Taylor Swift has detailed the two romantic breakups she experienced during the first half of her Eras Tour, saying she relied on the tour itself to get through what she described as one of the most difficult periods of her personal life.
The singer made the comments in episode four of "The End of an Era," a docuseries released on Disney+, which chronicles the global tour that ran from March 2023 through December 2024.
Swift said the tour coincided with significant emotional challenges unrelated to the demands of performing.
"There were points in this tour when the tour was really the only thing that was really keeping me going in my life," Swift said in the episode.
The physical and professional strain of the tour was never the issue, she noted.
"But there were never points in the tour where I thought, Oh, you know what? I want to quit the tour 'cause the tour's hard. No, my personal life was hard," she said. "I went through two breakups on the first half of this tour, and that's a lot of breakups actually."
Swift did not identify the relationships by name in the documentary. However, the timing aligns with her split from actor Joe Alwyn in early 2023 after more than six years together, followed by a brief relationship with The 1975 singer Matty Healy later that year.
According to Swift, the performances provided structure and purpose during a period when other aspects of her life felt unstable.
"The show was what gave me purpose and was what I could use to get me out of bed. So, the tour has never been the hard thing in my life," she said. "The tour has been the thing that has allowed me to find purpose outside of the s*** that was going wrong in my life."
She added, "Men will let you down, the Eras Tour never will."
Swift said the struggles she faced at the time were reflected in her music, describing songwriting as therapeutic.
"Tortured Poets album is like this purge of… just, like, everything, everything bad that I felt for two years," she said of her 11th studio album. "It was a really rough time in my life, so the songs reflect that.
"Feeling like I'm not a person, I'm just this like, big conglomerate that no one sees as a real human being and especially not men that I date. And in the whole process just being like … nothing, nothing works. There's no one for me in the world."
While much of the tour overlapped with personal hardship, Swift said it also led to a turning point in her life. The documentary details how the Eras Tour ultimately played a role in her meeting Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, now her fiancé.
Taylor Swift's mother, Andrea Swift, said she came across media coverage of Kelce's "New Heights" podcast, where he discussed wanting to give Taylor Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number.
Andrea Swift said she contacted a cousin described as the family's "resident expert on the Kansas City Chiefs," who told her Kelce was "the nicest guy" and he "really loves his mom."
Taylor Swift recalled her mother raising the idea of meeting him, despite her limited experience dating athletes.
"So, you call me up with this tone of like, 'Hey so I know you're not going to react well to this. But there's a guy," Taylor Swift said, before Andrea Swift added, "He's really cute."
Taylor Swift said her mother encouraged her to approach dating differently, telling her, "You gotta start doing something different."
Taylor Swift and Kelce made their relationship public in September 2023 and announced their engagement in August.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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