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Cassandra by Taylor Swift was the only song from the series The Department of Martyred Poets: The Anthology that had never been performed live until Friday night (November 22) in Toronto, where it stole the show in a three-song piano medley packed with anger.
‘Cassandra’, ‘Mad Woman’ and ‘I Did Something Bad’ suddenly co-existed in a fine fury, rising above the concept of organizing the tour’s main setlist by ‘eras’. (Martyred poets, Folklore And Reputation were represented here, in one performance.)
Watch a fan-filmed video of Swift’s full performance of the mashup here.
The live premiere of “Cassandra,” a song titled after Greek mythology’s Cassandra who received the gift of prophecy along with the curse to never believe, took place during the acoustic portion of Swift’s Friday show, the fifth of a total of six dates . Toronto this month. The Eras Tour acoustic set is known as the part of the concert where what she performs each night is intended to be a surprise for the audience.
“When the first stone is thrown, there’s shouting/ In the streets there’s a raging riot/ When it’s ‘burn the b—‘ they shout/ When the truth comes out, there’s silence,” Swift sang from ‘Cassandra’ in Toronto’s Rogers Centre, sitting at her piano painted with flowers.
She continued with the ballad’s chorus, singing, “So they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst/ And tried to tell the town/ So they filled my cell with snakes, I’m sorry to say/ Do you believe me now? Do you believe me now?”
Swift further surprised everyone with a sudden shift into “Mad Woman”: “What did you think I would say to that?/ Does a scorpion sting when it fights back?/ They strike to kill and you know I will/ You know that I will do that.”
In the moving chorus of “Mad Woman,” she sings, “Every time you call me crazy/I get even crazier/What’s up with that?/And when you say I look mad/I get even angrier/And nothing goes above a crazy woman/ What a shame she went crazy/ No one likes a crazy woman/ You made her that way.”
Although it feels melodramatic to type this out, the moment Swift took a sharp turn towards Reputation – with “I Did Something Bad” – actually drew gasps from the stadium and on the Internet, where fans who weren’t at the concert sought out streams of Swift’s set.
“What a shame she went crazy,” Swift sang from “Mad Woman,” which she casually called back to Reputation of “They say I did something bad.”
By the end of the performance, that verse became, “Do you believe me now? What a shame she went crazy. Do you believe me now? They say I did something bad” in a clever rewrite that connected “Cassandra” to both “Mad Woman” and “I Did Something Bad” in the same chorus.
The crazy mashup lasted a whopping seven minutes, as captured on video by concertgoers.
It followed a lighter performance by Swift on acoustic guitar, “Ours” (Speak now) mixed with “The Last Great American Dynasty” (Folklore).
Swift plays again in Toronto on Saturday evening (November 23). The Eras Tour, which kicked off in March 2023, will take a break for the US Thanksgiving week before taking its final bow in Vancouver from December 6 to 8, 2024.
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