Taylor Swift says working on The Life of a Showgirl amidst her mammoth Eras Tour helped her through the exhaustion.
The 35-year-old megastar completed 149 shows across five continents on the recording-breaking run, and although fans wouldn’t notice from her immaculate performances, the three-hour-plus concerts took their toll, with Taylor “getting sick a lot” and left physically drained.
Taylor explained that writing music for the album kept her “mentally and emotionally stimulated”, reigniting her excitement to return to the stage
Speaking on the Magic Radio Breakfast Show with Gok Wan and Harriet Scott, she said: “When I was on tour last summer it was the point in the tour where we had so many shows so frequently I was getting sick a lot, I was always like physically sore, but I had reached the point in the show where I could do it muscle memory. So I needed something [writing the album] to wake my brain back up.
“I was so physically exhausted from the shows, but being mentally and emotionally stimulated by making this music, got me to the point where I was so excited to step back on stage because I knew I had this little secret project I was working on.
So I’d play my shows, I’d play like three shows on the Eras Tour, I’d fly to Sweden. I’d fly back to the tour, I’d fly to Sweden. And it was a blast. Although that depends on your definition of fun!”
The End Game singer says the album’s title track – which features fellow pop showgirl Sabrina Carpenter – is partly about having no choice but to show up for fans every night, regardless of how ‘terrible’ she feels.
She said: “There are some lines in the song that are very much the manifesto of how I’ve had to operate within this industry, It’s a song about meeting one of your idols and they, instead of being what you thought they would be, they warn you against following in their footsteps because they just want to be honest with you about how hard this industry is and you do it anyway.
“I think that’s the manifesto of how I approached this tour. There wasn’t the option of if I’m sick I’m not going on stage. There wasn’t an option of I’m feeling terrible, I’m not doing the show tonight. And so every one of us on that tour operated from that standpoint of like the crowd is your king.”