Nikki Glaser and her sister were unable to see Taylor Swift’s performance of “Cruel Summer” at the pop star’s canceled Eras tour shows in Vienna and therefore had to improvise.
While stranded in an airport en route to Austria – where the pop star’s three previously scheduled performances were canceled after authorities uncovered a terror plot on the Ernst Happel Stadium – the comedian and her sister Lauren Glaser performed their own parody version of “Cruel Summer” in a TikTok posted on Wednesday (August 7) while waiting for a delayed flight to Europe.
“We’re stuck at an airport gate/ On the way to Vienna on a flight that was delayed/ We’re planning outfits and singing songs/ We had no idea what could go wrong,” they sang to the tune of Swift’s hit that topped the Billboard Hot 100, taking turns with each line. “Then we get a text from our mom/ That the shows were canceled because of a bomb threat/ And we screamed in a Hudson News/ What the hell am I supposed to do with these sparkly shoes/ I dyed my hair pink for nothing, we’re fucked!”
The comedian has previously shared that she is a super Swiftie, during a visit in October 2023 to The Kelly Clarkson Show that she had spent $25,000 on tickets to the Eras tour that year. “I just want to say that it was a conscious decision because I went to nine Eras tour shows this year,” she told Clarkson at the time. “When I’m not on tour, I go to their tour. It just fills my life with so much joy.”
The Glaser sisters did eventually make it to Vienna, where a crowd of Swifties gathered on the streets on Thursday (August 8) to exchange friendship bracelets and sing the 14-time Grammy winner’s songs together instead of attending the shows. At one point, Nikki joined in on the fan-led event, sharing a video on her Instagram Story of the crowd belting out “All Too Well” in unison.
“Sang All Too Well with thousands of displaced Swifties in Vienna,” she wrote, adding in another post that the other people in her group went shopping while she stayed behind to sing “like 7 more songs by myself.”
The meeting took place on the same day that Swift was scheduled to take the stage for the first of three back-to-back Eras shows at the Ernst Happel cinema. The performances were canceled a day earlier when authorities arrested two Austrian teenagers for allegedly planning to kill “as many people as possible outside the concert hall” with knives or homemade explosives. A 19-year-old suspect had previously pledged allegiance to the Islamic State after being radicalized online, officials said.
The next day, a third suspect – an 18-year-old man – was arrested in connection with the terrorist attack. Swift and her team have not yet issued a statement on the situation.
Watch Nikki and Lauren Glaser’s parody of “Cruel Summer” below.
