Taylor Swift is cooking up new surprise song combos on the international leg of The Eras Tour.
Swift, 34, played the first of several live shows at the Tokyo Dome on Wednesday, February 7, and fans were eager to see which two songs would be included in the acoustic section. While Swift kept her word of reusing surprise songs in the new year by performing “Holy Ground” from Red (Taylor’s Version), she also played a tune that had never been heard live before — and noticeably flubbed the lyrics.
When she sang “Dear Reader” from Midnights (3am Edition), Swift sang, “These restless tears of a cursed man,” instead of “These desperate prayers of a cursed man.”
Some fans wondered whether the mix-up was intentional or simply an accident. The crowd also noticed that Swift changed her signature manicure from colors representing each of her albums to a classy white, seemingly a nod to her upcoming 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Before concluding the 2023 leg of her Eras Tour in São Paulo, Brazil, Swift announced that she was changing her rule of only playing a surprise song once. “I decided that in 2024, when we go back on tour, I’m just gonna open back up all the songs for surprise songs,” she said. (“Holy Ground,” which she also performed at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in May 2023, was the first repeat of the year.)
“I feel like, for one year, we’ve really gotten through a lot of songs, so I’m just gonna make all the songs fair game when we go back on tour,” Swift continued. “There’s some songs that I still really, really wanna play, so I’m gonna try and get through all of them.”
Swift previously told fans that if she messed up a surprise song, she could play it again to redeem herself. Midnights tracks were the exception and could be performed multiple times.
“When I started the tour, I said, ‘In the acoustic section, I am never repeating a song. I’m never doing songs more than once,’” she explained while on stage in Tampa in April 2023. “But now I’m like, ‘Ugh, there are so many songs I want to do more than once.’”
She explained that if a track came from her 10th record, which dropped in October 2022, “I can do it however many times I want because Midnights is the most accurate picture of my life to date.”
Days before resuming her tour, Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department, which is set to be released on Friday, April 19, while accepting her Best Pop Vocal Album trophy at the Grammy Awards. She hinted on stage at the Sunday, February 4, ceremony that she’d been keeping the album “secret” for “two years.”
