Taylor Swift Eras Tour: The six songs she didn’t play, and the heartbreaking stories behind two of them

After nearly two years, Taylor Swift has wrapped her history-making Eras Tour.

The pop star played 149 shows around the world, performing over 44 songs a night from her 18-year music catalogue in a three-and-a-half hour performance.

While the main set list was set each night, the pop star made it a tradition to play at least two different surprise songs each show in what she called the “acoustic section”.

You would think she’d exhausted all her songs by the time the show came to an end. But there were six tracks the singer didn’t play once on tour – and we can guess why.

READ MORE: Aussie stars honoured in Golden Globes 2025 nominations

By the time she took that final bow on stage in Vancouver yesterday, Swift officially closed the tour without ever having performed the following: That’s When, Bye Bye Baby, Girl At Home, Ronan, Forever Winter and Soon You’ll Get Better.

The songs span from all different eras of Swift’s discography.

That’s When, featuring Aussie music star Keith Urban, and Bye Bye Baby are both from the vault tracks off Swift’s 2021 remastered album, Fearless (Taylor’s Version). 

Girl At Home is from Swift’s deluxe edition of Red.

The final vault track Swift never sang was Forever Winter from Red (Taylor’s Version).

Fans interpreted the lyrics are about a friend going through a mental health struggle. 

“I didn’t know/ You were breakin’ down/ I’d fall to pieces on the floor/ If you weren’t around/ Too young to know it gets better,” the chorus goes.

For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.

While Swift never discloses who her songs are about, it has been speculated the track is about her late friend, Jeff Lang, who died in 2010.

But the other two tracks in particular are not surprising to have been left unsung, given the known personal background stories that inspired them.

Swift herself said she would struggle to perform Soon You’ll Get Better from her 2019 album Lover featuring The Chicks, which is a track about her mum Andrea’s battle with cancer.

Swift’s mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and later a brain tumour in 2019.

During a YouTube livestream per People, she said the song is “something I’m so proud of, but it’s just really hard”.

“I can’t sing it. It’s hard to just emotionally deal with that song,” she added.

Swift’s song Ronan is also about a heartbreaking experience with cancer. 

Back in 2012, Swift released the charity single after reading a 2011 blog from Maya Thompson about her three-year-old son who died from stage four neuroblastoma.

Swift used direct quotes from the blog and listed Thompson as a songwriter.

Swift performed it at a 2012 Stand Up to Cancer event with all proceeds going to charity.

READ MORE: Wholesome reason for Bec and Lleyton’s rare public appearance

“She reached out because the love story between a mother and a child impacted her,” Thompson wrote to Instagram after attending one of Swift’s Eras Tour show in August.

“I fell in love with a twenty-two-year-old girl because of her bold, bleeding heart and genuine words – not because she was one of the biggest stars on the planet, but because she was just Taylor.”

Swift last sang Ronan live in 2015 when Thompson attended one of her 1989 tour shows.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.