“Awww, hello! It feels like we have a little to catch up on. Am I the only one who feels that way, or do you feel that way too? So what’s been going on with us, you know, from my side of things, we’ve added four new musical members of the family. They’re really cute, they’re doing great. Our eldest of the four new ones is named Lover, and then we have a very, very imaginative, little sister, called folklore. And then folklore’s younger sister evermore. She’s wild. And then the baby, the youngest, Midnights. Another thing that’s happened is that I decided to re-record my first six albums! And let me tell you, that was a thing that a lot of people were like, ‘That’s not going to work.’ That’s not going to work. Watch her do that and watch that not work. But I had feeling you guys might back me up it, and you did! So thank you, thank you, forever, for that. The ones that I’ve put out so far are Fearless (my version) and Red (my version). But now we are embedded in the wild and whimsical world of evermore. And you know, when I write a song, my favorite part to write is the bridge. It’s my favorite. And I know that the chorus is probably the thing everyone remembers and the hook is apparently important, but that bridge—if you can get to that bridge and make the bridge go like, ‘Oh! Whee!’ then that’s my favorite moment to sing with a crowd, So when I wrote this one, I’ve always been like, ‘I really can’t wait to sing that one with the crowd.’ So this is called champagne problems.”
—Taylor before playing champagne problems in Arlington, TX on April 1st
“So you might have noticed, based on the aggressive color blocking, that what we’ve been trying to tell you is we are currently in the Red era. When I do the show, one of my favorite things about it is that it really does take me back through this dream and life and caeeer that I am so lucky to have gotten to have because of you. And when we get to the Red album, I really do think about how important that album was for me as a musician who wanted to try new things and experiment and and learn, but also as a young woman who was writing about heartbreak and just dying for someone in the crowd to look back and say, ‘I’ve been through that too and it’s going to be okay,’ and you did that for me. And you know, I think there was one song that mattered more to me than any other song. I hate to play favorites, but I just do when it comes to this one. And so I’d like to play this next song, one more song in the Red era, if you happen to have an extra 10 minutes to spare?”
— Taylor before playing All Too Well (10 Minute Version) in Arlington, TX on April 1st
“So you might have noticed, based on the aggressive color blocking, that what we’ve been trying to tell you is we are currently in the Red era. When I do the show, one of my favorite things about it is that it really does take me back through this dream and life and caeeer that I am so lucky to have gotten to have because of you. And when we get to the Red album, I really do think about how important that album was for me as a musician who wanted to try new things and experiment and and learn, but also as a young woman who was writing about heartbreak and just dying for someone in the crowd to look back and say, ‘I’ve been through that too and it’s going to be okay,’ and you did that for me. And you know, I think there was one song that mattered more to me than any other song. I hate to play favorites, but I just do when it comes to this one. And so I’d like to play this next song, one more song in the Red era, if you happen to have an extra 10 minutes to spare?”
— Taylor before playing All Too Well (10 Minute Version) in Arlington, TX on April 1st
“So folklore was an album that was really my form of escapism during the pandemic. You know, we all found different ways to get outside f our lives and realities because we just didn’t know what we were doing. For me, up until then, it had never occurred to me to write about anything other than just me, and me, and my feelings, and me, so it was a nice change. And I thought, you know, wouldn’t it be fun to create characters and story arcs and narratives that go between these characters, right? And there’s one thing you should know about me: I do have this recurring theme in my writing where I just love to write songs that womansplain to men how to apologize. I just love it. It’s the thing I love to do: “This is how you get the girl, this is how you fix it, this is how you say sorry to us.” And so I thought, wouldn’t it be so fun to create a character like this teenage boy named James who screws things up with the love of his life, and he has to apologize to her, and her name was Betty!
— Taylor before playing betty in Arlington, TX on April 1st
“This is another request from someone who’s here tonight. This is a request from Gracie Abrams. I texted her and I was like—we text—and she was like, ‘I’m so excited, I’m so excited for this tour,’ and in her very adorable way, ‘I’m dying, dying, dying, I’m dead, I’m crying all day,’ she talks, you know her, she’s very adorable, the way she speaks in hyperbole. And I mentioned the acoustic set, and she was talking about the setlist, and she was like, ‘Would you play Clean?’”
— Taylor before playing Clean (piano) in Arlington, TX on April 1st
