
Before Taylor Swift had lived enough eras to mount an ERAS tour, she was a baby-faced 19-year-old in Thredbo, electrifying audiences at the CMC Rocks the Snowys festival. She had already released two with-a-bullet albums – Taylor Swift and Fearless – and was riding high, telling an interviewer (who calls her ‘mate’) how she mined her emotions to write Fearless.
She had not yet moved beyond her country-music roots or reached the kind of fame that gives her engagement to Travis Kelce in 2025 the air of a royal wedding. But the elements were there: glitter, winged eyeliner, heartfelt romance and an intense connection with her fans. She stretches out her arms to embrace, beckon and single out faces. She leans in with a lover’s gaze as the crowd sings every word back to her. In those moments, her future is already visible.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.