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Taylor Swift delights fans with two surprise guests at final London show
Pop star had some surprises in store for the final show of the UK and European leg of her Eras tour
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Louise Thomas
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Taylor Swift had a few surprises up her sleeve for her eighth and final show at Wembley Stadium in London this week.
The US pop superstar, 34, wrapped the UK and European run of her record-breaking Eras Tour by performing to 92,000 fans at the London venue on Tuesday (20 August).
As with most shows, she performed a few surprise songs towards the end of the set, including the first live rendition of “Florida!” that brought out British singer Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine.
In videos of the moment posted on social media, Swift and Welch can be seen standing atop a rising platform flanked by backup dancers.
“Little did you know / Your home’s really only the town you’ll get arrested / So you pack your life away just to wait out the s***storm back in Texas / Florida,” the duo sing.
Towards the end of the show, Swift gave Welch a warm hug and thanked her for joining her on stage.
This is the first time Welch, 37, and Swift have performed their hit song live. “Florida” is the eighth track on Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Welch previously recalled working with Swift on the song, admitting: “I almost didn’t think of the scale of it.”
“There’s the sort of bigness of [Taylor Swift, the phenomenon], and then there’s the Taylor I spend time with in the studio, who is just the sweetest and most down to earth,” the “Dog Days Are Over” singer-songwriter told British Vogue in April.
Swift didn’t stop there with the surprises at Wembley, as she later brought out her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff to sing an acoustic duet of 2019’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts” and 2017’s “Getaway Car”, both of which were co-written and produced with the Bleachers star.
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She then blessed the sold-out crowd with a first-time performance of her song “So Long, London.”
![Taylor Swift and Florence Welch performed their collaborative song ‘Florida’ live for the first time on Tuesday](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/08/20/21/Untitled-design-%281%29.jpg)
Fans had long speculated about whether she would perform the track, which is widely believed to be about the end of her relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, whom she split from last year.
Lyrics include the lines: “I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath/ I stopped CPR, after all it’s no use/ The spirit was gone, we would never come to/ And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.”
Swift and Alwyn were in a six-year relationship from 2016 to early 2023. They were rumored to have hunkered down at a rented home in Primrose Hill during Covid lockdowns, while Swift is said to have enjoyed walks on Hampstead Heath during her visits to the UK.
After a brief hiatus, Swift will bring her Eras Tour to Toronto, Canada for a six-night stint in November before officially bringing it to an end on December 8 in Vancouver, Canada.
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