Taylor Swift Issues PSA About Getting ‘Creative’ With Surprise Songs, Delivers ‘Come Back… Be Here’ & ‘Daylight’ Mashup
Guessing which surprise songs Taylor Swift will play during her acoustic section on The Eras Tour just got a little trickier. She’s now serving some unexpected mashups.
Swift previously told fans she’s given herself permission to repeat songs she’s already played this tour for the trek’s international leg, which she’s currently on. But she’s still set on bringing some element of chaos to her nightly song choices.
“That was to challenge me to really get to all the ones that I just don’t naturally gravitate towards, and I feel really proud about having done that,” Swift said at her Melbourne, Australia, show on Feb. 18, referring to her original plan to avoid surprise song repeats throughout the tour.
“But this is sort of a public service announcement to everyone who might be anywhere else on the tour, or whatever, or watching this — we have a lot of people, we’re very lucky to have a lot of people watch this on the internet and care about these shows if they’re not here,” she continued. “I’ve just been kind of rethinking, and I’ve been thinking I want to be as creative as possible with the acoustic set moving forward.”
Swift tried to explain further: “I don’t want to limit anything, and I don’t want to just say like, ‘Oh, if I played a song before, I can’t play it again.'”
“I don’t want to take any paint colors out of the paintbox of colors,” the pop star said. “I don’t want to take any tools out of the toolbox. What’s the metaphor I’m looking for? I want to be able to play songs more than once if I feel like it, and I want to be able to make changes to songs.”
In other words, continue to expect the unexpected during the acoustic section of Swift’s shows.
Swift combined “Come Back… Be Here” from her Red era with Lover closing track “Daylight” at Melbourne Cricket Ground on Feb. 18, a day after performing a mashup of “Getaway Car,” “August” and “The Other Side of the Door.”
Swift has wrapped her Melbourne shows and heads to Sydney for four Eras tour dates at Accor Stadium, starting on Feb. 23.
Watch her “Come Back… Be Here” and “Daylight” mashup below. At the concert, Swift’s second surprise song was her debut-era “Teardrops on My Guitar,” played on piano.
Ashley Iasimone
Billboard