Welcome to New York—wait no, I mean Glendale, wait I am still wrong—I mean Swift City. 

On March 13, Mayor Jerry P. Weiers announced that Glendale, AZ would be changing its name to Swift City temporarily on March 17 and March 18 for the opening night of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.’’

“The Eras Tour’’ is Taylor Swift’s sixth tour and the biggest ever United States-tour of her career. Her tour initially consisted of 35 shows, but she realized the extreme high demand and added 17 more shows which brings the number of shows to 52. This widely outnumbers her latest tour, “Reputation Stadium Tour,’’ as it only had 38 shows.

Swift announced “The Eras Tour’’ on Nov. 1, 12 days after she released her 10th studio album, “Midnights.” She also released “Midnights (3 a.m. Edition)” at 3 a.m., which consisted of seven new songs.

“Midnights” broke records all around the world as she became the first person to ever claim all top 10 spots in Billboard’s Top 100. I will gladly take some credit for these songs in the top 10 as “Midnights” is my favorite Taylor Swift album. 

When Swift announced the tour, she gave fans an opportunity to join Ticketmaster’s verified fan program, which gave fans a chance to be selected for a Nov. 15 presale. 

I unfortunately got waitlisted, but my friend got selected for presale and a boost in the line. 

The presale went downhill very fast, as fans all over the U.S.  were reporting crashes and extremely long wait times on Ticketmaster’s website. The first hour went relatively smooth, but no one expected the crashes to happen, even Ticketmaster. I personally dealt with this as we had the tickets in our cart and it would not let us checkout and pay. We then got sent back into the queue, at the back of the line, and saw the dreadful 2000+. 

The worst was yet to come, Ticketmaster announced the cancellation of the general sale on Nov. 17, which sent fans into a spiral. 

“The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” said Ticketmaster. “We had 14 million people hit the site—including bots, another story, which are not supposed to be there—and despite all the challenges and the breakdowns, we did sell over 2 million tickets that day.”

The math is not adding up. How does 14 million people enter the site, when only 1.5 million people were supposed to have access? Ticketmaster really fumbled the bag on this one.

With fans upset all over the world, they took to StubHub to see what the resell prices would be, but the numbers were absurd, with a range of $5000-$100,000.

Hope seemed glim for Taylor Swift fans, including me, I lost hope.

Closer to the opening tour in Swift City, fans were starting to get tickets for a much more reasonable price, as StubHub sellers were panicking and dropped the price drastically.

There is so much media and hype to “The Eras Tour” and rightfully so. It was a long time coming to finally reach this point, and after all the stress that fans faced, the time is finally here.

The impact that Swift has on the world is astronomical as Stanford University added a class that completely breaks down Swift’s song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version).” The song is 10 minutes of pure genius, and it definitely warrants a whole course that will break down the whole song. 

New York University also has a class about Taylor Swift, as it dives into her life, her inspiration, her songwriting and so much more. Granted, Swift received a Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa from NYU so it makes sense to have this course.

Now Swift’s fans, or “Swifties” as they are called, are absolutely nuts, but there is a level to being a crazy “Swifties” or not, although it is a thin line.

Swift’s lucky number is 13, and yes this actually matters.

Leading up to ‘The Eras Tour” Swifties took to TikTok, Instagram and Twitter with some of the wildest theories, though believable. 

When Swift dropped the “Bejeweled” music video, Swifties ran to Twitter to see all the Easter eggs and clues for the future, Swift knew exactly what she was doing. Swifties came up with the theory that “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” was next, and all the clues pointed to that being right.

Swift was in the elevator in the music video, on each button shown were the colors of every album she has released, but there was the color purple on the button for 13, which meant that “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” was next. I fully gave into the theory and I still believe that it is the next album being released. 

Leading up to March 3, I was fully convinced that Swift was dropping “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” or at least something. 

There were so many signs that just made the most sense that Swift was dropping March 3. On Swift’s birthday, she posted an image of herself in the studio holding three fingers on each hand. This was most definitely because she just turned 33, but Swifties had other ideas. 

They ran to Twitter to say something is coming on March 3 because the date adds up to 13, 3+3+2+2+3=13, March 3, 2023. They also thought that it was coming on March 3 because in the picture that she posted for her birthday, fans were saying the guitar she was holding looked like the guitar she used in the song “Mean,” which is in the original “Speak Now” album. The theories seemed so plausible, but oh boy were we wrong. 

There was one more theory that she was dropping or announcing something on March 13 because of the date being 13 and the fact that Lana Del Rey moved her album release date to March 24, instead of the original date of March 17. 

Swifites were right about one thing, something was coming before the start of “The Eras Tour.” On March 16, Swift announced that she will be releasing four songs at midnight, “Eyes Open (Taylor’s Version),” “Safe and Sound (Taylor’s Version),” “If This Was A Movie (Taylor’s Version)” and “All The Girls You Loved Before.”

The most shocking was “All The Girls You Loved Before” because this was originally an unreleased song and a week prior, the whole song was leaked and fans loved it, which could have been the reason she released it to the public. The songs were so random because the original, “Eyes Open” and “Safe and Sound” was on “The Hunger Games” soundtrack. 

At midnight, when these four songs came out, fans were surpised by the fact that “If This Was A Movie (Taylor’s Version)” was moved from the albums “Speak Now” to “Fearless (Taylor’s Version).” An even bigger shock to fans was the fact that “Eyes Open (Taylor’s Version)” and “Safe and Sound (Taylor’s Version)” were actually part of the album, “Red (Taylor’s Version).”

Fans are now speculating all over TikTok that Swift will release an assortment of songs each week that she will be able to play on tour, as she is unable to play songs prior to 2019 due to the fact that she no longer owns them. Only songs after 2019 or that have (Taylor’s Version) on it, can be played at ‘The Eras Tour.’ 

The wait is finally over for Swifties as the “The Eras Tour” has officially kicked off in Swift City, with openers, GAYLE and Paramore. The last day of ‘The Eras Tour’ is Aug. 9, which will end in Inglewood, CA. 

This is Taylor Swift’s world and we are all just living in it.