By Larisha Paul
Taylor Swift made it through three Eras tour shows in London without once playing “London Boy,” the deep cut from her 2019 album Lover. The sentiment of the record hasn’t aged all that well, but looking ahead at her three-show run beginning in Ireland tonight, “You know I love a Dublin boy” has a better ring to it, anyway. Ahead of Swift’s string of performances at Aviva Stadium, the musician received a welcome gift from U2, her self-proclaimed “Irish Fan Club.”
The band sent Swift a bouquet of flowers with a note reading: “Welcome back to our hometown… leave some of it standing?!!!!” The card was signed by Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. Sharing the correspondence on her Instagram Story, Swift wrote: “Already feeling that Irish hospitality!! @U2 thanks for always being the classiest & the coolest.”
The gesture comes across even sweeter in light of the jab that Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl took at Swift while performing in London on the same night. “I tell you, man, you don’t want to suffer the wrath of Taylor Swift,” Grohl said onstage after his audience started booing at the mere mention of the singer. “We like to call our tour the ‘Errors Tour.’ We’ve had more than a few eras, and more than a few fucking errors as well. Just a couple. That’s because we actually play live. What? Just saying. You guys like raw, live rock & roll music, right? You came to the right fucking place.”
Swift poked back at Grohl the following night while on stage at Wembley Stadium. “Every one of my band members, every single one of our crew, my band who’s gonna be playing live for you for 3.5 hours tonight, they deserve this so much,” she said. “And so does every one of my fellow performers. And you just gave that to us so generously; we will never forget it.”
After she leaves Ireland, Swift will bring the Eras tour to Amsterdam, Zürich, Milan, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Munich, Warsaw, and Vienna before returning to London in mid-August. The singer recently confirmed that her career-spanning live show will officially conclude in December.
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