LONDON (AP) — Two weeks after promoters canceled Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna following a foiled terrorist attack, the singer made her first statement on the cancellations.
“The cancellation of our Vienna shows was devastating,” she wrote in a statement on Instagram on Wednesday. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear and enormous guilt because so many people had planned to come to these shows.”
She thanked the authorities – “Thanks to them, we mourned concerts and not live performances,” she wrote – and said she waited to speak until the European leg of her Eras tour was over to give top priority to safety.
“Let me be clear: I will not speak publicly about something if I believe it might provoke those who wish to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.
Following the cancellations, Swift’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Associated Press and other news organizations, and her social media pages went dormant.
“In cases like this, ‘silence’ is actually an expression of restraint and waiting to express oneself at a time when it is the right time. My priority was to finish our European tour safely and I am very relieved to say that we have succeeded in doing that,” she added.
Concert promoter Barracuda Music said it had cancelled the three-day Vienna tour, which was due to begin on August 8, because the arrests in connection with the plot came too close to the concert’s start. Authorities said a 19-year-old suspect planned to attack spectators outside the Ernst Happel Stadium with knives or homemade explosives in the hope of “killing as many people as possible”. Austrian officials said they appeared to have been inspired by the terrorist group Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
That suspect and another 17-year-old were taken into custody on August 6, a day before the cancellation of the shows was announced. A third suspect, 18, was arrested on August 8. The 19-year-old’s lawyer said the allegations were “exaggeration at its finest” and claimed Austrian authorities had “exaggerated” this to gain new surveillance powers.
Tens of thousands of Swifties from all over the world traveled to Vienna for the shows.
Swift’s Instagram post also commemorated the end of the European leg with a tribute to her five nights at London’s Wembley Stadium, which she said played a role in her decision to wait to speak out and ultimately “felt like a beautiful dream sequence.”
“I have decided that I must focus all my energy on protecting the nearly half a million people who come to my shows in London,” she wrote the day after her last Wembley concert. “My team and I have worked hand in hand every day with stadium staff and the British authorities to achieve this goal.”
The shows in London, the next stop after Vienna, came shortly after a knife attack during one of Swift’s dance classes in the UK left three little girls dead. In a statement after the attack in Southport, Swift said she was “completely in shock” and “completely doesn’t know how I can ever express my condolences to these families.” News outlets reported that Swift met with some of the survivors backstage in London.
The record-breaking tour will pause until October and will then continue in Miami.
