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Lover (Live From Paris)

Live Album | May 18, 2020

This article is about the live album. For the concert film, see City of Lover Concert (2020).
Lover (Live From Paris) is Taylor’s second live album. It was released on May 18, 2020, by Republic Records. The album consists of songs Taylor performed at her one-day concert City of Lover, which was held at the Olympia theater in Paris, France, on September 9, 2019, slightly over two weeks after the release of her seventh studio album, Lover (2019). They were compiled into a limited-edition vinyl album, subtitled as Live from Paris.
The set list for the concert consisted of sixteen songs, with eight from Lover and eight from Taylor’s back catalog. Compared to the original concert, the official music releases for Lover (Live From Paris) only include the eight songs from Lover.
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Background and Release

Taylor released her seventh studio album, Lover, on August 23, 2019, through Republic Records. Described by Taylor as a “love letter to love itself”, the album explores the “full spectrum of love”, inspired by her close connections with fans during her “reputation Stadium Tour” (2018).

To celebrate the album’s release, Taylor held the City of Lover concert, a one-off concert at the Olympia music hall in Paris, France, on September 9, 2019. Prior to the event, tickets were not available for the public, but were reserved to fans who had bought the album to enter online contests from a select 37 countries around the world. Due to the event’s secrecy among selected fans, there were no widespread promotional campaigns for it.

On May 17, 2020, the concert was aired as a one-hour special, titled Taylor Swift: City of Lover, on ABC. The following day, it was made available for on-demand streaming on Hulu and Disney+. Media publications opined that the release was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to Taylor’s planned “Lover Fest” world tour to support Lover being postponed, and ultimately cancelled. When she announced the release of the concert footage, Taylor said:

«So I played this concert in September, called the 'City of Lover' show and it was in Paris. It was so much fun! It was actually a show that we put together just to celebrate the Lover album coming out. And we filmed it and I'm really excited about it!»

Following the ABC premiere, the live versions of the Lover songs were released to digital music and streaming platforms, except the live version of “The Man”, which had been released to the platforms on February 18, 2020. In February 2023, a limited edition of Lover (Live From Paris) heart shaped vinyls (pink and blue) were released on Taylor’s store.

Reissue in 2025

The album was re-released on January 7, 2025, on Taylor’s webstore as a 72-hour limited edition and sold out within minutes. It contained two heart-shaped vinyl LPs with different colors than the 2023 edition, this batch being pink-yellow and pink-blue, respectively. On January 16, 2025, three deluxe digital album versions were made available for a limited time. Each digital album contained one of three bonus tracks that were recorded during “The Eras Tour” (2023-2024): “False God“, “I Think He Knows“, or “Paper Rings“.

Concert

The City of Lover concert marked Taylor’s first concert at a music hall in France since her 2011 “Speak Now World Tour.” The title is based on the nickname of Paris as the “City of Love.” The set list was primarily made up of songs from Lover, including the singles “ME!“, “You Need to Calm Down“, “Lover“, “The Man“, and the album tracks “The Archer“, “Death By A Thousand Cuts“, “Cornelia Street“, and “Daylight.”

Critical Reception

Upon completion, the City of Lover concert received positive feedback from the European media. Most critics were particularly fond of the acoustic session, which showcased Taylor’s songwriting crafts and intimate connections with the audience. Hannah Mylrea from the British magazine NME gave the concert a five-star rating. Also awarding the concert a five-star rating, Sarah Carson from the British newspaper i lauded Taylor as a “confident and commanding performer” with a more laid-back and self-asserted attitude. Carson was impressed by her performance at the 2,000-seat Olympia: “It’s one of the inevitable tragedies of fame that when a singer-songwriter transcends to ‘superstar’, world tours and stadiums and spectacles shove special little gigs like this to distant memory – to see Swift so close, in a historic room, all gilt and deep red velvet, was a privilege.”

Commercial Performance

Lover (Live from Paris) was the best-selling vinyl album in the United States for the chart week dated March 4, 2023. It topped the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart as Taylor’s ninth No. 1 album on the chart, landed at No. 5 on the Top Album Sales chart by selling 13,000 copies, and debuted at No. 58 on the overall Billboard 200. Alongside the live album’s entry on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 4, 2023, Taylor charted nine other albums, becoming the first artist in history to place at least 10 albums on the Billboard 200 simultaneously since American musician Prince in 2016; Taylor is the first living soloist to chart 10 albums in a single week since 1963.

Following its vinyl reissue and digital release in 2025, the album re-entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2 with 202,500 album-equivalent units, all from album sales, of which 161,000 were vinyl sales. It marks the largest vinyl sales week for a live album since Luminate started tracking in 1991, and Taylor’s 18th top-ten album on the chart.

Publications have described Lover (Live from Paris) as a rare and collectible album. Variety reported that its original LPs were regularly sold over on eBay for US$1,000.