Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour is winding down — this past weekend’s three shows at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium marked the end of the US run, and she has just three more weekends of shows in Canada left before the whole tour concludes. I went to night one in Indianapolis on Friday, and the whole city was transformed for the occasion. Those who flew into Indianapolis Airport could stop to make bracelets and do other crafts arranged by a local Girl Scout troop. Volunteers were handing out maps for the “Swift City” and juggling cameras to capture photos of people against a pop-up backdrop.
Downtown, the local government had placed temporary album and song themed street signs around the venue – including So High School St., …Ready For It? Rd., Bad Blood Blvd, and Cornelia St. — while one hotel adorned its exterior with a 300-foot Swift. The convention center one block north of Lucas Oil Stadium hosted merch sales over four days. The lines on the sales floor, with wait times exceeding three hours at times, rivaled those I’ve seen at New York Comic Con. But in and outside the lines, people (including the police) were sharing bracelets and admiring each other’s attire. I can’t imagine how successful this could have been in cities with stadiums located outside their centers (looking at you, MetLife Stadium), but the walkable downtown of Indianapolis was a perfect location.
Though the city center didn’t feel strained, Lucas Oil Stadium struggled a bit to accomodate the sixty-nine thousand fans, a record number of attendees for a concert there. A line to get wristbands for the floor was 45 minutes long (many attendees missed opener Gracie Abrams as a result), wrapping halfway around the stadium, and then people could only get to the floor from one narrow stairwell (leaving was the same). With autumn in full swing, the roof of the Colts’ stadium was closed, making this the first indoor Eras Tour stop.
As for the show itself, the three-and-a-half hour spectacle has been updated since last year with a segment devoted to this year’s Tortured Poets Department. Here were some night one highlights from Indianapolis:
- Swift showed great appreciation for her fans throughout the three hour plus show and the fans responded in kind — there was almost two minutes of adulation following “Champagne Problems.”
- The stage lighting and the neon bicycles for “Blank Space” reminded me of a light-version of the grid in Tron, while the orange globes during “Willow” had me wondering if a Halloween version of the show would have had jack-o-lanterns. Some pockets of the audience had their own orange globes/balloons.
- The surprise songs for night one were “The Albatross” combined with “Holy Ground” on acoustic guitar followed by “Cold as You” and “Exile” on piano. There was cheering in anticipation of Bon Iver for the latter, but alas, he didn’t appear. (During “Fortnight,” people cheered in hopes that Post Malone would be there.)
- The Tortured Poets Department segment (which followed 1989) was dramatically monochromatic and had some cool outfit changes. First Swift had on a white dress with lyrics written on it, then she donned a military jacket and brought out drum cadets, and finally she wore a ringmaster jacket for “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart.”
Check out pictures (most are by Sachyn Mital) from night one, and video from all three nights in Indianapolis, below.
