Taylor Swift has taken to the stage for the last Dublin show on her sold-out Eras Tour.
The US singer’s three-night performance will see 150,000 Swifties at the Aviva stadium between Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the most lucrative set of concerts in history.
Famous faces spotted at tonight’s show include her boyfriend American footballer Travis Kelce, as well as Julia Roberts and Stevie Nicks.
Swift told fans it was a thrill and an honour to inform them that they made Eras the first tour to ever sell out the venue three nights in a row.
The 34-year-old went on to say that far from being tired on the third night, nights one and two were “just warm-up shows for you”.
While performing her acoustic surprise songs, Swift dedicated Clara Bow to Stevie nicks who is referenced in the lyrics, and used her Dublin date to play the song for the first time ever.
She described a friend of hers watching the show, going on to say mentors are the reasons why many can do what they do, but added they can be rare.
She said one “helped me through so much over the years”, adding: “I’m talking about Stevie Nicks” before playing Clara Bow.
One of the many memorable moments of the weekend included a proposal during Swift’s Love Story.
Alan Corley (26) knelt down on the floor of the Aviva Stadium and proposed to his boyfriend of four years, Aaron Hogan (25).
“The minute I knelt down, everything went quiet and it was like this kind of static in the back of my head,” Mr Corley told the Irish Independent.
“I’m very much an introvert, but for some reason I was never nervous about the idea of doing it in public at a Taylor Swift concert because I know the type of people that Swifties are.
“They’re just so supportive and full of love. I knew it was going to be just a really lovely moment and Aaron has always said that he hates the idea of public proposals except at Taylor Swift concerts.”
“He took what I told him and ran with it,” he added.
Mr Corley revealed that he had been thinking of proposing in this way since the couple bought their tickets to the Eras Tour a year ago.
The touching moment, which has since gone viral after it was posted by an attendee on X.
“I never actually considered the idea that I could end up online or anything. So I didn’t even notice the crowd, to be honest,” he said.
“By the time we got home there were videos on TikTok with thousands of views, thousands of likes. There were people posting pictures online and when Aaron came to pick me up at work the next day we were recognised in the street!”
The significance of getting engaged during the concert and during Pride Month was not lost on either of them. “I never imagined being that open with myself. I only went to Pride for the first time last year. So to be able to do it in public with people that I knew would, would just shower us with love, it really genuinely meant the world,” Mr Hogan said.
Ireland embraced the excitement of the star’s visit with a beach transformed into a large-scale artwork reading Ireland (Taylor’s version) as a nod to her ongoing re-recordings of her albums.
While the Irish Emigration Museum uncovered her Irish roots, advertising their story as the love story before the love story.
Even Taoiseach Simon Harris appeared to flirt with Swiftmania, joking he had a “bone to pick” with Swift over the lyrics of her Sweet Nothings hit – which mention lifting a pebble from a beach in the Taoiseach’s home county Wicklow.
He also shared on Instagram on Saturday that he had received his first Swiftie friendship bracelet at a service station in Ballinaleck.
There was also a nod to Ireland during a rendition of her chart-topper We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, when her dancer Kameron N Saunders jumped in to quip “bleedin eejit”.
On Friday night, Saunders said “Pog mo thoin” – a cheeky Irish-language phrase meaning “kiss my ass”, and on Saturday he said “The Neck of Ye”, where Swift would usually say “Like Ever” in the recorded edition of the hit.
Swift later in the concert pondered which of her Eras was the “most Irish”, continuing the she believes it is her album Folklore.
She recalled starting to write the song “two days into the pandemic”; when she created an imaginary world “living in a cabin in a really green and mossy landscape, very Irish”, adding the album is “all about story telling and you guys are gifted story tellers”.
On Saturday night Swift appeared to be caught off guard by the “actually crazy” reaction from Irish fans to her show, saying she would remember it for the rest of her life.
She was treated to fans chanting “ole, ole, ole” for a lengthy period during Saturday’s show, and Swift seemed surprised by the reaction, according to social media videos.
Swift told the audience: “Oh my god, here’s the thing, we’ve done like I dunno, we’ve done like 110 shows on this tour, something like that and like this … this is the first time like, I really don’t know what to say, my band and I are just looking at each other with our mouths hanging open.
“That was actually crazy, like we’re trying to be prepared, but we’re not prepared for the level that you’re on, Dublin.”
She also said: “What you just did for us, we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. We love you so much.”
Swift also played a mash-up of her songs This Love and Ours, as well as The Albatross and Dancing With Our Hands Tied during the gig as her surprise tracks.
