Taylor Swift has broken her silence on the planned terrorist attacks that led to the cancellation of a series of concerts on her Eras Tour in Austria earlier this month.
“It was devastating to cancel our shows in Vienna,” Swift said in a lengthy online post today.
“The reason for the cancellation filled me with a new sense of fear and an enormous amount of guilt because so many people were planning to come to those shows,” she said of the three shows pulled from her European schedule on August 7. “But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them we were grieving concerts and not lives,” Swift said just hours after finishing another SRO show at London’s Wembley Stadium.
“Let me be very clear: I will not speak about anything publicly if I believe that doing so might provoke those who want to hurt the fans who come to my shows,” he said. Tortured Poets Section The singer continued speaking online on Wednesday about why she waited until after her final UK performance of the tour. “In situations like this, ‘silence’ is actually a show of restraint, waiting to express yourself at the right time. My priority was to finish our European tour safely, and it is with great satisfaction that I can say that we have succeeded in doing so.”
Austrian public security officials said after arresting three people in the Austrian case, police found knives, chemical explosives, ISIS propaganda and 21,000 euros in counterfeit banknotes after searching the homes of one of the suspected extremists.
This comes one day after the final show in London. Tour of the Ages With the official music video for “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” out, Swift’s comments reflect some downtime for the busy artist who has been on tour for over a year in addition to racking up Grammy Awards, Kansas City Chiefs games, a major movie and a new album release earlier this summer.
Tragically, this summer also saw a fatal knife attack at a Swift-style dance class in the UK. The days of racial riots across the country, fuelled by misinformation that the perpetrators were Muslims, were intensified by the murder of three children by a 17-year-old in Southport, northern England. Swift herself met the victims’ families in London on August 19.
A star for more than a decade, Swift has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon over the past two years, as well as a billionaire, a political force in her own right that transcends the divide between blue and red states.
Last week, Donald Trump falsely claimed that Swift had endorsed him, with the Republican campaign saying that “the Swifties for Trump movement is a massive movement that is growing every day.” Based on Swift’s support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020, as well as the swelling Swifties for Harris movement, there was an expectation that the singer would fly to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week and endorse the vice president. While the calendar made such an appearance possible, with Swift’s European tour ending on August 20 and now no new dates until October in Miami, the reality was impractical on a variety of levels.
“Everyone loves Taylor, but her presence here is going to overshadow everything,” a Democratic insider told Deadline earlier this week of the singer’s appearance on “Shake It Off” on Aug. 22, where she was giving her acceptance speech as the first black woman nominated by a major U.S. political party for president. “Think about it, no one will remember a single word the vice president said in her acceptance speech. All the headlines will be about Swift.”
More Stories
Heather Graham Opens Up About Being Separated From Her Parents For 30 Years
Heather Graham hasn’t spoken to her ‘estranged’ parents after they warned her Hollywood is ‘evil’
‘Austin Powers’ star Heather Graham’s father warns Hollywood will ‘take my soul’