Taylor Swift has revealed how she managed to power through the global Eras Tour despite dealing with deep personal heartbreak behind the scenes. In Eras Tour: The End of an Era, part of her documentary
series The Life of a Showgirl, the singer offers rare insight into navigating her 2023 breakups with Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy while performing night after night.
Speaking candidly in the fourth episode released on December 19, Taylor admitted the tour became her emotional anchor during one of the most difficult periods of her life. “There were points in this tour where the tour was really the only thing keeping me going in my life,” she shared. “But there were never points in the tour where I thought, ‘Oh I want to quit the tour because the tour is hard.’ No, my personal life was hard.”
The singer, who began the Eras Tour in March 2023, ended her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn in April that year. A brief romance with Matty Healy followed, which also came to an end by June — all while the tour was in its early, most demanding phase.
‘The Tour Has Never Been the Hard Thing’
Reflecting on that emotional stretch, Taylor said, “I went through two breakups on the first half of this tour. That’s a lot of breakups, actually. This show is what gave me purpose and what I could use to get me out of bed.” She added, “The tour has never been the hard thing in my life. The tour has been the thing that allowed me to find purpose outside of the s–t that was going on in my life.”
Summing up her experience with characteristic wit, Taylor declared, “Men will let you down, the Eras Tour never will.”
Though she has largely refrained from discussing her relationships publicly, Taylor channelled her emotions into her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. Fans widely believe several tracks reflect her relationships with Joe and Matty.
Matty Healy later appeared to distance himself from the album’s narrative. Speaking on an October 2024 episode of The Doomscroll podcast, he said, “I would kind of just be lying if I made a record about, I don’t know, all the stuff that was said about me or my casual romantic liaisons,” adding he wasn’t interested in writing songs based on fame-driven speculation.
Joe Alwyn, meanwhile, has consistently shut down public dissection of their breakup. “As everyone knows, we together—both of us, mutually—decided to keep the more private details of our relationship private,” he told The Sunday Times in 2024. “It was never something to commodify and I see no reason to change that now.” He added, “There is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”
Before The Life of a Showgirl, the only song clearly inspired by Taylor’s current relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce was “So High School,” famously featured in the couple’s August 2025 engagement announcement. While fans speculate that “The Alchemy” may also reference Travis, “So High School” leaves little doubt with the lyric: “Are you going to marry, kiss or kill me? / It’s just a game but really / I’m betting on all three, for us two.”
