Taylor Swift induced some Tortured Poets-level hysteria when she performed “Guilty as Sin?” live for the first time at her Eras Tour stop in Stockholm, Sweden, on Saturday (May 18).
Swift, who brought her Eras spectacular to Stockholm’s Friends Arena for a trio of dates this weekend, complimented Saturday’s “absolutely wild” crowd at the start of the show’s acoustic section, during which she performs surprise songs on each tour date.
“You just fuel us the entire night,” Swift said of the crowd’s energy.
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“It makes me want to play one of my favorite songs from Tortured Poets that I’ve never played live before,” she teased. Swift gave her guitar a few strums leading up to an opening line that’s become instantly familiar to fans in the few weeks since she released her latest album: “Drowning in the Blue Nile/ He sent me ‘Downtown Lights’/ I hadn’t heard it in a while.”
The Friends Arena audience screamed. People on the internet shared the same sentiment, but through memes of Post Malone dancing to “Guilty as Sin?” and dry remarks about the tragedy of not being in the room with Swift for the track’s live debut.
“What if he’s written ‘mine’ on my upper thigh/ Only in my mind?” Swift sings on the track from The Tortured Poets Department. “One slip and falling back into the hedge maze/ Oh, what a way to die/ I keep recalling things we never did/ Messy top lip kiss/ How I long for our trysts/ Without ever touching his skin/ How can I be guilty as sin?”
“the way she sang guilty as sin as the first surprise song at her 89th show and opened with the lines ‘he sent me downtown lights’ which was released in 1989,” one fan pointed out on X, formerly Twitter, referring to the band The Blue Nile and Swift’s reference to their song “Downtown Lights.” (Saturday night marked the 89th Eras Tour date since the trek launched in March 2023).
“i’m taking the loss of Guilty As Sin really well,” another remarked, sharing evidence (via screenshots) of blocking both IKEA and ABBA’s accounts in response Sweden’s surprise song win.
“Guilty as Sin?” — which was followed by a 1989 piano medley of “Say Don’t Go,” “Welcome to New York” and “Clean” — continued to trend on X in the hours following Swift’s performance. See a clip of the full song played live below, plus fan reactions to missing out on “Guilty as Sin?” live.