If familiarity breeds contempt, then Taylor Swift should be getting roundly scorned. Unfamiliarity with the pop hegemon has become a near impossible condition as she traverses the globe with her record-breaking Eras tour. Since it began in March 2023, she has released three hit albums, had 27 songs chart in the US top 20 and released the highest grossing tour film ever. Totting up the hours of listening and watching, I have probably spent more time in her company than with some of my closest friends.

To this can now be added the three hours and 20 minutes of her Eras show at Murrayfield stadium in Edinburgh. The first of three nights at the venue, it marked the arrival of the tour on British shores. Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands had been renamed Loch Tay Tay for the occasion. In Edinburgh city centre, glitter and Taylor-themed apparel were ubiquitous: gold minidresses, cowboy boots and hats, glittery leotards — audacious outfitting for a fresh Scottish summer evening.

An immense caravan of tweens plus parental chaperones, teenage girls and young women headed towards the near 73,000-capacity stadium. (Some of the menfolk wore American football tops bearing the name of Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.) Most of the Swifties present would have already seen the show — not in the flesh, but on screen. The concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (worldwide box office gross $261mn) came out in the middle of the Eras tour itself (projected ticket revenue, more than $2bn).