Everything Taylor Swift touches lately turns to gold, whether it’s her record-breaking albums, her sold-out tour, her mere presence at NFL games that generate hundreds of millions of dollars, or her ability to single-handedly boost the economy at every The Eras Tour stop.
To no one’s surprise, she can also make other artists’ songs popular years after the fact, as confirmed by one of Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s biggest bops.
Swift is currently on the European leg of her Eras Tour, and she has been performing in the U.K. since the beginning of June, with three more dates to come, all in London. The superstar’s setlist includes a vast journey through 18 years of music since her debut, following all her eras (except her debut album, unfortunately). One thing fans particularly look forward to during the show is the acoustic section, which always differs from one concert to another (and sometimes includes a song or two from those precious Debut days).
The acoustic set is not exclusive to the Eras Tour, as Swift has been performing other songs during her tours for years. She used to perform covers in her Speak Now World Tour, and Red Tour, as well as singing some of her least performed songs. What The Eras Tour brought to the table are the chef’s kiss mashups and brand-new options from her lengthy discography.
Why Rihanna and Calvin song’s hit song is trending again
Taylor might have forgotten that Calvin Harris existed, but she performed his and Rihanna’s song, “This Is What You Came For,” on tour during Liverpool N2. She did a mashup with “Gold Rush” off Evermore, and, following her performance, the song re-entered the global Spotify chart at #183. “This Is What You Came For” was a major hit when it premiered in 2016 and was played over 1 billion streams on the platform. Although it was always popular, people have been praising “the Taylor impact” online since the song re-entered the charts.
You might not know one tiny detail about this song: it was actually co-written by Taylor Swift. Back in 2016, Swift was still dating DJ Calvin Harris, and, despite him claiming he wouldn’t collaborate with her, he did. They wrote the hit song together, with Taylor using the pseudonym “Nils Sjoberg.” Swift has performed the song on two previous occasions. Once in 2016 for the United States Grand Prix and another at the DirecTV Super Saturday Night in Houston, Texas in February 2017.
Her performing the song at the Liverpool show came as a surprise to all the people attending the concert (and the warriors watching on a grainy live stream), as it made possible the idea that she might record the song alone when she releases the highly-anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version). At least, this is what everyone wants now that we’ve heard how amazing it sounds when she performs it. After all, she did add “Better Man” and “Babe” to the vault tracks from Red (Taylor’s Version), so “This Is What You Came For” is fair game, right?
