all 17 surprise song duos from the asian-australian leg of the eras tour ranked
I’m tired of Taylor Swift. You’re tired of Taylor Swift. Let’s be tired of Taylor Swift together.
What sucks especially about this leg of the Eras Tour is that our favorite climate criminal got so bored with her back catalog (before she’d even performed all of it – I’m still waiting on “The Way I Loved You”) once she reached Melbourne that she decided to start duct taping together two or three songs per performance. Instead of, say, “New Romantics” on guitar and “Right Where You Left Me” on piano, she’ll start playing “New Romantics”, and inexplicably replace the bridge with the chorus from “The Moment I Knew”, or some nonsensical shit like that. This elicits a wide range of reactions, such as, “Huh?” and “What?” and “Okay…?” And then she’ll wordlessly sit down at the piano, as she does, and do the same thing with “Right Where You Left Me” and “End Game.” Just absolute lunatic behavior.
And it’s kind of impossible to grade these mashups on any kind of meaningful scale. What’s more important – thematic and lyrical sense, or sonic sense? Because fusion for fusion’s sake isn’t doing the songs any favors. Now if she wants a pair to place highly on this very important and prestigious ranking of which she is definitely aware, she has to come up with twice as many good songs that I like. A nigh-impossible task for someone who usually fails to pick two.
So. How did she do?
#17: “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” (feat. “Ivy”) + “Forever & Always” (feat. “Maroon”) (Sydney, Night Four)
Let us first just appreciate the excessive punctuation marks required for me to accurately convey what happened here. You think you hate looking at it. Imagine how I felt typing it.
Anyway, I still can’t stand Midnights. The hacks at the so-called “Recording Academy” were never going to change my mind, especially after last year’s stunt with Harold Styles. (Justice for SOS.) Combining a boring-ass John Mayer diss track and an Evermore deep cut with which it has utterly nothing to do is so disrespectful. Album-hating behavior, even.
And I really despise “Maroon”, which I believe has appeared in every single leg of this godforsaken tour. And every time it does, I hate it more! Were it not for her delivery of “your ROOMmate’s CHEAP-ass SCREW-top ROsé”, (not featured in this mashup, by the way) it probably would’ve dethroned “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” as my least favorite Taylor Swift song of all time. If I’d been at this show, vibing to one of my faves from Fearless, and she’d jumpscared me with “Maroon”, I would’ve left. I would’ve gone home. To the United States. I would’ve walked to the airport and sob-storied my way through customs and onto the first red-eye to JFK.
#16: “Come In With The Rain” + “You’re On Your Own, Kid” (Tokyo, Night Four)
ENOUGH “YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, KID!" ENOUGH! ENOUGH!!!! “Come In With The Rain” is fine. It’s probably my least favorite Fearless bonus track, which means it’s still several orders of magnitude better than anything on Midnights. But! I will give the Tokyo shows credit; there were no mashups.
#15: “Eyes Open” + “Electric Touch” (Tokyo, Night Two)
“Electric Touch” suffers from the same problem as its fellow Speak Now vault track “Castles Crumbling”: it features the lead vocalist of an emo band I love, and yet it’s mind-numbingly boring. “Eyes Open” was written for the Hunger Games soundtrack, and it is so hilariously incongruous with the franchise’s bleakness that I laugh every time I hear it.
#14: “Dear Reader” + “Holy Ground” (Tokyo, Night One)
I’m never gonna complain about “Holy Ground.” I’m not even gonna complain about “Dear Reader”, because that would mean “Dear Reader” is worth an emotional reaction of any kind.
#13: “Foolish One” (feat. “Tell Me Why”) + “This Love” (feat. “Call It What You Want”) (Singapore, Night Three)
I’m so sorry, “Tell Me Why.” Like, both of these mashups make thematic sense, I’ll give them that. She just happened to use three songs I don’t like.
#12: “Red” + “You’re Losing Me” (Melbourne, Night One)
“Red” good. As I’ve said. “You’re Losing Me” is a boring song made interesting only by its subject matter, which Taylor Swift is clearly inviting us to gawk at. Well, I don’t give a shit about your breakup! I give a shit about using my finite minutes on this dying planet to listen to songs that don’t put me to sleep! If you want me to care about your breakup, write better songs about it!
#11: “Mine” (feat. “Starlight”) + “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” (feat. “Dress”) (Singapore, Night One)
Guitar mashup of good songs, piano mashup of bad songs. What else is new?
#10: “How You Get the Girl” + “White Horse” (feat. “Coney Island”) (Sydney, Night One)
What happened here? Did she just forget to defile a 1989 deep cut that, as my research indicates, is not especially beloved by Swifties? Was it really so important to inform the good people of New South Wales how one gets the girl? Was someone backstage asking her?
I guess “Coney Island” functions as an intriguing response to “White Horse”, but I didn’t ask for an intriguing response to “White Horse.” Just because you have two good breakup songs on two good albums, it doesn’t mean they will automatically enhance each other if merged! One of the reasons “Exile”, for example, is so good, is because each perspective on the breakup is given equal weight. And I simply don’t think you can recreate that vibe by gluing a song you wrote at eighteen to a song you wrote at thirty-one.
#9: “Come Back… Be Here” (feat. “Daylight”) + “Teardrops On My Guitar” (Melbourne, Night Three)
An untainted “Teardrops On My Guitar” is doing all the heavy lifting here, although I don’t mind one of the guitar songs.
#8: “Death By a Thousand Cuts” (feat. “Babe”) + “Fifteen” (feat. “You’re On Your Own, Kid”) (Singapore, Night Four)
I can't justify this; I just have an endless supply of good will toward “Death By a Thousand Cuts.” The supremely annoying “Babe” and its promisespromises! live to see another day. And I believe I said in a previous ranking that “Fifteen” is the worst song on Fearless, but Midnights songs make anything seem spectacular in comparison. Plus, thematic sense! I love to hear it!
#7: “Sparks Fly” (feat. “Gold Rush”) + “False God” (feat. ““Slut!””) (Singapore, Night Five)
I fucking hate “False God.” I fucking hate ““Slut!”” (and the double quotations in which I have decided I must put it). Unfortunately, I fucking love “Sparks Fly”, and I fucking love “Gold Rush”, and I could never forgive myself if I ranked them any lower. It’s not their fault!
#6: “Is It Over Now?” (feat. “I Wish You Would”) + “Haunted” (feat. “Exile”) (Sydney, Night Three)
Okay, sonically, this show’s attendees were rewarded for suffering through a mashup of bad 1989 songs with a mashup of two all-time greats. Two personal favorites of mine. The phrase “haunted exile” even felt nice to type into my notes app. If she’d simply done “Haunted” on guitar and “Exile” on piano, Sydney Night Three would’ve been #1 both on this list, and my favorite pair of the entire tour so far.
But two good songs can cancel each other out. They can cheapen each other by association; be less than the sum of their parts. “Haunted” is amazing by the standards of 2010 Taylor Swift, but “Exile” is from FOLKLORE, which is pretty much universally revered as her best album. Certainly her most mature. “Exile” is indicative of that maturity – it’s a breakup song told from both perspectives, one of which is performed by a collaborator, and there’s no obvious guilty party. Meanwhile, “Haunted” is a desperate, one-sided rant at an emotionally unavailable partner. Because that’s the kind of song she would write in 2010. And again, it’s a really good one! I bought it individually on iTunes because I didn’t have enough money left on my gift card to pay for the entire album! But I’m not going to pretend it’s on par with “Exile.” Sticking “Exile” in the middle of “Haunted” makes the latter sound juvenile in comparison, even though I do think it’s aged well. And since it now scans as immature, the interpolation of “Exile” makes Taylor seem almost ashamed of it. And why would you be ashamed of “Haunted”, when you’re also responsible for everything on Reputation and Midnights?
#5: “Getaway Car” (feat. “August” and “The Other Side of the Door”) + “This Is Me Trying” (Melbourne, Night Two)
Look, there are two good songs here, (“Getaway Car” is also here) and this was the first mashup, unless you count “Is It Over Now?” with the “Out of the Woods” bridge back in Buenos Aires, so I won’t take that many points off for thematic incoherence. And “This Is Me Trying” – more like this is me succeeding.
#4: “Superman” + “The Outside” (Tokyo, Night Three)
An endearingly terrible Speak Now bonus track, paired with what Nate Jones for Vulture called “probably the best song written by a 12-year-old since Mozart’s Symphony No. 7 in D Major.”
#3: “Long Story Short” (feat. “The Story of Us”) + “Clean” (feat. “Evermore”) (Singapore, Night Two)
"The Story of Us" is thus far the secret weapon for placing in the upper echelons of these rankings. Remember how I said I had to buy my favorite individual Speak Now tracks on iTunes? "The Story of Us" was one of them. I don't even think it goes that well with "Long Story Short", but I will bend over backwards defending this song, and "Long Story Short" is from Evermore. As, obviously, is "Evermore." "Clean" is a decent partner for it. I think that's the next 1989 song I'll eventually, begrudgingly admit I don't mind.
#2: “Should’ve Said Naur No” (feat. “You’re Not Sorry”) + “New Year’s Day” (feat. “Peace”) (Sydney, Night Two)
For all the shit I’ve talked about these mashups, if I’d heard “You’re Not Sorry” in the middle of “Should’ve Said No”, I would’ve ascended to a higher plane. And if “New Year’s Day” is the worst song in the group, I would consider that a pretty great night.
#1: “Tim McGraw” (feat. “Cowboy Like Me”) + “Mirrorball” (feat. “Epiphany”) (Singapore, Night Six)
Let me tell you, the sigh of relief I let out Saturday morning when I saw this on setlist.fm... All of these songs are great. They’re not even particular favorites of mine, but they’re objectively good, and I’ll gladly take that over an inexplicable mashup of my emotional support Joe Jonas diss track and my least favorite song from my least favorite album.
"Mirrorball" and "Epiphany" are both from Folklore, which makes the mashup less distracting. Both songs allude to the coronavirus pandemic – the former from the autobiographical perspective of a pop star whose drive to entertain is ever-present, despite its inability to impact the problem in any way; the latter from that of a traumatized ICU nurse. I thought hearing them side-by-side might cheapen "Mirrorball", but "Epiphany" actually emphasizes its futility. Which, in my opinion, is the most interesting aspect of the song.
However. "Tim McGraw" and "Cowboy Like Me" are eight albums apart. What could they possibly offer each other? I don't know, man! I never thought the couple in "Tim McGraw" seemed particularly compelling, but they do make the doomed relationship in "Cowboy Like Me" feel more tragic. This is what the "White Horse"/"Coney Island" and "Haunted"/"Exile" mashups from Sydney were trying to do. "Tim McGraw" is mature enough to hold its own against a 2020 song, whereas "White Horse" and "Haunted" are not. And that's fine; they shouldn't have to be. But I'd never considered "Tim McGraw" sophisticated until now. I think it's going to sound considerably better than its albummates when rerecorded. No wonder her old label selected it as her debut single. If Taylor Swift had introduced herself to the world with "Teardrops On My Guitar" or even "The Outside", as much as I love them, I don't know if there'd be an Eras Tour.
Nearly a year ago, opening night of the tour, the surprise songs were "Mirrorball" and "Tim McGraw." They seem to be linked in Taylor Swift's brain, and understandably so. If I were reflecting on my entire creative output, the first thing I ever released would be at the forefront of my mind, too. When I think "Tim McGraw", I do indeed think of just how long Taylor Swift has been at this. And when I think "Mirrorball", I'll think of how the Folklore-Evermore duology was one of the only highlights of the worst year ever.
That said, The Tortured Poets Department is going to suck. I know this in my soul. I’ll see you in August, after the world's most infamous private jet owner and her stupid mashups have laid waste to Europe.