Taylor Swift Performs “The Best Day” in Honor of Her Mother at Homecoming Eras Show

Taylor Swift has a number of heart-wrenching tracks. “Never Grow Up.” “All Too Well.” “Ronan.” These songs have no trouble bringing a tear to one’s eye, but for a homecoming show in Pennsylvania Swift dusted off perhaps the biggest tearjerker of them all, “The Best Day.”

In honor of Mother’s Day, Swift used the surprise song section of her third Pennsylvania Eras show to perform an ode to her own mother, Andrea Swift.

“The Best Day” was featured on Swift’s 2008 album, Fearless. Swift flexes her storytelling chops in the lyrics, recounting all of the ways her mother helped her through hard times throughout her life.

I’m thirteen now / and don’t know how / My friends could be so mean…and we talk and window shop /
‘Till I forgotten all their names, she sings in the second verse.

“We were talking earlier about how it’s Mother’s Day,” Swift said prior to performing the track. “I think the time in my life that I remember, in terms of giving presents to my mom, was when I secretly recorded a song on Fearless.”

“And this was harder back then to do because I was 16/17 when I recorded Fearless, so secretly recording something away from my mom at that age was actually really difficult,” she continued. “I wrote this song by compiling these core childhood memories of not just her as a mother but her as my friend. She was always such a wonderful friend to me.

“I’m gonna try and play it, I don’t know what is going to happen,” Swift said before rolling into the first few chords. Swift seemed to get emotional while singing the track, particularly at the line, Daddy’s smart / And you’re the prettiest lady in the whole wide world.

“Happy Mother’s Day to you, to your mom, to the people who mentored you, to the people who you mother, to the people who you love,” Swift said after wrapping up the final notes. “Happy Mother’s Day to all of you, I love you all so much…But mostly my mom.”

Check out a clip of the performance, below.

(Photo by John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)