Superstar Taylor Swift has broken her weeks-long silence over the cancellation of three concerts in Austria due to a terror threat, saying on social media she was “showing restraint.”
The 34-year-old man, whose “Department of Tortured Poets” was Billboard's best-selling mid-year album of 2024, He wrote on Instagram that he was “waiting to express [herself] at a time when it is appropriate to do so.”
“My priority was to finish our European tour safely,” Swift said. wrote Wednesday, “and it is with great relief that I can say that we did it.”
Swift had been silent on the cancellations until Wednesday's statement, fueling questions and criticism from some fans for her lack of response.
Swift was scheduled to perform August 8-10 at Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium as part of the European leg of her Eras Tour.
Concert organizers expected up to 65,000 spectators at each concert, with a potential 30,000 more outside.
The show's organizer, Barracuda Music, announced on its website that Swift's three sold-out shows were canceled as a precaution. Barracuda said it had confirmed with government officials “a planned terrorist attack” at the venue.
“We have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for the safety of everyone,” the organizer said.
“The cancellation of our Vienna shows was devastating,” Swift wrote. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear and enormous guilt because so many people had planned to attend those shows. But I was also so grateful to the authorities because, thanks to them, we were mourning the shows and not the concerts.”
Three men were arrested, including a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots and an 18-year-old Iraqi.
The Austrian prime suspect had allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group leader online shortly before the planned attack, authorities said.
“He is clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and believes it is right to kill 'infidels,'” Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of Austria's General Directorate of Public Security, told the Associated Press.
Haijawi-Pirchner added that the suspect “wanted to carry out an attack in the area outside the stadium, killing as many people as possible using… knives or even using the explosive devices he had made.”
A week earlier, in Southport, England, three children were killed in a knife attack during a Swift-themed dance class. A 17-year-old boy was arrested; prosecutors did not reveal a motive.
“They were just little kids in a dance class,” Swift wrote in a statement on Instagram. “I don’t know how to convey my condolences to these families.”
Swift concluded her European Eras Tour on Saturday at London's Wembley Stadium. The tour kicked off in Paris on May 9.
“I was heartened by the love and unity I saw in the fans who came together,” she wrote. “I decided that all my energy had to go into helping protect the nearly half a million people who came to see the shows in London.”
