On Nov. 3, 2024, after two years of touring, Taylor Swift put on one of the final U.S. “ The Eras Tour” shows in Indianapolis, Indiana. At the end of “The Eras Tour,” Swift will have visited over 52 different cities across the world and performed her show 152 times. She performed three nights in Indianapolis and only has two more cities to go.
Liv Ashely, a freshman at the University of Missouri, got to see Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” in Nashville, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. Getting tickets to the tour was an arduous experience for many but Ashely shared her strategy in obtaining tickets.
“My brother buys a lot of Taylor Swift merch, and so if you buy a lot of merch with the same email that you use as your Ticketmaster account, it gives you boosters in the queue,” Ashley said. “So we were boosted every time, and we managed to get presale codes also because of that.”
Ashley isn’t your typical teen fan girl. She has been a Taylor Swift fan since she was 4 and has attended multiple concerts before now.
“I’ve been to 10 Taylor Swift concerts. I’ve been to the ‘Fearless Tour’ twice, the ‘Red Tour’ twice, the ‘1989 Tour,’ the ‘Reputation Tour,’ and then I went to the ‘Eras Tour’ three times,” Ashley said. “I remember very vividly one of the first songs that I ever knew all the words to was ‘Picture to Burn,’ which is on the first album.”
“I remember very vividly one of the first songs that I ever knew all the words to was ‘Picture to Burn,’ which is on the first album.”-Liv Ashley
Ashley always goes to the concerts with her mom, and it’s something they have always bonded over.
“It’s like a tradition for my mom and I. We actually have a tattoo of a Taylor Swift song together, because of how much it means to us to go together and just kind of share that with each other,” Ashley said. “I hadn’t seen her in so long because of being at school, so it was super fun to finally see her and get to do our favorite activity together.”
Each time Ashley attended an “Eras Tour” concert, she had a different experience, making it worth going three times.
“So my first show that I went to was when Taylor announced that ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ was coming out. The second show I went to was when she did three surprise songs for the first time.” Ashley said. “And then last time was the first time I’d seen ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ live, and it also was the first time that I had had surprise song mash-ups.”
Now that Swift’s tour is coming to an end, Ashley shares how she feels and what she expects from Swift in the future.
“It’s so sad. But also I know she needs to get back to her normal life because I have a feeling that she’s either going to get married soon or she just needs to take a nice break.” Ashley said. “I definitely think that she’s probably gonna start to kind of close out her music career in the next five to 10 years, and most likely, hopefully, get married, maybe have a kid or two. But I also think that she could become just like a very big role model for people, kind of similar to Madonna and how she still doesn’t tour but everybody still really looks up to her and all the work that she did.”