Explainer: Friendship bracelets, fan chants, toilet breaks — the Swiftie guide to Dublin Eras tour
From friendship bracelets to fan chants, here’s how to fully immerse yourself in the joy of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour this weekend.
If you’re lucky enough to have a ticket to one of the Era’s tour dates in Dublin this weekend, you’re in for a great show.
But if you’re a plus one to the Swiftie(s) in your life, you might be feeling a bit apprehensive about making it through the 3.5hr+ spectacle.
We recently summarised all the practical info you need to know, including the standard setlist, but if you want to pass under the radar and masquerade as a Swiftie this weekend, this is the guide for you.
From friendship bracelets to fan chants and surprise songs, here’s how to fully immerse yourself in the joy of the Eras Tour this weekend.
A big aspect of the Eras Tour is the dress-up element of the shows. If you have a pair of cowboy boots or something sparkly, you’ll fit right in. Lots of shops on the high street from Penneys to New Look to TK Maxx have some very Era-inspired fashion items in stock right now, with rental services like Happy Days a great option for ensuring you aren’t buying something you’ll only wear once.
Of course, the main fashion essential at Swift’s shows are friendship bracelets. It all comes from a line in one of Swift’s tracks, ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’ from her 2022 album, . In it, she sings “So make the friendship bracelets / Take the moment and taste it”. We’re not sure who exactly started the trend, but by the time the first night of the Era’s Tour came around on March 17, 2023, friendship bracelets were as much a part of the show as the confetti.
Lots of fans make bracelets with inside jokes, song lyrics, or simply with song titles of their favourite songs. The tradition is to swap them with other fans at the show and go home with some momentos.
Yes!
You might feel indulging in this particular tradition is a bit cringe, but chances are you’ll make lots of young Swifties' day by trading bracelets with them.
If you haven’t time to make your own, you can pick up friendship bracelets from Lovisa and Lynott Jewellery this week. We’ve also heard Centra at The Oval in Ballsbridge will be giving away a limited number of friendship bracelets on Friday, free of charge.
Swift has been sticking to the same songs — excluding the surprise set section — since the start of the European leg in Paris. You can view the setlist in full here.
If you’ve done your homework, and by that we mean watched movie (on Disney+) / been listening to the Eras Playlist on Spotify, you’ll hopefully already be familiar with the bulk of these set songs. If you are, congrats, we’re confident you will pass as a Swiftie and have no voice by the end of the show. If not, don’t worry — although we would suggest learning all the words to the bridge of ‘Cruel Summer’ (just trust us on that one).
If you want to level-up one step further on the Swiftie scale, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with Swift’s extensive discography for the surprise set section. Here, Swift plays anything from two full songs to snippets of 4-6 songs mashed up with each other, one half on guitar, the other half on piano. But with over 200 songs to choose from for that surprise set... well, that’s a lot of lyrics to learn.
However, if we were to give a cheat's guide... we’d be fairly confident one of her surprise songs this weekend will be ‘Sweet Nothing’. The song, from , mentions her time in Wicklow and she has only performed the song once so far on tour.
Another popular fan prediction for Dublin is ‘The Last Time,’ a song Swift wrote with Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. Some fans are even hoping Lightbody might make a surprise appearance at the show for a special duet.
Others also think a duet with Stevie Nicks for 'Clara Bow', a song which mentions Nicks, might be in the works as the Fleetwood Mac singer is thought to be in Dublin this weekend.
Swift has also been debuting many songs from her latest album, in this section since its release, so it’s likely she will play some tracks from that album during her stint in Dublin.
If you’re curious, here are the songs from her discography Swift is yet to play live on the Eras Tour, and as such, are all tipped as runners for the Dublin dates.
Mary’s Song (Oh My My My), A Perfectly Good Heart
Change, Superstar, We Were Happy, That’s When, Don’t You, Bye Bye Baby
Girl At Home, Better Man, Forever Winter, Run
I Did Something Bad
London Boy, Soon You’ll Get Better
hoax
happiness, closure
So Long London, Florida!!!, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), Clara Bow, imgonnagetyouback, The Albatross, Cassandra, Robin
There are a couple of so-called ‘fan chants’ that you might have spotted popping up all over your TikTok. These are things fans chant at certain times during the show. Lots of fans have tried to make different chants happen, but only a few have endured to such an extent they are practically a part of the show’s furniture. Here’s what they are;
After Swift sings “We can't make any promises now, can we, babe? / But you can make me a drink,” and before the drop, the crowd shouts, "One, Two, Three, Let’s go bitch!”
Coming from a feature with Kendrick Lamar on a remix of Swift’s song ‘Bad Blood’, the audience fill in the gaps on the live performance during the show. After Swift sings, ‘If you live like that, you live with ghosts,’ the crowd adds Lamar’s line ‘You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go'.
Again, filling in a line from a remix. When Swift sings ‘Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism, like some kind of congressman?’, fans sing Jack Antonoff’s line from the Bleachers remix of the song, 'Taylor, you'll be fine’.
After Swift sings 'And by the way,' in the pause the crowd asks ‘Where are you going Taylor?’ and the singer responds ‘I’m going out tonight’.
In the bridge of ‘You Belong With Me’, everyone double-claps after Swift sings ‘I’m the one who makes you laugh / when you know you’re ‘bout to cry’. Meanwhile in the bridge of 'Fearless', get ready to hold your hands up in the shape of a heart in true country Tay Tay fashion.
During her evermore set, fans also like to turn the flashlights on their phones and wave them in the air for 'marjorie', a song dedicated to Swift's grandmother.
And if Swift changes the lyrics on ‘Karma’ from ‘Karma is the guy on the screen / coming straight home to me’ to ‘Karma is the guy on the Chiefs / coming straight home to me’ you’ll know Travis Kelce is in the stadium...
This, believe it or not, is a frequently asked question, so I've included it here.
The best time to go to the toilet depends on what favourite Taylor Swift era is, and what song think is a skip. Once you're familiar with the setlist, you can roughly work out when is a good time for you to take a bathroom break. If you really don't want to miss any songs, a fan called Georgia posted a handy guide summarising the length of transitions between certain songs — so by using her guide you'll miss the minimal amount of Taylor on stage.
Now if you aren't a die-hard Swiftie, and your priority is the shortest bathroom lines, we'd advise going during 'All Too Well'. It's a 10-minute song no Swiftie will miss — you'll have the place to yourself.
