Taylor Swift kept “Timeless” in the vault for 13 years, then brought it to the stage just a week after its release on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
The track about an ageless romance — a never-before-heard gem until the star dropped her re-recorded Speak Now on July 7 — is new to fans, but easily finds a place as one of the most classic love songs in Swift’s canon. She surprised the crowd with the first-ever live performance of the ballad at Denver’s Empower Field at Mile High on Friday night (July 14).
Sitting at the piano during the acoustic section of her Eras Tour show, during which she switches things up with two surprise songs that aren’t on the regular set list, Swift kept the audience on its toes until she sang the opening line of “Timeless”: “Down the block, there’s an antique shop/ And something in my head said, ‘Stop,’ so I walked in.”
Although “Timeless” has only been on fans’ playlists for about a week, the Denver crowd sang along while Swifties at home lamented not being in attendance for its live debut; they also showered praise for the song on social media. “idk i just think that if you dont like timeless or you dont get it, it’s probably because you didn’t fall in love with the classic storytelling country taylor,” one fan tweeted Friday night. “like look me in eye and tell me it wouldn’t be a smash on country radio in 2010.”
Before “Timeless,” Swift played her self-titled album’s “Picture to Burn” live, for the first time in more than a decade. (“In the spirit of nostalgia we should be exploring all the eras, including my first album that I wrote when I was like 14,” she announced.)
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which features re-recorded versions of the original album’s tracks plus six songs “From the Vault,” has already had the largest week of 2023 for any album in its first six days of release, according to initial reports to Luminate. The album’s first-week numbers are expected to be announced on Sunday (July 16) along with its debut position on the multimetric Billboard 200 albums chart (dated July 22).
Watch a fan-filmed clip of Swift’s “Timeless” performance below. Check out the full list of surprise songs she’s brought to The Eras Tour here.
This story originally appeared on Billboard
