end of the tour got reduced to less than a minute for movie purposes. A spoken-word recitation of part of “Seven” that opened the “Folklore” segment was snipped. And the seven moments in which Swift disappeared from the stage for a costume change between “eras” all obviously made for easy trims. (Swift was truly the master of the quick-change on this tour, though; those time-outs were clocked and just about all were timed at two minutes or less, accounting for only about 15 minutes of the concerts’ running time.)
Some fans are disappointed that not every setlist staple made it into the movie, but given that 40 out of 45 songs did, there are a couple of ways to look at it: that the glass is about 10% empty, or about 90% full.
“Long Live” does make an appearance in the film, by the way, just not in a live rendition. “Long Live (Taylor’s Version)” plays over the end credits, which also feature a combination of fan footage and rehearsal bloopers.
Here’s the full setlist for the movie:
LoverEra:
- “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” (excerpt)
- “Cruel Summer”
- “The Man”
- “You Need to Calm Down”
- “Lover”
FearlessEra:
- “Fearless”
- “You Belong With Me”
- “Love Story”
EvermoreEra:
- “Willow”
- “Marjorie”
- “Champagne Problems”
- “Tolerate It”
ReputationEra:
- “…Ready for It?”
- “Delicate”
- “Don’t Blame Me”
- “Look What You Made Me Do”
Speak NowEra:
- “Enchanted”
RedEra:
- “22′
- “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
- “I Knew You Were Trouble”
- “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”
FolkloreEra:
- “The 1”
- “Betty”
- “The Last Great American Dynasty”
- “August”
- “Illicit Affairs” (excerpt)
- “My Tears Ricochet”
1989Era:
- “Style”
- “Blank Space”
- “Shake It Off”
- “Wildest Dreams”
- “Bad Blood”
Surprise Set:
- “Our Song,” played on guitar
- “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” played on piano
MidnightsEra:
- “Lavender Haze”
- “Anti-Hero”
- “Midnight Rain”
- “Vigilante Shit”
- “Bejeweled”
- “Mastermind”
- “Karma”
End titles:
“Long Live (Taylor’s Version)” (studio track)
