Taylor Swift breaks Wembley record and sings So Long, London as UK tour ends

Taylor Swift had completed the European leg of her Eras Tour with a record-breaking present at Wembley Stadium that was packed filled with surprises.

The pop star was joined on stage by Florence + The Machine and by Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, rewarded followers with the premiere of a brand new music video and gave the primary reside rendition of her tune So Long, London.

It was Swift’s eighth live performance at Wembley this summer season – overtaking a file for any solo singer, which was set by Michael Jackson along with his Bad Tour in 1988.

“You simply made me the primary solo artist to ever play Wembley eight instances in a single tour,” she informed followers. “We won’t ever, ever be capable to thanks sufficient for it.”

The star’s eighth Wembley present additionally noticed her equal the general file for probably the most nights on the venue on a single tour, set by Take That on their Progress Tour in 2011.

The star’s headline-dominating tour has criss-crossed Europe all summer season; with the Wembley finale marking the 131st date of her two-year trek.

In the UK alone, she performed to nearly 1.2 million folks, producing an estimated £1bn for the nation’s financial system.

A group of geophysicists in Edinburgh even recorded seismic waves generated by followers dancing at Murrayfield Stadium, which made the bottom transfer by a most of 23.4 nanometres (nm) in the course of the tune Ready For It?

The London dates marked a excessive level, with Swift enjoying there extra instances than another metropolis on her itinerary.

“I’ve at all times cherished enjoying for you right here in London, however that is one of the best,” she mentioned throughout Tuesday’s finale.

“I’ve by no means had it this good earlier than. I’ve by no means had a crowd that is so beneficiant.

“You appear to have memorised each single lyric of each single tune, and that is a dream come true.”

She made the ultimate present rely, bringing out Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine to duet on the tune Florida!!!

The British singer’s look triggered a wave of screams, as the 2 stars stood face-to-face, bellowing the refrain at one another on the finish of a catwalk.

But any devoted Swiftie is aware of that the actual spotlight of the Eras Tour is the acoustic set, the place she performs two “shock songs” that are not an everyday a part of the setlist.

Last week, the star was joined by Ed Sheeran to play the songs Endgame and Thinking Out Loud.

For the final date at Wembley, she was assisted by Jack Antonoff – one in all her core collaborators on Grammy-winning albums like Folklore and Midnights.

Together, they performed a guitar-based medley of Death By A Thousand Cuts and Getaway Car.

To followers’ delight, the pair even staged a goofy reenactment of the Getaway Car recording session, the place they wrote the tune’s bridge in a 30-second burst of inspiration.

Swift then continued the acoustic set at her piano, with the reside debut of So Long, London, from her newest album The Tortured Poets Department.

Fans had been speculating for days about whether or not she would carry out the observe, which is extensively believed to be concerning the finish of her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn final yr.

The couple had been believed to have lived in Primrose Hill in the course of the pandemic, and Swift had written an earlier tune, London Boy, in his honour.

But the six-year relationship fell aside final yr, a month after Swift launched the Eras Tour in North America.

On So Long, London, she sings concerning the loss of life of a London-based affair: “You left me on the home by the Heath… And I’m pissed off you let me offer you all that youth without spending a dime.”

But the surprises did not finish with the acoustic set.

After the three-and-a-half-hour present ended and Swift had left the stage, she performed a model new music video on the stadium’s massive screens as followers began to make their method dwelling.

Featuring model new behind-the-scenes footage, it gave a glimpse into the large scale of the Eras tour, with Swift travelling beneath the stage on prepare tracks and rehearsing the audacious “stage dive” that is develop into a spotlight of the live performance.

The video was soundtracked by I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, a spotlight of her latest album, which particulars how the opening leg of her tour was overshadowed by the emotional fallout of her break-up with Alwyn.

“All the items of me shattered as the gang was chanting ‘More’,” she sings within the pre-chorus.

However, there was an altogether extra tragic backdrop to this summer season’s reveals.

On 29 July, three younger ladies had been killed in a horrifying assault at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.

A couple of weeks later, the star needed to cancel three dates in Vienna after safety forces foiled a possible assault on her followers on the Ernst Happel Stadium.

Swift is known to have personally reached out to the victims of the Southport stabbing, and launched a press release saying she was “at an entire loss for find out how to ever convey my sympathies to those households”.

However, she has not referenced both incident on stage – preferring as an alternative to deal with the sense of neighborhood that has develop into the defining attribute of the Eras tour, the place followers swap friendship bracelets and make new friendships each night time.

The tour has even spawned a side-industry of spreadsheets, cataloguing each costume variation and shock tune that is been performed alongside the best way.

The countours of the present are so acquainted to devoted Swifties that they now take part along with her scripted stage patter (“Welcome to the Eras Tour!”) as usually as her tune lyrics.

It provides a sure factor of camp to the proceedings – like a sanitised pop remix of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

On stage at Wembley, Swift lapped up the adulation, saying it was “a privilege to do the factor I like, in entrance of any measurement crowd in any respect”.

At an earlier present in Liverpool, she had additionally known as the Eras Tour the “most exhausting, all-encompassing however most joyful, most rewarding, most great factor that has ever occurred in my life”.

The 34-year-old will now take a well-deserved break, earlier than firing up the tour for one final jaunt throughout the US and Canada within the autumn.

When it reaches its closing date in Vancouver this December, it would have made an estimated $2bn in ticket gross sales alone.

Without query, that may make it the largest tour of all time – with revenues greater than doubling Elton John’s farewell tour, which was the earlier file holder.

The massive query is: What will Swift do then?