The Magic We Made: “Long Live,” “New Year’s Day,” and “The Manuscript”
Taylor Swift’s reflections on her beloved Eras Tour (part two).
At the final Eras Tour concert on December 8th in Vancouver, Taylor Swift performed two emotional surprise song mashups to bid farewell to all the audiences that had come to see her. Last week, I posted an analysis of the first mashup, “A Place in This World” / “New Romantics,” so I’m now turning to the second. On the piano, Swift performed a mashup of “Long Live” / “New Year’s Day” / “The Manuscript”—three songs with a sense of finality and closure. As a group, these choices reflect the legacy of the Eras Tour and an anxiety around this chapter ending. Swift repurposed songs from three different eras in her life and career to sum up a new story altogether.
Fearless to Eras
Swift started with a verse and chorus of “Long Live”: “I said remember this moment / In the back of my mind / The time we stood with our shaking hands / The crowds in stands went wild.” This song was originally written about the Fearless Tour—a much earlier point in Swift’s career but one that mirrors the feeling of the Eras Tour. The latter’s massive scale and impact have adopted and expanded upon the significance of these opening lyrics about the importance of living in the “moment.” The cheers that reverberated through the audience after “went wild” made this line a full circle moment. Swift then changed the lyrics from “end of a decade” to: “It was the end of an era / But the start of an age.” This one-word change holds a lot of meaning. The Eras era is ending, but we are still in the “age” of Taylor Swift. Whatever comes next, she will continue to create and share art with the world—this was not a victory lap tour.
The chorus continues to describe the magic of a momentous concert tour like this one: “And I was screaming long live the walls we crashed through / How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you.” The fairytale metaphor in this song can be applied to all the cities around the world welcoming Swift and Swifties, and having makeovers in honor of the Eras Tour. The image of crashing through the walls also comes to represent all of the records this tour broke with its unparalleled success and popularity. The song then references “all the magic we made,” which describes the magical experience of live entertainment in a space full of joy and love. Swift then challenges, “bring on all the pretenders” in an expression of confidence reminiscent of “The Alchemy,” another song about the tour. The final line of the chorus sums up the legacy of the Eras Tour: “One day we will be remembered.”
Snapshots
Swift then sang the first verse of “New Year’s Day,” which paints the picture of the end of a party: “There’s glitter on the floor after the party / Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby / Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor / You and me from the night before.” These lyrics mirror the image of fans leaving the stadiums at the end of their Eras Tour shows after a long, spectacular night. It even became a TikTok trend to play this song over a clip of the venue emptying out, with a caption like “the concert you’ve waited over a year for comes to an end.” This notion of post-concert depression has a bittersweet and melancholic feeling that corresponds to the broader themes of “New Year’s Day.”
In the chorus, Swift tells the audience not to “read the last page.” The song describes a special connection and the constant underlying fear that it could come to an end. This lyric advocates instead for living in the present, not wanting to know the ending of the story. The thesis of the song is a promise of commitment: “I want your midnights / But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day.” Not only does “midnights” represent the fun times or the “party” of a concert, but it is also a retroactive reference to Midnights, which was the last set of the Eras Tour. The final lyric here is both a promise to stick around no matter what life throws your way and for Swift, the performer, reassurance that she will be there when it’s time for a new era to begin.
Theatricality
The mashup then turns to the bridge of “The Manuscript,” which essentially functions as a narration of the Eras Tour: “And the years passed / Like scenes of a show / The professor said to write what you know / Looking backwards / Might be the only way to move forward.” The Eras Tour is a theatrical trip through the “years” of Swift’s career, presented to the audience one era at a time with different “scenes” and costume and set changes. The phrase “write what you know” is often given by teachers, “professor[s],” or mentors as an instruction for writers. Swift is known for her autobiographical expression and songwriting through music but, at the same time, this lyric suggests that she has been following a predetermined set of instructions or a script. While her years away from the stage allowed for a comeback tour of this large size and scale, she also reveals that “the only way to move forward” to whatever might come next was to revisit these earlier albums. Beyond the Eras Tour, this lyric also applies to Swift’s re-recording project, as she has chosen to go back and remake her older work in order to move forward with her ownership of new music.
Swift continues with the performance metaphor: “And the actors / Were hitting their marks / And the slow dance / Was alight with the sparks / And the tears fell / In synchronicity with the score.” The Eras Tour was very precise in its staging, choreography, and programming, which is reflected in the sentiment of this bridge. She describes everything going according to the proper script and packing the correct emotional punch. The “sparks” and “tears” are evidence of Swift’s success in delivering a feeling to the audience. Her public life does this to an extent as well—as she put it in her Time Person of the Year interview: “Are you not entertained?” The end of this section has a sense of finality: “And at last / She knew what the agony had been for.” From a creative perspective, all the hardship and “agony” Swift has experienced can be justified by the success of the Eras Tour if she treats it as the pinnacle of her life and career thus far.
Hold On
The mashup then pivots to the bridges of the other two songs as well: “Hold on to spinning around / Confetti falls to the ground / May these memories break our fall.” These lyrics from “Long Live” take us back to the concert venue and the moment of making memories to last a lifetime; indeed, literal confetti in the colors of all of the eras would rain down at the end of the show. The anxiety of “New Year’s Day” comes back with: “Please don’t ever become a stranger / Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere.” Although Swift does not personally know many of her fans, the proximity of the touring experience might simulate getting to know a whole new group of people. She wants this relationship to last even after the tour is over, as opposed to being stuck with only the happy memory of a “laugh.”
Swift reminds herself and the audience of the importance of treasuring joyful moments: “Hold on to the memories / They will hold on to you.” In her eyes, the Eras Tour is more than an event that you attend and then move on from; it can have positive and lasting effects for anyone who allows themself to cherish the experience. Even the memory of positive feelings can provide comfort to those who need it through this reciprocal relationship with their past self. After this, Swift sang the chorus of “Long Live” once more to hammer home her message.
The final verse of the mashup is, fittingly, the ending of “The Manuscript”: “The only thing that’s left is the manuscript / One last souvenir from my trip to your shores.” The concept of a “souvenir” represents the value in what is left behind after something is over—in this case, the Eras Tour. The story contained in “the manuscript” is this “souvenir” that, unlike the actual experience, can be passed down and remembered in a multitude of ways: “Now and then I reread the manuscript / But the story isn’t mine anymore.” Through both her music in general and the Eras Tour more specifically, Swift has given “the story” to her fans. This “manuscript” is her songs themselves, and now that they have been a part of this musical and emotional exchange with a live audience, the story belongs to everyone who was there to witness it. As Swift bade farewell to her beloved Eras Tour, she made it known that she understood just how beloved it was by its audiences as well.
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