How Taylor Swift Could Add The Tortured Poets Department To The 2024 Eras Tour

Taylor Swift had a surprise at the 2024 Grammys that even the most investigative Swifties couldn’t uncover in advance. After winning Best Pop Solo Album for 2022’s Midnights, she announced that her next album, The Tortured Poets Department, arrives on April 19.

Fans went into overdrive looking for Easter eggs about her 11th album, but perhaps the most important question is whether Swift will add her new music to the Eras Tour.

Swift is expected to include Tortured Poets when the Eras Tour begins its European leg on May 9 in Paris, just three weeks after the new album’s release date, and she has dates through August before returning to North America for shows from October to December.

While she hasn’t confirmed that Tortured Poets will be added to the setlist, fans think one of her band members might have done just that. Plus, it’d be slightly odd if Swift ignored a whole new album while on tour, so here’s how she may incorporate it.

Swift Might Add A Whole New Act

On April 19, Swift’s Eras Tour pianist David Cook supported the new album on Instagram, calling it “really REALLY good.” However, eagle-eyed fans noticed that he reportedly wrote, “And: wait until you hear the live versions...,” before reposting the image without that part of the caption.

This is a clue that Swift’s band has been rehearsing Tortured Poets songs together, meaning she’ll likely give her new songs their own act in the show. After all, the full band wouldn’t need to rehearse if Swift was simply going to perform Tortured Poets tracks as acoustic “secret songs.” However, the bigger question is how many songs she’ll add to the setlist.

The Eras Tour already has a massive 45-song setlist that spans nearly three-and-a-half hours, with nine of her 10 studio albums getting their own act, a rare feat for any pop concert. Swift may simply add another section to represent Tortured Poets, perhaps making it a 50-song setlist. But it’d also be reasonable, perhaps more likely, to cut some songs to make room.

She already experimented with changing the setlist in the Eras Tour concert film, where she cut five songs from the show — “The Archer,” “Long Live,” “cardigan,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “no body, no crime” with HAIM, the latter of which was performed at the Los Angeles shows in place of “‘tis the damn season.”

New Tracks Could Be “Secret Songs”

That said, if Cook actually hasn’t been rehearsing with the band as suspected, then it’s possible that Tortured Poets will get the “secret song” treatment. Every night, Swift chooses two songs from her catalog that aren’t already on her setlist and sings them acoustically, one on her guitar and one on the piano.

Swift’s goal for the 2023 shows was not to repeat any “secret song” at later shows unless she messed it up. However, she allowed herself to sing tracks from Midnights as many times as she wanted, simply because it was her newest album.

If she opts out of creating a whole new act for Tortured Poets, expect the new tracks to pop up as “secret songs,” and for them to get the same treatment as Midnights.