Taylormania has finally arrived in Southern California.
Nearly five months after she launched her first road show since 2018, Taylor Swift is wrapping up the initial U.S. leg of her blockbuster Eras tour with six sold-out concerts at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium starting Thursday night.
The tour ostensibly comes behind Swift’s 10th studio album, “Midnights,” which came out in October and immediately set a record for the most streams ever accumulated in a single day on Spotify. Since then the LP has been certified double platinum and spun off a No. 1 single in “Anti-Hero”; it’s also a strong contender for an album of the year nomination at February’s Grammy Awards.
As the tour’s name suggests, though, Swift’s live show — with dozens of songs spread over three hours or more — is meant to encompass the 33-year-old’s entire career, from her days as a teenage country phenom through her pop breakthrough with 2012’s “Red” to her current station as a kind of fairy godmother figure to a generation of younger songwriters including Gracie Abrams and Gayle, both of whom are among her opening acts at SoFi.
Has any pop-culture event been more closely followed this summer? (Maybe “Barbenheimer.”) In addition to the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve taken in one of Swift’s gigs in person — driving gross proceeds toward an expected $1 billion or more by the time she’s finished circling the globe next year — the Eras tour has maintained a constant presence on TikTok thanks in the part to the show’s blend of novelty and familiarity: You know she’ll play a surprise song or two, but you don’t know which ones; you know she’ll place a hat on a lucky fan’s head during “22,” but you don’t know who the fan will be.
Might Swift, who revealed early Thursday that she’d scheduled a second round of North American dates next year, have even more up her sleeve in L.A.? The Times’ Mikael Wood and Suzy Exposito are at SoFi for opening night and will provide live updates from the show as it happens.
Lili Sunga, 18, scores some Taylor Swift merch at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday.
(Brittany Murray / Getty Images)