One of the questions raised by Taylor Swift’s recent single “Karma” is whether the titular force is something that can be, like, aggressively courted. And, if so, is writing out $100,000 bonus checks to one’s tour truck drivers a form of metaphysical insurance payment? These are the deep thoughts that may woozily cross your mind on the Eras Tour, as the clock nears midnight while Swift is bringing things to a close by performing “Karma” at the end of a 3-hour-and-25-minute marathon set. It’s a weird, funny finale that leaves an audience with the idea that virtue is even better than revenge, or that maybe these can amount to the same thing. And who’s to argue any of this when you’re witnessing the insane success of the soon-to-be-billion-grossing Eras Tour?

Swift is paying her good fortune forward with an exhaustive, exhilarating show that is making millions of international fans justifiably joyful. As re-witnessed in Thursday night’s performance at the L.A. area’s SoFi Stadium — the first of a six-night stand in Inglewood, Calif. — the Eras Tour represents the apotheosis of what a pop superstar tour can be. It’s massively overscaled, oddly intimate and even, at its heart, extraordinarily musical in a way we don’t expect, much less demand, out of pop extravaganzas. It feels generous and sweet, and it absolutely flexes like a goddam acrobat.


“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Swift told the crowd early in Thursday’s show, “but this is the last city on the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour, and we really wanted to spend it somewhere special.” Flattery will get her everywhere, but there’s an asterisk she could have put on that statement and didn’t, which is that the SoFi run marks the end of just one U.S. run for the tour, as she announced earlier in the day that she is adding North American dates for fall 2024, albeit more in what looks like a regional mopping-up exercise than a full-scale return after the Latin American, Asian and European globetrotting to come in the next year. No matter — Angelenos do like to believe we’re special, and were happy to treat it as a closer to what began in Phoenix four and a half months ago, even if, in the overall picture, she’s only just begun.

Any of the fans who’ve already caught the tour — which, if you count people watching shaky,  illicit livestreams, means almost all of them — will know not much has changed about the set since the March opening in Arizona. The most overtly autobiographical song about a love affair now known to be broken up, “Invisible String,” was cut months ago, in favor of another great “Folklore” song with nearly the exact opposite viewpoint, “The 1.” “Long Live” was added to the set upon the release of the “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” re-record. Just a week or so ago, “Tis the Damn Season” was dropped from the “Evermore” portion of the set to make room for “No Body, No Crime,” thanks to that song’s featured artist, Haim, coming on for the last stretch of the tour.