ARLINGTON — If Taylor Swift is getting even a little bit tired, she didn’t show it.
The megastar brought the same fervor and spunk to her fifth performance on the “Eras Tour” Friday as if it were opening night. And the crowd — nearly 70,000 Swifties — matched her sky-high energy with a warm, Texas-sized welcome.
“Being back in Texas feels so good,” Swift said, drowning out screams and applause. “You’re making me feel phenomenal right now.”
The 3-hour concert was a marathon. But Swift, 33, a master of her craft and no stranger to sold-out stadiums, made night one of her three-show Arlington tour stop look like clockwork.
Word for word, a devout audience belted out a total of 44 songs spanning her 10-album discography.
Three of those albums have arrived since Swift’s “Lover Fest” tour was canceled in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Swift has also rerecorded two older albums.
“It makes me feel like we have something more going on here because of how long we have been hanging out and singing in groups together and dancing in groups together,” she said.
Halfway through the whimsical third act “Evermore,” set in an evergreen forest, Swift paused, looked over her moss-covered piano and took out her earpiece to listen to the roaring fans before mouthing, “Oh, my God.
“I love this crowd,” she said. “I love this crowd.”
Swift has kept fans guessing what each night’s set list will bring by weaving “secret songs” into her shows. On Friday, she swapped out “invisible string” for “the 1″ from 2020′s folklore before launching into acoustic renditions of “Sad Beautiful Tragic” from Red, her award-winning rerecorded album, and “Ours” off Speak Now.
“Let it be said about the ‘Eras Tour’: We’re tricksy,” Swift said.
For attendees, the journey to get there was trouble, trouble, trouble: Some waited in snaking lines, others shelled out hundreds to thousands to secure their spots. All fought ticketing meltdowns and chaotic concert traffic.
But fans’ woes faded as AT&T Stadium transformed into their temple and Swift made her first concert appearance in North Texas since 2018, complete with upwards of a dozen bejeweled costume changes. Swifties came decked in their own blinged-out outfits, including recreations of her best-known looks and homages to her country music roots in the form of bedazzled cowboy hats and boots.
Gilliana Taylor, 19, traveled from New York for the show Friday. She donned a glittery pink dress and halo — a play off Swift’s lyric “angels roll their eyes” from the pop hit “Cruel Summer.”
“All of her songs are things I’ve gone through in my own life, so it feels like we’ve grown up together,” she said. “She’s always been there for me like a big sister. This is a really emotional night.”
Jasmine Smith drove from Oklahoma City. To Smith, Swift’s prevailing message is empowerment.
“Growing up, liking Taylor Swift was the thing you were made fun of for,” Smith, 25, said. “As I’ve gotten older … it’s more, ‘I can come into myself and I am who I am.’”
The show was an immersive experience. Fans were blanketed with sheer white confetti to realize a line — “I still remember the first fall of snow” — from “All Too Well” off Red. During “Bad Blood,” an angsty number about betrayal and soiled relationships, flames shot up from the stage.
Swift threw a hat and guitar pick into the audience, to the delight of those close to the stage. Strutting the entirety of the converted football field, she made sure to show love to the rest of the arena, too. During one of her early songs from Speak Now, she scanned the crowd — even in the nosebleeds — while singing, “I was enchanted to meet you.”
Swift closed the show with seven tracks from her most recent release, Midnights. The audience erupted as she bowed.
“Arlington, you have been the crowd of dreams,” she said.
Opening acts included Plano-born Gayle Rutherfurd, better known as GAYLE, who closed her short but amped-up set with her social media track turned breakthrough hit “abcdefu.”
She was followed by indie pop band MUNA, which dedicated one of its final songs, “I Know A Place,” to the queer and transgender community as the jumbo screen behind the band lit up in shades of pink, white and blue.