Taylor Swift was named Spotify’s most-played artist yesterday and ends her monumental Eras Tour this weekend. She’s also landed the biggest book launch of the year in the US with the publication of her official Era’s Tour book. However, fans have noticed multiple eras – sorry, errors…
ADVERTISEMENTShe’s 2024 most-played artist for the second year in a row. And now, after 152 dates across five continents over nearly two years, Taylor Swift is about to close off her Eras Tour this weekend.
The global phenomenon that is the Eras Tour is hard to encapsulate. We tried our best when Euronews Culture went to see her during the French leg of her trip.
Three and a half-hour concerts, showcasing 44 songs, representing 10 different “eras” of her career – it’s quite the undertaking, and not many artists have the talent or stamina for such a feat.
Swift kicked things off in March 2023 and Sunday’s Vancouver show will end the tour under the Canadian winter.
The tour shattered sales and attendance records, created an economic boom, spawned a box office-topping cinemagoing experience and became the first tour to ever gross over $1 billion by the end of 2023. She is likely to bring in over $2 billion by the time the tour wraps, according to concert trade publication Pollstar. That makes the mammoth celebration the highest grossing tour ever.
And let’s not forget that during the tour, Swift was named Euronews Culture’s Global Person of the Year for Music. That’s got to put those numbers in perspective, surely.
There have been more ups than downs, but the downs hit hard. There was Trump beef, Palestine criticism, pornographic deepfakes, and more tragically, the Southport stabbings that claimed lives of three children, and in August, all three of Swift’s concerts in Vienna were called off after officials announced arrests over an apparent plot to launch an attack in the city.
Still, those moments brought Swifties together, revealing that most of all, this tour became a beacon of joy – a chance not only to appreciate Swift’s expansive music career, but also to celebrate the journey her Swifties have taken with her.
It’s with these fans in mind that she has released a coffee table book, and just one retail chain in the US was enough for Taylor Swift to have the biggest publishing launch of 2024.
According to Circana, Swift’s “Eras Tour Book” sold 814,000 copies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Circana tracks around 85% of the print market, but the “Eras” numbers are more precise: Swift sold the book exclusively through Target, which launched the “Eras” tie-in on Black Friday.
Sales soared even as Swift skipped Amazon.com and other retailers and as some fans complained online that the $39.99 (€38) book included typos and other mistakes.
Yes, you read correctly, it’s less ‘Eras’ and more ‘errors’, as eagle-eyed Swifties were left disappointed when they found misspelt song titles and blurry imagery.
One fan posted on TikTok to say she was « blown away » by the « amount of grammatical errors she saw.”
« I saw so many, in fact, I am seriously questioning if this book was actually edited, » she said. « When I am reading through things, if there are certain grammar mistakes or sentence structures that are really distracting, it really takes me out of the reading experience. »
ADVERTISEMENTOne video even appeared to show the book printed upside down and back to front.
A rare blunder from Team Swift, even if some fans are claiming that the misprints will make the book more valuable.
There doesn’t seem to be anything that can deter a die-hard Swiftie.
The sales of the “Eras Tour Book” also mean that it stands as the second-biggest nonfiction book launch ever in the US, second to the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, “A Promised Land”, which sold 816,000 copies in its first week on shelves in 2020, according to Circana.
ADVERTISEMENTThe website notes, however, that Obama’s memoir was available through all major outlets, and Circana’s tracking for the « Eras Tour Book » accounts only for its first weekend sales.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour comes to an end on 8 December.
Additional sources • Circana, AP
