Taylor Swift was joined by her frequent collaborator Aaron Dessner for the live debut of “The Great War” in Tampa, Fla., on Friday (April 14).
The pop superstar brought out The National member, whom she referred to as the “collaborator version of a soulmate,” during the surprise songs acoustic portion of her setlist on the second night of her Eras Tour stop at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium.
“You guys are watching the greatest performer on Earth do the greatest show of all time,” Dessner told the sold-out crowd.
Prior to the performance, Swift joked that the Midnights (3am Edition) track “took on a new meaning when you guys made enough jokes about how you trying to get tickets for this tour felt like surviving the great war.”
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“The Great War” peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 2022. Watch a snippet of her onstage collaboration with Dessner here. Swift also delivered the live debut of her Midnights song “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” which reached No. 8 on the Hot 100.
During the show, Swift also amended the rule about the surprise songs acoustic portion of her set, telling concert-goers that she will allow herself to perform certain songs as many times as she likes during future dates of The Eras Tour.
“Basically when I started the tour, I was like, ‘In the acoustic section, I am never repeating a song. I’m never doing songs more than once.’ But now I’m like, ‘There are so many songs I want to do more than once,’” Swift said in a fan-captured clip.
She added, “So, I’m making a little caveat to the rule, which is that if [a song] is on Midnights, I can do it however many times I want, because Midnights is the most accurate picture of my life to date.”
The superstar also made a couple of changes during her first Tampa concert on Thursday, including switching out a few of her costumes and adding Red (Taylor’s Version) cut “Treacherous” and the Speak Now title track to the setlist as the pair of surprise songs for the evening.