“Basically it’s a weird feeling going into these last five shows in Europe because … we’ve done 128 shows so far,” she says in the 2024 footage, “but this is the first one where I feel like I’m skating on thin ice or something. We just had this series of very violent, scary things happen to the tour. We dodged a massacre situation.
“There was this horrible attack in Liverpool at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party. And it was little kids that, uh … ” At this, she trails off, unable to complete the sentence and say that three children died after being assaulted by a knife-wielding attacker.
A message then appears on screen revealing that Swift met with survivors of the Liverpool attack before each of the concerts in London. The film then cuts to Swift sitting alone minutes after spending time with the victims, before she slowly breaks down in tears just moments before she’s due to be onstage.
It’s a moment that mirrors the viral scene from fellow pop star Katy Perry’s documentary where she receives a text from then-husband Russell Brand asking for a divorce before having to swallow her feelings and go onstage moments later.
“It’s gonna be fine, because when I meet them, I’m not gonna do this. I swear to God, I’m not gonna do this,” she vows. “I’m gonna be smiling.”
“Any of this gets out of the way before you ever go upstage. You lock it off for three and a half hours. They don’t have to worry about you. It’s like you’re a pilot flying the plane. And if you were like, ‘Ooh, there’s turbulence up ahead; I don’t know if we’re actually gonna land in Dallas; I’m gonna try hard, but I don’t know if I can actually figure out how to land through this turbulence,’ everyone on the plane’s gonna freak out.”
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