Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is sort of the efficiency feat. Since tickets went on sale final 12 months, it’s been dominating headlines and breaking all types of information. Off the again of the tour, Swift has set attendance information at stadiums throughout the U.S., damaged the file for the highest-grossing U.S. tour in historical past and he or she set a brand new benchmark for the most live performance tickets bought in a single day.
However, I hear you ask, why does Jalopnik care about one of many hottest tickets on the town? Properly, in addition to being an all-out musical spectacle, the present can be a feat of logistics that requires 90 semi vehicles to arrange one single efficiency due to the quite a few costumes, color-coded microphones, huge LED screens and an illuminated stage that the “Hits Totally different” singer takes to every present along with her.
The stage for the tour is large, and it options an expansive LED display screen as Swift’s backdrop. There’s additionally an infinite illuminated catwalk-style part that stretches virtually the size of a soccer area. It’s a powerful web site to behold, because the stage can rise and fall to match Swift’s wants, and in addition tasks all method of photographs to showcase every period within the singer’s profession – together with a barrage of snakes when she kicks off her Fame period.
On high of all that, there’s the innumerable audio system, lights and every part else it is advisable placed on a psychedelic present that every one wants taking with the “Getaway Automotive” singer throughout the U.S.
Transport all that equipment from place to put takes an effort virtually as massive as Swift’s again catalog. In line with a report from the New York Put up, the hassle begins greater than every week earlier than the present, when a barrage of vehicles takes to the stadium.
The positioning spoke with Dave Brooks, Billboard senior director of reside music and touring, concerning the present to search out out what it takes to place the spectacle on. The Put up studies:
For a stadium tour of this magnitude, Brooks stated, “They’ve advance groups that may be prepping and pre-building.”
Nearer to the date, a workforce of an estimated 90 vehicles pulls into the venue to assemble the sprawling scene for Swift to sing career-spanning hits starting from her 2006 self-titled debut album to her newest LP, 2022’s “Midnights.”
The entire course of, Brooks instructed the Put up, takes an estimated “two to 3 weeks” to finish.
In these 90 vehicles, Swift crams the stage and all method of props, together with a mossy home that varieties the set for the Folklore part of the present, and a fleet of illuminated bikes for 1989. There are additionally quite a few costume modifications and extra guitars than you may shake a stick at.
As soon as all that’s unloaded, Swift places on two or three nights in every metropolis she stops at. After that, it’s all packed up and strikes onto the following cease on the tour.
It’d sound ridiculous, however when the mathematics is all stated and carried out, it’s solely 10 extra vehicles than her final tour in 2018, which required 80 semi-trailers (for a complete of 160 semis) that alternated stops throughout the calendar.