Read Taylor Swift's Full Speech Before The Last Eras Tour Show

Taylor Swift gave an emotional speech to her dancers and band before their last-ever Eras Tour performance on Dec. 8, 2024. Episode 1 of The End of an Era opens with Swift’s tear-worthy remarks, where she clarifies exactly how she views the “phenomenon” of the tour — plus, what she thinks of all of the people who worked so hard to make it happen.

“I wanna say, we have done something that no one has ever done. We have performed for over 10 million people in person,” she told her dancers and band, as they huddled in a circle backstage. “That’s not like, ‘Oh, 10 million people watched a TV show,’ which is pretty amazing too. We performed for 10 million plus people.

Swift continued, “I think about every single one of you as little kids. I think about the moment that you decided that dancing was your calling, and the moment that you first saw a band and thought, ‘Man, I want to save up for an instrument.’”

As she continued, the Life of a Showgirl singer touched on how difficult the entertainment industry can be. “Every single one of us has picked professions that categorically, people for the majority of the time, they tell you, ‘You shouldn’t do it.’ They tell you, ‘You should not try to do this,’” she said. “You have to love the thing so much that you override 85 to 95% of the advice you are given along the way, oftentimes by people you respect, people you trust, people in the field.” As she spoke, her team got teary-eyed and started crying.

“Everyone in dance, everyone in music will tell everyone younger, ‘If there’s anything else you can do, do that,’” Swift added, making them laugh.

According to Swift, she can picture her team in all phases of life — up to this point in their careers and afterwards, too. “I’ll see you getting rejected, not getting the job, not getting the part, not getting the solo. I’ll see all of those things that happened all along the way: the doors that were shut, the doors that were open, the windows you pried open,” she said.

“And then sometimes I’ll see you when you’re older, and I’ll think about what you’re gonna tell your family or the people you mentor, because every single person here has the spirit to mentor others and to tell them, ‘Yes, do it. Try it. Go for it, if you have that same love for it,’” she said, her voice breaking as she began to cry. “And I think about whether that’s to your grandchildren or to the little neighborhood kid that just wants to talk to you about what that was like.”

Swift clarified that nothing on the tour happened by coincidence. “Everyone likes to talk about phenomenons, like the Eras Tour, almost as if it was pieces falling into place in some sort of accidental confluence of events that just happened, right?” she said. “When I’m thinking about the people that are in this circle, I don’t think about it as pieces that fell into place, I think of each of you as like tectonic plates on the earth, that took millions of micro decisions and forces of you pushing and pushing, inch by inch, closer together.”

She added, “And the Eras Tour wasn’t when all of the pieces fell into place. That was just when every single one of us had done so much work to where this tour was just when we all clicked together.”

“It is our job to make this look accidental, and it is our job to make this look effortless,” Swift continued. “But I just want every single one of you to know that I — in no way, shape, or form — look at this as the pieces just falling into place. You put the pieces where they are. This is the biggest challenge any of us have ever done. Tonight, we complete that challenge.”