Bon voyage, Taylor Swift, and thanks for the New Orleans Eras Tour memories last weekend

Taylor Swift, come back anytime.

Her three-night residency at the Caesars Superdome, attended by nearly 200,000 fans, was by any measure — artistic, economic, the all-around radiation of joy and positive energy — an unqualified success.

New Orleans rolled out the welcome mat for Swift and thousands of visiting Swifties. Those Swifties returned the love by spending generously and, by all accounts, being unfailingly pleasant.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, Swift spent three hours and 20 minutes performing 45 songs — the same songs, in the same order, each night, except for her solo, two-song acoustic segment on guitar and piano — in whole or in part, grouped into 10 album-specific eras.

I attended all three shows. And I’d be hard-pressed to name any moment in that 10-hour total that felt subpar.

Sure, certain songs may have packed a bit more punch night to night. But as The Eras Tour enters its final lap after more than 130 shows worldwide, it is a very well-oiled machine.

Swift herself, the only cog in that machine that truly matters, is indefatigable.

“You may think that we’re tired on our third night,” she announced onstage Sunday. “That’s not the way this works on The Eras Tour. The way it works is that we save our best, we save everything we’ve got, to give to you on Sunday night.”

Truth be told, I detected no extra energy Sunday night. She was energized and on-point every night.

Perhaps because it was her New Orleans finale, Sunday tickets were in especially high demand. Prices on the secondary market didn't drop like other nights. At 6 p.m. Sunday, less than two hours before Swift hit the stage, not even nosebleed seats were less than $1,000.

By contrast, on Friday afternoon, one couple paid $800 apiece for two prime seats in floor section H for that night’s show. Less than 24 hours earlier, those same seats were $2,200 each on a resale site.

Throughout the weekend, many dreams were realized by acquiring tickets. Conversely, all three nights I saw at least one mother/daughter duo in tears at the Superdome box office, having discovered that their tickets were fake or otherwise invalid.

For a little girl in a Swift-inspired costume to be so close to seeing her hero, only to have the dream dashed right outside the door?… that’s a rough lesson about how cruel life can be.

Looking for clues

But overall, good vibes abounded. Many of the genial Superdome ushers and security staffers wore friendship bracelets gifted to them by young Swifties.

The Swift faithful love to obsess over Swift's supposed clues about upcoming plans. The lengths they go to convince themselves would make the most extreme conspiracy theorist proud.

One fan noted that Sunday was the 13th-to-last show of the Eras Tour — Swift’s favorite number is 13. The first letters of the remaining cities — New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver — spell NITV, this fan explained, which could be an abbreviation for “Now Introducing Taylor’s Version.”

So surely she would announce a new “Taylor’s Version” rerelease of one of her old albums Sunday in New Orleans, right?

It didn’t happen. There were no big announcements Sunday, and no special guests (the weekend’s only surprise guest was Sabrina Carpenter on Saturday).

Instead, Swift did what she’d done the previous two nights: preside over a smartly conceived, ambitiously rendered, near-flawlessly executed overview of her recorded history.

A big farewell

Just before showtime Sunday, Swift’s father, Scott Swift, greeted fans from behind the barricade of a VIP section on the Dome floor. On the opposite side of the Dome, members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band — whom Swift met during a New Orleans visit two years ago — shared a VIP section with actress Angela Kinsey of “The Office.”

Each night, Swift protegee Gracie Abrams’ opening set was a bit like seeing a younger, slightly edgier Swift. Their simpatico songwriting was especially obvious on “Us,” which Abrams and Swift wrote together.

The Superdome is the only New Orleans venue Abrams has ever played. At times, she seemed blown away to be there. But she was also up to the task.

During Abrams’ set on Sunday, the line at the stand selling Swift merchandise at Gate H snaked from the plaza-level lounge area to the main concourse before doubling back on itself. And this was after five full days of merch sales at Champions Square and the Smoothie King Center.

Not surprisingly, the lines largely disappeared when Swift hit the stage just before 8 p.m. No one wanted to miss a minute.

Casual fans may not have caught the significance and symbolism of every detail of the sumptuous costumes and dazzling video content. But the show’s overall impact is so striking that an observer can go in knowing virtually nothing about Swift or her music and still come away impressed.

The shirt she wore Sunday during the song “22” read, “A Lot Going On At the Moment” — an accurate statement in the midst of such an eye-popping production.

That production could still hearken back to an early, simpler time in her career. The mandolin and twang of “Fearless,” especially, were a reminder of her country-pop origins.

But she has moved forward at light-speed since then, with evermore sophisticated and emotional material.?

“...Ready For It?” crackled like Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat.” “Don’t Blame Me” tread similar sonic terrain as Hozier; two guitarists briefly soloed as columns of vertical light framed the Caesars logo on the Dome ceiling.

Sunday’s crowd briefly went quiet after “Cardigan,” the opening of the lovely if chill “Folklore”/”Evermore” segment. Just as quickly, the audience reengaged for “Betty.” Swift’s nightly pause for applause after “Champagne Problems” was longest on Sunday.

The solemnity of “My Tears Ricochet,” as female dancers marched alongside Swift with black mourning dresses and heads bowed, contrasted with the spunk of “Style” and the whole of the joyous “1989” era.

Whatever she may say on social media, she keeps politics and her personal life out of her shows. Onstage, she didn’t mention the looming Election Day or the presidential candidates. Her only passing reference to her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce came in the closing “Karma,” via an altered lyric about “karma is the guy on the Chiefs.”

In Sunday’s acoustic segment, she banged out “Afterglow” and “Dress” on acoustic guitar. She acknowledged that Sunday was the tenth anniversary of her “1989” album by mashing up “How You Get the Girl” and “Clean” on piano.

After Sunday’s final “Midnights” showcase, the big weekend was over. By Monday afternoon, the 140-foot-long inflatable friendship bracelet that had decorated the exterior of the Dome was gone.

So, too, was The Eras Tour’s fleet of semitrucks. They were already on the road bound for Indianapolis.

But the memories Swift left behind won’t soon be forgotten.

“This is our third and final night getting to play in New Orleans,” she said Sunday, speaking as Swiftie-in-chief. “I have been so moved and so blown away by the way that this city has embraced us and welcomed us. So can we all just please say a big, ‘Thank you, New Orleans!’”

New Orleans says “thank you” right back.