Over the course of a little over eight months in 2023, Taylor Swift played 66 sold-out shows across the Americas as part of her history-making Eras Tour. Each night she was up on stage, Swift belted out 40-plus songs while performing hours of intricate choreography and trying to make sure tens of thousands of fans were having the time of their lives.
The first year of the tour, which is set to run for an additional 85 shows in 2024, required intense physical, mental, and emotional fortitude from Swift, who told TIME in an interview for 2023 Person of the Year that she wanted to “superserve the fans” to repay them for the effort they put in to attend her career-retrospective concert.
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“They had to work really hard to get the tickets,” she said. “I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.”
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Swift began getting in shape for Eras six months before the tour kicked off in March in Glendale, Ariz. “I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot,” she said. “I finally, for the very first time, physically prepared correctly.”
Her training regimen included running on the treadmill every day while singing the entire Eras setlist aloud—”Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs”—following a specialized strength, conditioning, and weights program at her gym, Dogpound, and doing three months of dance lessons.
“I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought,” she said. “Learning choreography is not my strong suit.” Swift worked with choreographer Mandy Moore, who she says “completely changed my relationship to choreography, and somehow got into my brain and figured out exactly how I would think about things.” Moore was recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with her on La La Land. Stone’s recommendation carried weight. “I’ve known her since we were 17, and I told her all about the tour—I’m always bouncing ideas off my friends,” she said. Swift says she wanted the show to have elements of Broadway and evoke a cinematic experience. “I wanted it to show people so many different types of dance and performance,” she says. “Em said, ‘Mandy’s your girl.’”
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Before the show started, Swift says she and her team camped out in Glendale. “We actually got to be in the stadium for almost a month running the show several times a week,” she said. “So that was extremely helpful.”
Unlike on her previous tours—during which Swift said she behaved “like a frat guy”—she stopped drinking alcohol to prepare more rigorously. “I was really disciplined about drinking,” she said. “I stopped drinking for a couple months before the show except for on Grammy night, which was hilarious. I gave myself a fun night for that one.” She then kept up that practice throughout the tour’s run. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she said, “I don’t want to know that world.”
Once Eras was underway, Swift was often performing three back-to-back shows per city. In Los Angeles, her final U.S. stop of 2023, she did this twice in a row with only a day’s break in between for a total of six shows in seven days. During the hiatus between tour legs, she would spend a “dead day” recovering in order to get ready for the next string of concerts.
“I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she said. “It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels. But it’s the most fulfilled I’ve ever felt.”
The Eras Tour will resume in February 2024 for a six-month run across Asia, Australia, and Europe before returning to North America in October for its final 18 shows. And Swift plans to be in top form for all of it.
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“I know I’m not drinking on tour. I know I’m working out in between shows. I know I’m keeping my strength and stamina up. I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed,” she said. “That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.”
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