By Althea Legaspi
Taylor Swift debuted “How Did It End?” live for the first time at her third and final 2024 Eras Tour date at Friends Arena in Stockholm, Sweden. The song is among the new tracks she’s been treating fans to since she kicked off the tour’s European and U.K. run in Paris, France earlier this month.
During the surprise songs acoustic segment on Sunday, she took to the piano for the haunting ballad from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.
Prior to the song’s live premiere, she welcomed the audience to the acoustic portion of the set and checked on how the front row folks were doing.
“This is pretty much my favorite part of the show because it’s different every night and I’m always trying to challenge myself to customize this for every place that we are,” she said. “And one thing that I’ve always been a huge fan of, is in terms of Sweden’s most incredible export, which is genius pop songwriters and producers.”
She explained that in 2012 “my life changed for the better because I started working with two genius Swedes named Johan Shellback and Max Martin.” She revealed that Martin was at the show, “but he is a shy genius so I’m not going to bring him out on stage, but I am gonna do what I’m calling the ‘Max Martin medley.’”
Swift launched the medley with Red vault song “Message in a Bottle,” the first song they ever cowrote together. “He was always saying that he wanted to hear it live and we never got to have that happen until right now,” she said before performing the song on acoustic guitar. She followed up the Red gem with 1989’s “How You Get the Girl” and one of 1989’s bonus tracks “New Romantics,” all of which she cowrote with with Martin and Shellback.
On Saturday, she surprise-debuted TTPD’s “Guilty as Sin?” and a 1989 mashup in honor of it being her 89th Eras Tour show.
Swift’s Eras Tour continues with a slew of dates in Europe and the U.K. through August. This leg of her tour follows the release of The Tortured Poets Department and she has tweaked the set, which includes a brand-new section dedicated to the new album. She initially launched the TTPD revamp during her four-night Paris run earlier this month. She heads to Lisbon, Portugal next for a two-night stand on May 24 and 25.
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