LONDON – Two weeks after organizers canceled Taylor Swift’s Vienna concert because a terror plot was thwarted, the singer has issued her first statement about the cancelled show.
“I was shocked when my Vienna show was cancelled,” she said in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “Hearing the reason for the cancellation left me with a new sense of fear and immense guilt as so many people had planned to come to the show.”
She thanked authorities, writing that “they allowed us to mourn a concert, not a life,” and said she was holding off on speaking out until the end of the European legs of her ERAS tour, in order to prioritize safety.
“I want to be clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think it could incite people to seek harm against the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.
Following the cancellation, Swift’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press and other news organizations, and her social media pages were dormant.
“In this case, ‘silence’ is actually about showing restraint and waiting to express yourself at the right time. My number one priority was successfully completing my European tour and I am very relieved to say I have done so,” she added.
Concert organizers Barracuda Music said they had cancelled three consecutive nights in Vienna, scheduled to begin on August 8, because the plot-related arrests came too close to showtime. Authorities said the 19-year-old suspect planned to “kill as many people as possible” by targeting crowds outside the Ernst Happel Stadium with knives and homemade explosives. Austrian authorities said the suspect appeared to be inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
The suspect and another 17-year-old were detained on August 6, the day before the cancellation of the show was announced. The third suspect, an 18-year-old, was arrested on August 8. The 19-year-old’s lawyer argued that the charges were “the height of exaggeration” and that Austrian authorities were “overstating the case” to gain new surveillance powers.
Tens of thousands of Swift fans from around the world traveled to Vienna to see the show.
Swift’s Instagram post also paid tribute to the five days she spent at London’s Wembley Stadium to mark the end of her European tour, which she said contributed to her decision to wait to speak out and that ultimately “felt like a beautiful dream sequence.”
“I decided that all my energies needed to be dedicated to protecting the approximately half a million people who were in attendance to watch me perform in London,” she wrote the day after her final Wembley show. “My team and I worked every day in collaboration with stadium staff and the UK authorities to pursue that goal.”
The London show, scheduled after Vienna, came just days after a stabbing incident at a Swift-themed dance studio in the UK left three girls dead. In a statement released after the Southport attack, Swift said she was “just completely shocked” and “has no idea how to express my condolences to the families.” News outlets reported that Swift met with some of the survivors backstage in London.
The record-breaking tour will be on hiatus until October, when it will resume in Miami.
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