I was lucky enough to attend The Eras Tour in May and can honestly say it was a completely different experience than any other concert I have ever been to. Having been a Taylor Swift fan for as long as I remember, experiencing this show which featured songs from each of her eras was like watching my life flash before my eyes.  

I attended the show with my best friend since childhood, and as we were listening to those songs together, we weren’t our 20-year-old selves. We were every age we’ve been since Taylor’s debut into our lives. We were girls again.  

I remember rushing home to Philadelphia on the train and doing my hair and makeup in the bathroom of the train station once I got there. I slipped on the cowgirl boots I had bought and ran to meet my friend at the restaurant she was waiting for me at. We got on the train and excitedly headed to the stadium. Sitting across from us were little girls in ruffled skirts, mini-cowgirl boots, Swift graphic tees that were too big for them, lots of body glitter, and of course, some friendship bracelets. I leaned onto my friend’s shoulder and gestured for her to look at them as we exchanged a cherishing look. We were in their place before and now as they’re heading to their first Swift show, we were right alongside them heading to our fourth.  

We walked into the stadium and the feeling of watching her enter the stage was indescribable. I had been anxiously awaiting this moment for months after a rough semester. It was the perfect way to start the summer.  

A few songs in, she played “Love Story,” a pretty popular song whether you’re a “Swiftie” or not. The stadium boomed as everyone, from little girls young enough to only know “Taylor’s Version” of the song to parents who heard the original on repeat in the early 2000s, sang along.  

The entire place glittered gold and I zoned out and looked around to take it all in. Swift’s music has been with me all my life, as well of the life of my best friend next to me. When she originally showed me Swift, we watched the music video for “Teardrops on My Guitar,” huddled together in front of the bulky desktop computer in the basement of her childhood home, and now we were halfway through college, sending each other TikToks of every clip from each show we came across leading up to that night because of our excitement. As the night went on, each song sent us through a time machine. The early albums full of fake country twang reminded us of being little kids dancing around our bedrooms. the Lover album was the soundtrack of our first car ride with no parents after she got her driver’s license, the Reputation album was always on repeat when we’d FaceTime our freshman year of college after I originally failed to realize how much I liked the album after swearing it wasn’t my style, and the Red era brought lots of tears as we thought about our own breakups and heartbreaks of our teenage years. 

Everyone I’ve ever been, I’ve been to the soundtrack of a Taylor album. And everyone I’ve ever had her as my best friend. Part of the reason Taylor is so special to so many of us is because her music is a time machine. She’s been like a big sister to so many girls, having experienced the various stages of womanhood and putting into words exactly what we’re feeling. 

The Eras tour is full of people coming together to bond over shared experience and love of her work, and between the outfit compliments, the offers to take photos of my friend and I, and gift of beaded bracelets from so many people, it was such a safe space to celebrate femininity and friendship. I attended the show as a 20-year-old but remembered every Era of myself that night.