Holy ground: 'Swiftie parents were the real heroes of Taylor Swift's Dublin Eras tour'
Victoria and Sylvie Gray pictured arriving to Taylor Swift, the Eras tour at Aviva stadium in Dublin. Picture: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos
When I crawled into bed on Thursday night, I set an alarm — but I knew I wouldn’t need it.
Like a child on Christmas Eve, I was overtired and overhyped. My cowboy boots were at the foot of my bed, my Taylor Swift t-shirt neatly folded with a couple dozen friendship bracelets laid atop.
I knew I’d be lucky to get a few hours of shut-eye before the most magical day of the year — the arrival of The Eras Tour in Dublin.
Since Swift first announced The Eras Tour in November 2022, the American popstar has been deep in training for the 152-date tour that may well become the pinnacle of her career — and us fans have been deep in preparation in our own way.
From custom-made gowns to intricate friendship bracelets, homemade t-shirts, and learning every word to Swift’s 243 studio-released songs (and that’s before she dropped double-album in April and added another 31 to that list), Swifties have been giving the same dedication to the arrival of The Eras Tour in their city as any Olympian training for Paris.
Like Arwen Kavanagh from Laois, who looks like a fairy escaped from the woodlands in an emerald green ensemble complete with ivy and about a dozen friendship bracelets adorning her wrists.
She offers one of the much-famed friendship bracelets, and I am about to trade one of mine, as is Swiftie etiquette, when seemingly from nowhere she pulls out two ziplocked bags stuffed to the gills with beaded bracelets.
“I made 273”, she says somewhat sheepishly. “I started making them when US dates were announced. I didn’t know how I was getting here or when, but I made it happen.”
Arwen's story echoes many of the people I meet over the course of the weekend, the vast majority of which feel incredibly lucky to have secured a ticket to the gigs in Dublin that left thousands of fans on waitlists without even a chance of joining that dreaded Ticketmaster queue. In fan circles, the process of securing tickets last year is only half-jokingly referred to as ‘The Great War’.
Usually, outside any big gig you’ll find men shouting, “Any spare tickets?” hoping to sell them on at an inflated price, but over the course of three days in the Aviva, all I encounter is girls of all ages, the youngest often accompanied by a mother or father, with handmade signs that read “looking for [insert number here] tickets”.
One such grouping is Ciara, Lucy, and Rachel McGrath from Newry.
“We’re hoping someone takes pity on us,” Ciara says, her daughters sitting cross-legged next to her, looking wistfully over at a growing queue of Swifties singing the icon’s songs as they wait for the gates to open.
“We’ll drive down again tomorrow if we have to,” she says, only betraying a slight weariness as she zips up her sequined jacket and settles in for the evening.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the intensity, dedication and, at times, delusional, aspect of the Swiftie fanbase, but over the course of my three-day weekend at the Aviva, it’s the parents' dedication that stands out to me.
Ciara McGrath was just one parent who was going above and beyond to try and make her daughter's dreams come true, there was also Jonathan Davis who had travelled over from the UK with his daughter, proudly wearing his ‘Dad is in his Swifty era’ shirt to see Swift in Dublin after she missed out on Wembley tickets.
There was Kristi Bazata who had travelled from New York with her daughters Emma and Isabella because it was more cost-effective than tickets in the States which are subject to dynamic pricing, where prices increase based on the demand for the individual event.
Here in Dublin, fans could get pit tickets — the best view in the house — for €206. In the US, even nosebleed seats can be sold for thousands of dollars. It was a no-brainer to come here, even if the Aer Lingus strike did offer up an extra challenge in the final hour.
“Our flight was cancelled, but Jet Blue got us here,” she tells me, as I swap bracelets with Emma and Isabella who are wide-eyed at all the grown up girls complimenting their outfits and their bracelets.
There was another dad, who didn’t want to be photographed in his homemade Junior Jewels t-shirt (from Swift’s iconic ‘You Belong With Me’ music video), camped out with his daughters Taylor-gating (the term for fans who gather outside the stadium to hear the show after failing to secure tickets). He might not have been willingly in his ‘Swiftie era,’ but he was still intermittingly refreshing his phone in the hopes tickets might pop up.
“They released tickets late last night for today’s show,” he tells me knowingly, “they might do it again for tomorrow's show.”
He’s flummoxed when I tell him that those last-minute tickets released are only those with restricted views — and still come with a hefty price tag. “It would be worth it!,” his girls pipe up in unison.
It will, I tell him, not just to aid their case. I know because I once was that young girl, relying on my mother going above and beyond to make my dreams come true.
When I was 13, Taylor Swift came to Ireland for the first time to play in what was then the 02 Arena at the point. At the time, nobody I knew liked Taylor, so my mum listened to her then, three CDs, on repeat with me, helping me make my ‘I am enchanted to see you Taylor’ sign and homemade Junior Jewels t-shirt.
On Sunday night, I was back with my mum in the Aviva, the pair of us marvelling at just how far this country singer with her signature curly hair and sparkling guitar had come. We sang the songs that soundtracked my childhood, my teenage years, my first loves, my first heartbreaks, knowing this moment is sacred.
As Swift sings herself, "Right there where we stood, was holy ground".
