On the Eras Tour, Swift is looking back at her career, album by album, each of which represents a different “era” of her life. “We’re going on an 18-year journey, one era at a time,” she told the MCG. The idea of marketing the evolution of an artist from one album to the next as a series of “eras” is simple, but, in the moment, undeniably brilliant.

It provides the framing for the show and excuses for costume changes – some as elaborate as dancers wielding glowing orange orbs with a lightly witchy vibe for Willow, or as simple as throwing a spangled suit jacket over a spangled leotard for The Man.

In this way, the Eras set list – in the manner of a beautifully composed painting – directs your attention to the parts Swift wants you to pay attention to. Properly contextualised, I found myself converted to certain eras that, even as a Swift completist, I’d neglected.

For no particular reason, I’d always preferred folklore to evermore. Don’t ask me why. I realise now I was wrong. They are both perfect. Whole eras – like Taylor’s heel-turn on Reputation – reveal depths to the lyricism and songwriting I’d somehow under-appreciated when they weren’t sung in a glorious one-legged sequinned snake suit atop a storm of pyrotechnic lightning.

There is one era that is not officially on the line-up, however – the forthcoming Tortured Poets Department, announced at this year’s Grammys and to be released in April.

“We might talk about that later,” Swift teased on Friday night, peering out over her piano, sparking wild speculation that she might debut a track. In the end, she didn’t – but announced that the album would feature a song titled The Bolter.

“I needed to make it, it was really something that got me through,” she shared. “It really reminded me that songwriting really gets me through.”

Experiencing the Eras Tour is like putting on a vinyl record in an old-timey listening booth and being nudged to really listen to the music – only for the purpose of this analogy, the booth is the MCG, and the vinyl record is 96,000 of my best friends, who are teenagers. They are teenagers and they are screaming with joy. They know every word. They know every song Swift will play, and which lyrics will provoke a call-and-response from the crowd.

The set list is carefully planned, but each concert includes an interlude after the attitude and literal flamethrowers of Bad Blood for Swift to perform a couple of lo-fi, acoustic songs of her choice: Taylor’s versions, if you will (sorry). On Friday, that meant a guitar-only version of Red and a stripped-back piano rendition of You’re Losing Me before the sick beat (so sorry) kicked back in with the start of the Midnights era and the spectacular conclusion.

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The Eras Tour is an astonishing victory lap of a show. Over nearly two decades, Swift has built both an enduring body of work and an unparalleled connection with her fans.

Her songs – for the work of a billionaire with the most ludicrous life imaginable – are remarkably grounded. She writes about the specifics of her life in such a universal way that she invites listeners to complete the narrative and emotional arcs of her songs with their own feelings and experiences.

Her best work has a blank space, so to speak, in which to write your name. Songs that mean – for both the middle-aged rock snob writing this review, and the 10-year-old sharing a formative moment of transcendent pop with their Millennial parents – ‘I wrote this for you’.

She is singing to people who have sung to her in their bedrooms for years. Taylor’s eras have sound-tracked the stages of her fans’ lives, so to watch Eras feels like a curated tour of your own past. An extraordinary achievement.

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