As some of you may remember from my last blog about concerts, I was looking forward to this summer. Two weeks ago I went to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Night One, in Philadelphia. I had been looking forward to this concert for months, and I can’t believe it’s already over.

My friend and I arrived at Lincoln Financial Field around 6 p.m.; the stadium complex was already crawling with Taylor Swift fans, some going to the concert and some not. Once we found the correct entrance, we set off to grab a drink and wait in the long merchandise line. Neither of us cared about seeing the two openers, so we decided that would be the perfect time to wait in line. The merch line took about 45 minutes, but it was worth it because we both got the sweatshirt we wanted.

Once we checked out, we used the bathroom since we knew we weren’t going to want to leave during Taylor’s set and then headed down to our seats on the floor — we got really lucky with our seats and the price. We made it to our seats just in time for the two-minute countdown to pop up on the big screen.

When Taylor took the stage, the crowd went wild! She performed two songs before addressing the crowd. She talked about how important her Philadelphia shows were to her, as she considers them her hometown shows because she grew up in Reading. She talked about how she grew up watching the Philadelphia Eagles with her dad, and that set the crowd off in roars. She went on to perform all her hits, and then it came time for the surprise song section of the concert.

Each concert’s setlist is the same except for two different surprise songs each night from different albums. There was some debate on what songs fans thought she was going to sing in Philly. One of her songs mentions an Eagles t-shirt, and fans were debating if she was talking about the band or the football team. For her first song she addressed this debate and confirmed it was a Philadelphia Eagles t-shirt, and again the crowd went wild.

Taylor Swift played around 45 songs for about 3.5 hours with only a couple seconds of breaks for costume changes. Needless to say, it was the best concert I have ever been to. I have even been looking for tickets to other concerts in different cities just to experience it again.

If you have the opportunity to see The Eras Tour in a city near you, you won’t regret it!

— Mary Melnick, social media and editorial coordinator