Taylor Swift may have been understating things when she called one of her surprise songs for night 2 in Liverpool, England, “a little bit unexpected.”
Making her Eras Tour debut on Friday night (June 14), Swift performed “This Is What You Came For” — the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit released by Calvin Harris and Rihanna in 2016, the which Harris co-wrote with then-girlfriend Swift — in a mash-up with ForeverThe “gold rush” of the first of two surprise acoustic songs.
With a guitar slung over her cobalt blue maxi dress, Swift introduced the song acknowledging that it can be special surprising surprise song “Every time we have an acoustic set, I always try to think of things that you might want to hear, maybe things that might be a bit unexpected,” he told the Anfield Stadium crowd. “Let's see how we did tonight.”
While “This Is What You Came For” debuted on the Eras Tour, Swift has performed the song twice before: once in 2016 at the US Formula 1 Grand Prix concert in Austin, Texas, and once in 2017 at her Super Saturday Night concert. in Houston, Texas, ahead of that year's Super Bowl.
When the song was released in April 2016, it was credited to Harris and an unknown songwriter named “Nils Sjöberg”. After Harris and Swift split, TMZ reported in July of that year that Sjöberg was actually a pseudonym for the pop singer/songwriter, and Harris confirmed her involvement on Twitter. In a 2020 Rolling rock conversation with Paul McCartney, Swift explained her motivation for using the nickname.
“I think when a nickname comes in is when you still have a love for creating the work and you don't want the work to be overshadowed by this thing that's built around you, based on what people know about you,” Swift said at the time. “And then it's really fun to create fake names and write under them. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because these are two of the most popular Swedish male names. I wrote this song called 'This Is What You Came For' that Rihanna ended up singing. And no one knew for a while. I remember always hearing it when Prince wrote “Manic Monday” [for The Bangles]they didn't reveal it for a few months.”
For her second acoustic song on Friday night, Swift performed one Midnight mash-up of “The Great War” and “You're Losing Me” on the piano.
Watch Swift perform 'This Is What You Came For' in Liverpool:
