Royals among the famous faces at Taylor Swift's ‘unforgettable’ first London show of Eras Tour
Taylor Swift appeared speechless when she emerged on stage to a crowd of around 90,000 people, Alex Iszatt reports for ITV News
The Prince of Wales, Prince George and Princess Charlotte joined tens of thousands of people at Wembley last night for Taylor Swift's “unforgettable” first night in London as she finally brought her Eras Tour to the capital.
The concert also coincided with William's 42nd birthday, and the popstar later tweeted a photo of the group backstage with her boyfriend Travis Kelce with the caption: "Happy Bday M8! London shows are off to a splendid start".
The Princess of Wales stayed at home with Prince Louis.
Other celebrity fans and friends, including Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan, Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and model Cara Delevingne, Swift’s boyfriend, his brother Jason and their parents, as well as her parents Andrea and Scott Swift, were also in the 90,000-strong crowd at Wembley Stadium.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also attended the event with his wife Victoria.
Swift’s billion-dollar juggernaut tour takes fans through her back catalogue, including hits from albums 1989, Red and Midnights.
The revamped set list, which she first unveiled at the Paris shows, also includes songs from her latest album The Tortured Poets Department.
Opening the show, she told the crowd: “What an absolute honour it is to say these words to you – London, welcome to the Eras tour.
“I’m going to say something that is going to sound crazy but it’s true – there are 88,446 people in this stadium.
“Look what you’ve done for us London, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
She continued: “Thinking about how many people I’m looking at and how you could spend your time in the most exhilarating city in the world, especially on a Friday night in the summer on a beautiful day in London, and you decided to be here.
“Thank you for all the effort you made to be here, dressing up to be here, memorising song lyrics to be here.”
During the show, Swift reminisced about gigs at King’s College London and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire that she performed earlier in her career.
She said: “You just continued to support me more and more and the rooms got bigger then bigger and now you’ve done this, sold out three nights in June and five in August.
“I’m not the best at maths but I think that means we get to play Wembley Stadium eight times.”
Swift has already played shows in Edinburgh, Liverpool and Cardiff and will take to the stage in Wembley again on Saturday and Sunday before the tour moves on to Dublin.
She will return to London again for five nights in August.
She told fans: “We have a lot of fun memories, but this feels more special and more fun than any tour I’ve done.
“We get to take all the memories we’ve made over the years and put them all in one tour.”
It was an extra special night for two of Swift’s fans, who got engaged during her rendition of her hit Love Story.
Jamie Walters, 25, got down on one knee to propose to girlfriend Cate Crowe, 25, at the climactic moment of the song.
The couple, from Eastbourne, have been together for eight years. After the proposal, Crowe said: “It was a total surprise, I didn’t know I was even coming to the show until today. He surprised me with the tickets as well as the ring.”
The acoustic set, which features surprise songs every night, also offered a special treat for fans as Swift performed a track live for the first time ever.
Fuelling fire to the reports her song The Black Dog is about a London pub, she performed it live on the piano for the London crowd, mashed up with Midnights track Maroon.
On guitar she performed a mash up of It Hits Different and Death By A Thousand Cuts.
Ahead of her final song – Karma from Midnights – she told the crowd: “This has been an unforgettable night.”
That song also offered up a special treat for fans of her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Kelce as she included a special shout out to him.
She changed the lyrics in her final song to: “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me.”
It is a change she has made before when Kelce is in the crowd, but still drew screams from the assembled devotees.
It was revealed on Thursday that Swift’s fans were expected to boost the London economy by £300 million as the capital hosts more Eras Tour shows than any other city in the world, with nearly 640,000 people expected to attend across the eight dates.
To celebrate her arrival in the capital, murals, a special Tube map, a Taylor trail and a series of events have all been created.
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