Taylor Swift performs onstage during The Eras Tour at Soldier Field on June 2, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois.Natasha Moustache/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

“My brain just broke,” Taylor Swift said into her mic at Chicago’s Soldier Field on Saturday night (June 3), when she invited a young fan to come up onstage with her.

The Eras Tour setlist — which runs for nearly three-and-a-half hours and covers more than 40 songs — might be meticulously rehearsed in the interest of time, but Swift’s “22” performance last night had a very unrehearsed bit when she became overcome by the cuteness of a child in the audience.

During “22,” one lucky fan gets escorted to the front of the stage on the catwalk end, where Swift hands over the hat that she’s been wearing that night. This special experience seemed to be going as planned at her second of three Chicago tour dates on Saturday. Then Swift got lost in the moment.

Swift crouched down and leaned forward, handed the hat to a young fan and took her hand. And then she encouraged her with a nod to join her on the actual stage. But she wasn’t quite thinking about the safety of that fun gesture. She suddenly stopped herself, admitted that her brain broke and rejoined the Eras dancers in the “22” kickline — kicking with the wrong leg.

By her next song, the 10-minute “All Too Well,” Swift told the crowd about the funny incident that had just happened.

“I just had this inclination,” explained Swift. “She’s so cute that I wanted to like, I was just like ‘I’m just gonna bring her on the stage, I’m just gonna hug her and put her on the stage.’ And then I remembered we don’t have a safe way to get her off the stage.”

“My brain went completely blank,” she said. “I was just like, ‘You’re so sweet and cute, come up on the stage.’ She was confused. I was confused. So if anybody else was confused, that was because that child was so adorable that I tried to make her a part of the show.” She joked, “I had no control over it.”

At this point, Swift added in a universal compliment to everyone that had showed up: “You’re all so cute. I feel that way about a lot of you during the show. We make eye contact and you guys are like performing, passionately. There’s a lot of really passionate performances happening in the audience of the show. Have you noticed that too? You look around you, you wanna be best friends with everyone. Yeah, that happens to me too.”

See the Chicago concert moment below. You can also catch how it went down from the perspective of the girl on TikTok, as another fan captured it from her angle.