Review: On night two in Miami, Taylor Swift tosses a few things, but stands her dazzling holy ground

It’s been exactly six months since the biggest pop star in the world released her 11th studio album, and the better portion of 61,000 Swifties (according to her, anyway) sardined into Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday night already has The Tortured Poets Department memorized cover to cover.

It’s an indie-pop record unlike anything in Taylor Swift’s preceding catalog. On it, listeners can hear how she’s evolved as a storyteller since Folklore surprise-released in 2020, as she crosses those skills with reflections of her more recent relationships falling apart (but not without a glimmer of hope for ol’ Travvy), and emphasizes her feelings regarding a larger-than-ever amount of public interest, first kindled by the TicketMaster scandal of ’22.

On one hand, it’s a lot for one person to be as central to the public eye as The Beatles were when they arrived in the U.S. in 1964. On the other, Swift—and the entire stadium that screamed out the titular line of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”—knows all too well that she has the power to influence the bulk of an entire generation, and those afraid enough of her should be shaking in their boots. Who cares if the sad, strange little men post an all-caps tweet out of anger?

Since its kickoff in March 2023, it has become hard to imagine a world where there isn’t an Eras Tour show to look forward to, whether you’re attending or watching your umpteenth live stream on TikTok. But while going through cities that might be loud and energetic enough to bring an encore U.S. leg to, Swift, who has confirmed that this tour will officially close up shop in December, felt that it would be right to stage the beginning of the end of the biggest tour of all time in America’s spring break hotspot.

Swift has seen plenty since opening night in Glendale on St. Patrick’s Day 2023. There’s been a presidential endorsement, a terror threat overseas, three album releases (two of which are additions to the “Taylor’s Version” series), and a Super Bowl win for her boyfriend. And along with it, the Eras Tour has evolved into something so different than what it once was, and yet remains so similar. It maintains the same, Springsteenian length, and if a song was a hit, it’s most likely on the setlist. But with the recent addition of a new album, a few eras must be switched around, and a few songs had to be sent to the cutting room floor, just to make sure the already-shitty Miami traffic doesn’t last even longer at the end of the night.

For one thing, the Speak Now section is now back to only featuring one song, a cut-down “Enchanted,” after a few months of having “Long Live” part of the list in honor of Swift’s third album getting a Taylor’s Version earlier in the tour. Its lack of attention didn’t really seem to matter though, because once Swift, rocking a sparkly, light blue dress ejected the stage, a snake flicked its tongue, and in a matter of nanoseconds, all the princesses in the stadium turned into Reputation girlies that are gearing up for a Taylor’s Version of its own.

The Red portion of the 205-minute set was moved from its initial position at the start of the show’s second half, all the way to right after Swift takes fans back to high school during a fringey, twangy Fearless era. A kid received Swift’s black fedora from off her head on “22,” dancer Kam Saunders (an utter queen in his own right) played opposite his boss on the spoken word bit on “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and when Swift began to get sentimental about how much this tour means to her, it could only mean one thing.

“You got 10 minutes to spare?” she asked before very kindly strumming her way into the full version of “All Too Well.”

Perhaps most notably, Folklore and Evermore (described by Swift as “sister albums”) no longer have two separate sets, and have been merged into one. While the former and its Holiday House got more stage time (I feel your pain, Evermore girlies), Swift kept a witchy aura about her on an orb-filled “Willow,” brought a sea of cellphone flashlights to think about loved ones who have passed on during “Marjorie,” and after ripping out “Champagne Problems” on her mossy grand piano, received an ovation that lasted no less than two minutes. It doesn’t seem like long, but after an emotional rollercoaster as such, it’s a wonder that Swift even got to move on with the show at all.

Then, you had the brand-new Tortured Poets Department segment, only publicly played on U.S. soil once, the night before.

Swift’s dance troupe, all clad in white, lined up beside her and walked like boarding school children on a mashup of “But Daddy, I Love Him” and the nostalgic “So High School,” while she used the Force to strike down the dancers that attempted to join her on her rising, onstage platform (which we learned could slide across the stage like a Roomba) on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” The greedy Swifties in the house hoped that Post Malone would join their Mother for “Fortnight,” but made perfect do with the typewriter-centric choreography between Swift and dancer Jan Ravnik.

And while Posty didn’t show up, Florence Welch joined Swift onstage for her swampy, Florence + The Machine collaboration “Florida!!!” for the second night in a row. It still took even those who heard about Welch joining in the night before by surprise, and once the song was finished, the two skipped upstage together so Welch could descend back underneath everything.

Talk about something to make up for the barren opening slot in between Swift and Gracie Abrams, whose all-too-short set of indie-pop made the musician kids in the crowd believe that with a little humility, karma can be your best friend and the most famous person in the world right now very well might ask you to open for a global tour of hers, just to personally shout you out during her Lover set.

Now that Swift doesn’t have much left in the way of material for her “surprise songs” set, it’s coming down to mashups made up of 18 years worth of tunes you never thought could go together. Sporting a brand-new, sparkly purple dress, her acoustic guitar selections were 2006’s “Should’ve Said No” and 2017’s “I Did Something Bad,” while the flowery classroom piano that was once destroyed by a rainstorm saw her punch out this year’s “LOML” (stylized in all-lowercase) and Fearless’ “White Horse.”

Her last time in state was for three consecutive nights at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, while she was on the heels of a breakup with her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn. If there’s anything The Tortured Poets Department taught us, there’s a damn good chance that her smiles and giddiness on those April nights weren’t only a mask, but one that was incredibly hard to maintain. Sure, there’s always going to be pain of some sort lingering. That’s just part of life. But compared to when she got emotional during the ovations for last year’s early performances of “Champagne Problems” (as opposed to Saturday night’s, where she got some laughs in and humbly looked out in shock), Swift seemed genuinely happy and content with where she is in life, how she’s doing, and she’s two months before her 35th birthday, no less.

Then again, Florida is one hell of a drug. Billy Joel and his family sure as hell thought so.

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This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2024.