“What a charming Saturday” it was for Taylor Swift fans, just like the singer-songwriter narrates on “The Bolter,” one of the tracks she played live for the first time ever last night (June 8).
The Eras Tour sets Swift up to pull deep from her discography when she wants to, during her ever-changing acoustic section of the concert. Nearing her 100th show on the sprawling trek (Saturday night in Edinburgh, Scotland, was No. 98), the star got particularly unpredictable in her choice of surprise songs when she sat at the piano at the Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium.
First, on guitar, Swift debuted one of her newer songs live. She played “The Bolter,” one of the last tracks on the Anthology edition of 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, her new album that’s so far spent six consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
A song in which she tells a story that comes to the realization “hearts are hers for the breakin’” and that there’s “escape in escaping,” “The Bolter” flawlessly pivoted to 2017’s “Getaway Car,” from Reputation.
Swift performing well thought-out mashups during the surprise song part of the Eras show has become customary on the international leg of The Eras Tour, ever since the singer announced her intention to “be as creative as possible with the acoustic set moving forward,” back in February.
Saturday night in Edinburgh, she followed the mashup of “The Bolter” and “Getaway Car” with another song combo, this one more surprising than the first. On piano, she paired “All of the Girls You Loved Before,” a one-off track she released from the vault of 2019’s Lover, with a song Swift wasn’t even sure her crowd would recognize: “Crazier,” found only on the soundtrack for the 2009 film Hannah Montana: The Movie.
But the stadium had no problem recalling the swooping chorus of “Crazier,” and sang with her: “You lift my feet off the ground/ You spin me around/ You make me crazier, crazier/ Feels like I’m fallin’ and I am lost in your eyes/ You make me crazier, crazier, crazier.”
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“Oh my god,” Swift said, laughing at how many people knew the words.
Watch both of Swift’s Saturday night Scotland surprises in the fan-captured clips below, and enjoy Billboard‘s complete list of all the songs we’ve heard in the Eras acoustic set (it gets updated with every tour date).
The post “Taylor Swift Debuts Something Old, Something New Live in Edinburgh: See Her Play 2009’s ‘Crazier’ & 2024’s ‘The Bolter’” by Ashley Iasimone was published on 06/09/2024 by www.billboard.com