Prepare for the Eras Tour with this journey through Taylor Swift’s concert films

The Eras Tour concert film is nearly upon us, and it’s set to be another major milestone in Taylor Swift’s already incredibly illustrious career. Topping $100 million in advance ticket sales, the movie experience will likely be crowned the biggest concert film of all time. This is no surprise given Swift’s complete cultural dominance in the last few years. But this also isn’t Swift’s first rodeo: she’s released several concert films (or concert-film-adjacent material) throughout her career, each one calibrated to its specific “era.”

Swift’s on-screen journey (and no, we’re not talking about her appearance in Cats or her magnificent death in Amsterdam) tracks the incredible rise to fame of the biggest pop star of her generation, capturing her at the height of her powers—in front of an audience, connecting with her fans.

Journey To Fearless

After breaking out with her self-titled debut album, the Fearless era truly put Taylor Swift on the map. Her sophomore effort was ultimately awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year. This era also featured her first world tour, which kicked off in April 2009 and stretched through July 2010. The event was captured in Journey To Fearless, a three-part documentary series that originally helped launch the children’s television network The Hub.

Journey To Fearless “combines riveting performances from Taylor Swift’s smash 2010 tour with revealing interviews and behind-the-scenes footage,” per a synopsis of the series. It’s “the story of a little girl who dared to dream big, and who fearlessly faced near-insurmountable obstacles to make those dreams come true.” Questionably surmountable obstacles aside, it’s a fascinating document in the Swift canon that serves something like an origin story. In addition to tour footage, the doc features Swift family home videos and an explanation of how she fell in love with music and made it to Nashville. If you’re itching to watch it, Journey To Fearless can be purchased on DVD over at Amazon.

Speak Now World Tour — Live

Following the smash success of Fearless, Swift famously decided to make a point to her haters by releasing an entirely self-written album so that no one could question her songwriting abilities. Enter the Speak Now era, which was accompanied by a fairytale world tour spanning from February 2011 to March 2012. The Speak Now World Tour — Live concert film was accompanied by a live album that featured Swift’s set list and a few of the covers she played on the road (she played a lot of covers on that tour).

This one is more of a pure concert film than the documentary that preceded it. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see Swift’s evolution as a performer and the production value she brought to her shows: big set pieces, elaborate costumes, and even little skits (there’s a fake wedding staged in the middle, with a priest and organ music and everything). This DVD can also be purchased at Amazon.

Red

After Speak Now came Red, the era where Swift began her crossover from country music to pop. Sadly, there is no concert film from the Red tour, which took place from March 2013 to June 2014, though rumors circulated for years that one had been filmed and scrapped. (Swift’s label at the time, Big Machine, did not respond to The A.V. Club’s request for comment on the subject.) Some of the speculation that the Red film was scrapped was because one of the music videos released from the tour, “The Last Time,” was directed by Terry Richardson, who was shortly thereafter embroiled in (another) sexual misconduct scandal.

However, Swift also released a “Red” music video with a different director, Kenny Jackson. Maybe she was shopping around for a director to fit her vision. Per “Taylor Swift Switzerland,” Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta said “he and the management never planned to film the concert or to put it on DVD. He said Taylor also never insisted to film ‘The RED Tour’ due to her process of switching genres,” but this writer can’t find a single source to back up this claim. We’ll just have to enjoy the two music videos (and any blurry fan footage you can find).

The 1989 World Tour Live

The 1989 era marked Swift’s official entry into pure pop, and marked another incredible peak in her career. The world tour, which spanned from May to December 2015, was a similar blockbuster smash, and got an Apple Music-exclusive concert film. Filmed at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia (the final stop on tour), the Jonas Åkerlund-directed film captured the incredible scope of her stadium success.

The movie featured interviews with Swift about crafting the concert experience, including inviting a lot of friends and celebrities to come out on stage and surprise her fans—everyone from Fetty Wap to Idina Menzel. There are also interviews with “The Squad,” Swift’s infamous group of girlfriends and footage filmed by her ex-bestie Karlie Kloss. Unfortunately, the film isn’t available for purchase and it’s no longer streaming anywhere (officially, at least—an intrepid fan may be able to find it somewhere on the web.) Instead, you can watch comedian Lara Marie Schoenhals’ “Please welcome to the stage…” video and get a similar idea as to what the 1989 tour was like.

Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour

Swift’s reputation era followed a fall from grace prompted by the latest (at the time) chapter in her feud with Kanye West. The album is a dark horse in her discography, but for reputation doubters, the tour (which took place between May and November 2018) breathed new life into the material and gave new context to the music. The film version is another straight concert movie without any behind-the-scenes material—as Swift said when the era began, “There will be no explanation. There will just be reputation.”

On a streaming budget, this is probably her best-looking concert film ever, gorgeously shot and lovingly rendered with lots of gilded costumes and giant snakes. It was a herald of what was to come with the Eras Tour as far as production, choreography, and some of Swift’s strongest vocals of her career. The full film can be found streaming on Netflix.

Lover & folklore

Swift’s Lover era was going to be conducted a little differently, with just 16 big shows called “Lover Fest.” Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted those plans, but not before Swift managed to film an intimate concert in Paris called City Of Lover. Broadcast on ABC and later streaming on Disney+ and Hulu in May 2020, the show stripped down songs from the pure-pop album and transformed many of them into aching acoustic versions. While the full concert is no longer available to stream, there’s some video from the show on Swift’s YouTube page, and the accompanying live album can be streamed on Spotify.

Also during the pandemic, Swift released Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. It’s not really a concert film, so this one’s a bit of a cheat, but it’s a highlight of an era that never got its own tour. The movie features Swift and her main collaborators, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, performing songs from the Grammy-winning album and discussing the meanings behind the lyrics and the process of creating the tracks. That pandemic-era film can be still be streamed on Disney+. (And none for you evermore. Bye!)

The Eras Tour Concert Film

Next up is The Eras Tour Concert Film, which premieres in theaters October 13. Swift made a deal directly with AMC to distribute the film, circumventing studios and giving herself the freedom to sell to a streamer at a later date. For now, though, the event is shaping up to be a theater experience, replicating some of the traditions started at the live show (trading friendship bracelets, for example, has been encouraged). The footage was shot at Swift’s final tour stop on the first leg of the U.S. tour, at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium in early August 2023. Performing songs from each previous “era,” this concert film is no doubt a culmination of all the on-screen eras that came before—and it’s already set to become one of the highest-grossing films of the year, period. See you at the cinemas!