The world’s biggest pop star Taylor Swift exclaimed that she was the one who was “starstruck” as she performed to the largest audience of her career in Melbourne on Friday night.
“If I seem a little bit like I’m losing my mind over the fact that there are 96,000 people here tonight … it’s because it’s true,” she told the crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
“This is the biggest show that we’ve ever done. I’m fully starstruck by the fact so many people wanted to hang out with us on a Friday night in Melbourne.”
Swift performed for more than three hours on her Eras Tour, belting out songs that span her career and dazzling the stage with a parade of glittery and flowing costume changes.
The concert opened with a mash-up of Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince with Cruel Summer, followed by The Man and You Need to Calm Down — advice the Melbourne audience was never going to take.
Taylor Swift performed to 96,000 fans in Melbourne on Friday night. Photo: Getty
Just a few songs into the epic set list, the crowd’s enthusiasm got so much it brought the music to a halt.
Swift had just played Champagne Problems seated at a moss-covered grand piano, and was left simply laughing and shaking her head as the crowd screamed and chanted her name.
“I really miss coming to Australia, I gotta say,” said Swift.
Several of Swift’s best-loved hits, such as Blank Space and Shake it Off, reverberated around the stadium, such was the sheer volume of the crowd singing along to every line.
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Surprise for fans
The singer hinted at her upcoming album The Tortured Poets Department, which will be released in April, and treated fans to one of the album’s new songs.
So devoted were the Swifties, they already knew the words to The Bolter as she performed it live for the first time.
Two more surprise songs on the night were a moving rendition of You’re Losing Me, from her 2022 album Midnights, and Red, from ten years earlier.
One of countless crowd-pleasing moments was when one of her dancers inserted some Aussie slang into We are Never Ever Getting Back Together.
“Yeah, nah,” he sang in an Aussie twang.
Taylor Swift commands the stage in another bright costume. Photo: Getty
The Eras Tour is a next-level stadium show, with sets and costumes defining each phase of the singer’s career, a runway of massive screens, blizzards of confetti, banks of smoke and bursts of flame.
The Reputation era saw Swift in a one-legged sequinned bodysuit emblazoned with snakes, while for Evermore she wore a flowing gown.
Swift might have dozens of costume changes, but fans also go to extreme lengths to create outfits inspired by their favourite album.
On Friday, there were legions of sequinned bodysuits, a great many pairs of cowboy boots, and even one specially-made t-shirt that read “It’s me, hi, I’m the husband it’s me.”
The epic concert ran more than three hours, ending with 2022’s Midnights, and the tracks Anti-Hero, Mastermind and Karma.
Taylor Swift kicks off the Australian leg of the Eras Tour in Melbourne. Photo: Getty
The Eras Tour, which started in March 2023 with more than 150 shows across five continents, is the first in history to gross more than US$1 billion ($1.53 billion), according to industry estimates.
The 34-year-old jetted into Melbourne on Thursday from the US after watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce win the Super Bowl with his Kansas City Chiefs.
She will play two more concerts at the MCG followed by another four in Sydney starting next Friday.
-AAP
