Gracie Abrams Says Ending The Eras Tour Was Like "Last Day Of School"
"I was just soaking up every moment of her show."
If Swiftie University were real, Gracie Abrams would have just graduated with top honors. The singer-songwriter opened for a whopping 49 of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour shows, having cemented her own superstar status in the year-and-a-half process. After having played the final Eras concert on Dec. 8, Abrams is still trying to come to terms with the tour being over.
“I watched the live streams on shows that I wasn’t at,” Abrams told NYLON in a Dec. 17 profile. “I’m feeling emotional and grateful and in a state of shock that we don’t, as a global community, get to experience that source of light anymore.”
She described the Dec. 8 show as an especially emotional one. “Everyone had been crying all day. It felt like the last day of school backstage,” Abrams said. “Everyone was walking around with their [Eras Tour] books, signing each other’s books. We were all walking around with Sharpies.”
Looking back on the whole thing now, Abrams can say she took a ton of important lessons from the Eras experience. “I was just soaking up every moment of her show, too. I’ve basically been studying it for a year-and-a-half,” Abrams said. “Every time I’ve opened for her, I watch and learn. I learned from her every time we have a conversation about the weather, even.”
In particular, her Eras sets have prepared her to play much larger venues, now as a headliner. “When I think about playing bigger rooms, I think of the Eras Tour as this endless well of information for me,” Abrams said. “I felt like I was at school for this job. I used to be freaked out about the concept of not playing in a 100-cap room. It’s been a minute since I felt freaked out. If anything, you get to say hi to more people in bigger rooms.”
She’s also seen the benefits of Swift’s relatively speedy album release cycle, teasing that she is already working on her next album that may just be released before the end of 2025.
“I am inspired by Taylor in a million ways, but especially by the pace with which she puts things out into the world,” Abrams said. “There’s less pressure the more you release — that’s how I consider it for myself. I want to just keep it coming while I’m in this period of writing as frequently as I am. I think it would be a waste to not be open.”
