The 96 Best Quotes from Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Doc (You’ll Feel Like You Have Backstage Access!)

For anyone who stayed up watching a grainy live stream of Taylor Swift’s acoustic set during one of her 149 Eras Tour shows, the singer’s new documentary series about the record-breaking phenomenon is for you. When the first two episodes of The End of an Era dropped on Disney+ on December 12, they covered a lot of ground: from Swift’s intense tour prep to sweet phone calls with fiancé Travis Kelce to more serious (and heartbreaking) topics like her canceled Vienna shows. In fact, I watched the first and second episodes twice. All six episodes of The End of an Era are available on Disney+ as of December 23, and they immerse you in almost everything that went on behind the scenes.

You get to hear from Swift, her dancers, bandmates, and special guests like Ed Sheeran and Florence Welch. It’s a literal backstage pass to everything that went into the making of The Eras Tour, including adding a brand-new era more than a year into the tour. Here are some of the standout moments and quotes from the series.

Swift talks about how this massive tour was in the works for about two years, and how rerecording her music was part of the inspiration behind the 3.5-hour show she put on for a year and a half. The behind-the-scenes looks are like little gifts for fans who saw (and loved!) the final product.

1. “There were two main factors that culminated in The Eras Tour — both of them were unpleasant.” —Taylor Swift (on her catalog being sold and the coronavirus pandemic)
2. “We think that these bad things are happening to me, or to us. If you flip it around correctly, and you react in a certain way, those things can be happening for you.” —Taylor Swift
3. “When you revisit something, you go back into that world. All this work is so indicative of the time I was in, in my life. I feel like I’m reading my old diaries, thinking about all the different girls I was, until I was this one.” —Taylor Swift (on her rerecords helping to inspire the tour)
4. “What if I did a tour that celebrated all these different moments in my life and career, where you have chapters divided up by albums, and everything changes when the chapter changes?” —Taylor Swift 
5. “I clung to songwriting as a sort of life raft.” —Taylor Swift (on the pandemic)
6. “She had said to us, ‘This is gonna be over 3 hours.’ And we were just like, ‘Oh my God, how do we do this?’” —Andrea Swift
7. “Not just planning, but executing a tour of this size, is mind-boggling.” —Andrea Swift

Swift says in the episode that every aspect of this tour was put together by people all around the world — all separately honing concert pieces that needed to coalesce by March 17, 2023, the opening concert. Swift also put herself through six months of physical training before she got to rehearsals.

1. “I’m weirdly emotional right now.” —Taylor Swift (on rehearsing the tour for the first time) 
2. “It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Taylor.” —Taylor Swift (a global superstar introducing herself to every dancer) 
3. “We’re just gonna hit ’em with: ’22,’ ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,’ ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ and then the full 10 minutes of ‘All Too Well.’” —Taylor Swift (on her Red setlist)
4. “I wanted to overserve the fans. That was my main goal. I wanted to overserve them in terms of the amount of songs they were gonna hear, the length of the show, what kinds of production they were gonna see. Different styles of dance, different worlds of dance, wardrobe, how far I was gonna push myself.” —Taylor Swift

Swift talks to her documentary crew following the cancellation of the Vienna shows due to a suspected terror plot and the horrific July 2024 stabbing attack in Liverpool that killed three children, ages 6 to 9.

1. “I thought that this would be a tour I was very proud of. This is like more than a tour; it’s a force to be reckoned with in global culture. So, never in my life did I think we would have a terrorist plot.” —Taylor Swift
2. “I’m gonna meet some of these families tonight and … put on a pop concert, you know?” —Taylor Swift (on trying not to cry when meeting the families of the Liverpool victims)
3. “I’ve been performing for, you know, 20 years. From a mental standpoint, being, like, afraid something’s gonna happen to your fans at any moment, this is a new challenge.” —Taylor Swift (on performing after Vienna)
4. “I want to keep all the nerves I have away from the crowd. Because when you’re sort of the ringleader of this show, they can sense any kind of shift energetically in you, and you have to really focus on that and factor that in, that, ‘you’re at The Eras Tour. Nothing’s wrong.’” —Taylor Swift (on being strong for her fans)
5. “I feel like people have forgotten that, like, you’re a human being amongst all this as well.” —Ed Sheeran (on the news surrounding the tour)
6. “I just do live in a reality that’s very unreal a lot of the time.” —Taylor Swift (on performing following the tragedies)

You see Swift play her final shows of the European leg of the tour in London in August 2024. She takes you through backstage concert moments and little snippets of her relationship with her now-fiancé, Travis Kelce.

1. “It’s like the crowd knew that I needed a pick-me-up. They were, when I walked out on stage, they were wilder than I’ve ever seen.” —Taylor Swift (talking to Kelce on the phone following her first show back after Vienna)
2. “I was so happy that I thought I was gonna forget how to play guitar and sing.” —Taylor Swift
3. “Bringing out special guests is something I really enjoy. Like when I get to be onstage with someone like Ed Sheeran, we can create a unique, special moment, and it really just gives something to the fans that they didn’t expect.” —Taylor Swift
4. “The only thing we’re trying to do is to make the world go away for a little while and make people feel seen and let them scream the lyrics they love at the top of their lungs.” —Amos Heller, Swift’s longtime bandmate (on the importance of The Eras Tour)
5. “Something this moving, this powerful, this rich in feeling and experience, represents more than just people coming to see an artist perform songs. And so we have a large responsibility to do this show and still show up for fans in the way that we can and know how.” —Kam Saunders, Eras Tour dancer (on the importance of The Eras Tour)
6. “I watch tons of TV, I get room service in bed, I sign a box of 2,000 CDs, and then I’m tired. And then we do the whole thing again.” —Taylor Swift (on her postshow routine)
7. “It’s basically the same job. I got songs to remember. You got plays to remember … You’ve got Coach Reid; I’ve got … my mom.” —Taylor Swift (speaking to Kelce on the phone)
8. “So I’m gonna be scouring the internet just in case you sing the song.” —Travis Kelce (on his excitement for a possible Ed Sheeran duet)
9. “Some people get a vitamin drip; I got this conversation.” —Taylor Swift (to Kelce)

Anyone who attended The Eras Tour knows it was special, and the docuseries highlights how this show affected Swift’s fans.

1. “It’s like Woodstock, but without the drugs.” —Fan in the docuseries 
2. “The thing that’s so special, it is that community. When they get into that stadium and celebrate, not just what’s happening on that stage, but what’s happening with them, and how they honor each other and love each other, it just became this movement.” —Andrea Swift
3. “There’s so many hundreds of moments of individual eye contact throughout the course of the show. I see the mass quantities of joy that everyone’s feeling.” —Taylor Swift
4. “What’s interesting is there’s some joy in the show. But there’s a lot of emotions in this that aren’t just like, ‘put on your smiley face and come to The Eras Tour.’ It’s so much more.” —Taylor Swift
5. “You look out into the crowd, and this isn’t just a blob of lights. These are millions of stories and all these counternarratives all colliding in one place where we feel safe to be demonstrative about a whole spectrum of emotion. That stuff is really powerful.” —Taylor Swift
6. “A lot of tenured professionals are doing their very best to quantify what it is about what she’s doing that’s connecting to everybody. It’s just a show. It’s just music. But there is something more profound than that going on here.” —Amos Heller

Swift gets right into the final concert, opening the first episode in a huddle with her dancers, singers, and band before they play their last night of the tour in Vancouver on December 8, 2024. She talks about how special the people are who make up every part of the tour. Here are some highlights from her speech.

1. “Every single one of us has picked professions that, categorically, people, for the majority of the time, they tell you [that] you shouldn’t do it.” —Taylor Swift
2. “You have to love the thing so much that you override 85% to 95% of the advice you are given along the way.” —Taylor Swift
3. “Everyone likes to talk about phenomenons like The Eras Tour, almost as if it was pieces falling into place in some sort of accidental confluence of events that just happened, right?” —Taylor Swift
4. “It is our job to make this look accidental, and it is our job to make this look effortless. But I just want every single one of you to know that I in no way, shape, or form look at this as the pieces just falling into place. You put the pieces where they are.” —Taylor Swift
5. “This is the biggest challenge any of us have ever done. Tonight, we complete that challenge.” —Taylor Swift  

Swift famously added a brand-new era to the tour from her April 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department, and the second episode is a deep dive into how that all happened.

Her surprise album dropped in April 2024 and joined The Eras Tour in May 2024.

1. “My goal for The Eras Tour is that I didn’t want the fans to leave thinking that they missed out on anything.” —Taylor Swift
2. “One thing I’ve always tried to do is, like, give something to the fans that they didn’t expect. —Taylor Swift (on adding the TTPD set)
3. “…In the middle of me releasing the album, we had to be all hands on deck, creating a brand-new era to put into the show to represent [The Tortured Poets Department].” —Taylor Swift
4. “I love having a good secret.” —Taylor Swift (on adding the TTPD set)

Swift and her team basically took apart what they knew and retooled it with this brand-new album included.

1. “We’re doing theater!” —Taylor Swift (on her “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” choreography)
2. “It feels crazy to, like, take all the pieces apart, and then put them together in a different order.” —Taylor Swift 
3. “I swear to God, if I heard people online being like ‘I miss the old show!’ I was gonna be like, ‘Oh my God you have no idea how hard this was to do.’” —Taylor Swift (on adding the TTPD set)
4. “When we brought out this new show in Paris, it was so rewarding, because all that secrecy and all of that working during our only time off paid off so much, cuz the fans were so excited.” —Taylor Swift

Swift brought out her “Florida!!!” duet partner of Florence and the Machine, and the effort that went into the surprise was impressive to watch — it was Florence’s first time on a lift!

1. “It is so much extra work to keep things a surprise. Let me tell ya — I need a nap just thinking about it — but it’s so worth it when we can actually pull it off.” —Taylor Swift (on adding “Florida!!!” to the final London show)
2. “Everybody’s got their thing they’re good at … it’s taken me a really long time to be even fine at choreography.” —Taylor Swift (on practicing choreography for “Florida!!!”) 
3. “We’re similar in that the persona is huge, but the person is soft, and so I think that’s why we get along.” —Florence Welch
4. “It was really fun and completely terrifying.” —Florence Welch
5. “Taylor’s my friend, and I know her as this, like, very cozy person, and I came out of the lift, and I was like ‘Oh my God, it’s f*cking Taylor Swift.’” —Florence Welch

Before the tour, Swift asked her friend Emma Stone (casual) if Stone knew of any choreographers, and she immediately said that Mandy Moore, who she worked with on La La Land, should be the only name on her list.

1. “I never would’ve thought that I would be in the same sentence as Taylor Swift in my life.” —Mandy Moore 
2. “Her songs are mini movies, so when I listen to them it’s just lyrics and melody swirling with ideas in my head, and then you just start making something.” —Mandy Moore (on choreographing Swift’s tour)
3. “I wanna kinda channel like Rites of Spring, Florence [and the] Machine … like, girl in an insane asylum-slash-wood nymph.” —Taylor Swift (talking to Moore about her “Willow” choreography)
4. “…People can get very opinionated about things looking very uniform. That’s not what I wanted to do with The Eras Tour. I feel like when you look up onstage as a fan, if you see people that represent you, your friends, the people you see in the world, that’s, I think, much more emotional and more connective and powerful. I really wanted everyone to look up on that stage and think, “I see myself in that person.” —Taylor Swift (on casting her dancers)
5. “I don’t want dancers that blend in. I don’t care about them pulling focus. I want them to pull focus. I want you to feel like you saw an entire crew of individual stars on the stage.” —Taylor Swift (on her dancers)

Swift’s record-grossing $2 billion tour meant everyone who was part of The Eras Tour family got a cash bonus.

1. “Bonus day is so important because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is really important to me, because people who work on the road, if the tour grosses more, they get more of a bonus, and these people just work so hard, and they are the best at what they do.” —Taylor Swift
2. “Every single person on the crew, I’ve handwritten them a note. It took me a couple weeks, but it’s fun to write the notes.” —Taylor Swift 
3. “It feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you.” —Taylor Swift
4. “Bonus day! I love bonus day!” —Taylor Swift

The dancers, band, singers, crew, and Swift get a couple months off in episode 3, before heading to Miami for the last U.S. leg of the tour.

Ahead of Miami, Swift and her stylist, Joseph Cassell, try on a new version of her Reputation bodysuit, but early fittings didn’t go well as it appeared it wasn’t made to Swift’s correct measurements. Thankfully, seamstress Diana Aghajanyan is a “genius,” as Cassell says in the doc, and quickly altered the suit to fit Swift perfectly.

1. “Nostalgia is a huge part of The Eras Tour. If you were 12 years old during the Red era, you’re gonna remember certain things that you saw and certain things that you felt. It’s my job to bring those feelings and those visuals back to you. Wardrobe is one way to do that.” —Taylor Swift
2. “I mean, dancing all night. Yeah, my feet ache, but I’m wearing Louboutins. Like, it is a privilege for these feet to ache like this.” —Taylor Swift
3. “It can take me from being utterly exhausted (*snaps fingers*) [and] I’m just like, ‘Nope. If I’m wearing this, I gotta level up. I gotta be on the level of this outfit.’” —Taylor Swift (on her Versace Lover bodysuit)
4. “Oh, it’s now my favorite. I didn’t see this coming … when I tell you guys that the bra was in a corset here (*points to her ribs*) like a second row of udders.” —Taylor Swift (being ecstatic that she could debut her gold Reputation bodysuit in Miami)

You get an inside look at some of the members of The Eras Tour family as they head home for break. One of the more touching stories includes when backup singer Jeslyn Gorman is diagnosed with breast cancer during the tour, successfully completes her treatment, and returns to the road.

1. “Jeslyn is one of the most talented, resilient, loving people I’ve ever been around.” —Taylor Swift
2. “When I let Taylor know, she came storming in with hugs and crying and just saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And her mom said, ‘You just take care of you, and we’ll be here when you’re ready.’” —Jeslyn Gorman, one of Swift’s backup singers
3. “I cannot believe that she was back in a few months. The will to come back and do the hardest show ever. None of us could believe it. I still can’t.” —Taylor Swift

Swift and her tour crew had to get back into touring mode in October 2024 after being off for about two months. She reminisces on the tour prep and how she “had to up her game” with physical training and the detailed stage production. The group also had to deal with inclement weather as they headed to southern Florida.

1. “I’ve never worked out this much in my life — it’s horrible.” —Taylor Swift
2. “Anything’s hard when you’re scaling a stage that goes the entire length of an NFL stadium. I think I run like 8 miles in the show.” —Taylor Swift
3. “I don’t wanna fall in a hole, and I don’t wanna have, like, pyro, go off on my head.” —Taylor Swift (on needing to be precise with her movements during the show)
4. “Weather components I don’t enjoy: extreme wind — do not like it, do not love it.” —Taylor Swift (on the threat of rain in Miami)
5. “Then you get situations where [bad weather] sometimes it’s kind of wonderful. Just cinema. Just drama … it adds to the show, if there aren’t other [dangerous] weather situations at play.” —Taylor Swift (on playing shows in the rain, like in Miami)

The fourth episode of the docuseries dives into Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce, revealing that Swift’s mom, Andrea Swift, was the mastermind behind introducing her daughter to the Kansas City Chiefs tight end after she saw his plea on his “New Heights” podcast.

Swift talks about the challenges of dating on the road.

1. “Men will let you down; The Eras Tour never will.” —Taylor Swift (on going through two breakups during the tour)
2. “She can’t believe that she doesn’t have to convince me to be in love with someone who’s good for me.” —Taylor Swift (on Andrea’s happiness about her relationship with Kelce)
3. “I thought it was the sweetest thing in the world that he came to your show … He brought you something from your world.” —Andrea Swift (on Kelce making a friendship bracelet for Swift)
4. “You know, on our first date, he literally had to explain football, as if it were, like, violent chess.” —Taylor Swift (on dating Kelce)
5. “We both have jobs where we go out in NFL stadiums and we entertain people for 3-and-a-half hours — his with considerably more violence than mine, um, but he’s not in heels.” —Taylor Swift (on how she and Kelce are similar)
6. “I can safely say that was the loudest it ever got on The Eras Tour.” —Taylor Swift (on Kelce joining her on stage for “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart”)

From one of Swift’s backup dancers getting to do his dream dance number for “…Ready for It?” to Swift mashing up acoustic versions of her songs (and her friends’ songs), you witness the little moments that made this tour special.

1. “I love being challenged to come up with different things to do every night.” —Taylor Swift (on creating her acoustic sets)
2. “Sabrina is just like a shooting star. She’s so smart; she knows exactly how to entertain people in the way that they want, in the moment that she’s in.” —Taylor Swift (on Sabrina Carpenter joining her during the acoustic set in New Orleans)
3. “We’re not trying to make any points about gender, but we just don’t really have any kind of restrictions. We got guys in heels and leotards and stuff, and we just don’t really think too hard about it, right?” —Taylor Swift (on her approach to The Eras Tour)
4. “It’s not really that often where a male dancer can do, like, a female swinging part and even be allowed to, like, flourish as much as he wants in, in that part.” —Whyley Yoshimura, Eras Tour dancer (on subbing in last-minute during the all-female “…Ready for It?” dance)

You better have your tissues ready because this episode highlights Swift’s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who was an opera singer.

Swift’s dad, Scott Swift, and her younger brother, Austin Swift, aren’t featured as much as Andrea throughout the entire docuseries, but the singer makes sure to give them their due.

1. “For me, part of The Eras Tour is a celebration of my family. Ultimately, I just don’t see any of this happening if all of my family hadn’t been involved.” —Taylor Swift
2. “This tour, it’s an honor to work on it … it’s incredibly fun, but mostly it’s a way for us to be together as a family and to sort of honor this thing we’ve committed our entire lives to.” —Andrea Swift
3. “It began with my mother, and I think that that prepared me, probably better than anything that could have, for having a child like Taylor, who pretty much wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps.” —Andrea Swift (on growing up having a mother who was an opera singer)
4. “The experience writing ‘Marjorie’ was … I was kind of a wreck at times writing it. I would sort of break down, sometimes.” —Taylor Swift (on writing a song for her grandmother and putting it in The Eras Tour)
5. “She died when I was 13, when I was on a trip to Nashville to try and make it. So, I’ve always just sort of felt like she was just seeing this, you know. One of the things that still rips me apart when I listen to it is that she’s singing with me on this song.” —Taylor Swift (on writing a song for her grandmother and putting it in The Eras Tour)
6. “This has been the dream tour of your life.” —Andrea Swift
7. “It’s so crazy that, like, all this has happened and we all got to experience it together.” —Taylor Swift (reflecting on how the people closest to her got to experience this tour)

You finally reach the last three shows in Vancouver in this episode, and it’s a nostalgic look back at where Swift was in her life and how much this tour meant to her and her Eras Tour crew.

You see Swift watch a Chiefs game while simultaneously practicing her acoustic set before she goes on stage one final time, and you get a look at how everyone on the tour prepared for the last show. 

1. “I feel so proud, but so ready, like so ready for this. This is the perfect ending.” —Taylor Swift (on going into her final three shows)
2. “Every person in that audience, hopefully, is being shaped positively in some way by something that they see, or something that they hear, or something that they feel during that 3-and-a-half hours.” —Taylor Swift (on her hope for what The Eras Tour did for fans)
3. “Everything’s going on around us, and somehow we’re able to just have this moment be completely between us.” —Taylor Swift (on giving out hats to little kids during “22”)
4. “…I know I used to have hobbies and a personality outside of this tour. I can’t remember what they were. I’ll let you know.” —Taylor Swift (on the demands of The Eras Tour)
5. “Maybe I’m just a girl on a mission, but I’m ready to fly, I’m alone — that’s pass interference, did they get a flag for that?” —Taylor Swift (interrupting herself singing backstage to react to the Chiefs game)
6. “Trust me, mine is better — get this first down, please — we need love, but all we want is danger, we team up — THROW IT! — switch sides — Ahhhh, touchdown!!!” —Taylor Swift (interrupting herself singing backstage to react to the Chiefs game)
7. “We have broken every single record you can break with this tour. The only thing left is to close the book.” —Taylor Swift (during her final preshow pep talk) 
8. “You have to just take life, you know, one era at a time. See what happens.” —Taylor Swift (on what comes next after her tour)