Taylor Swift fans caused the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake with their raucous dancing at her shows on July 22nd and 23rd at Seattle’s Lumen Field, an expert has claimed.
The songstress, 33, has been breaking records with her The Eras Tour – which sees her belt out a whopping 44 songs a night – with the star’s fans making the earth move, according to Western Washington University geology professor and seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach.
Speaking to CNN, Caplan-Auerbach said: ‘I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals. If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.’
Comparing Swift’s concert to 2011’s Beast Quake when Seattle Seahawk fans set a new noise record with their cheers and stomps for Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch, Caplan-Auerbach added: ‘Cheering after a touchdown lasts for a couple seconds, but eventually it dies down. It’s much more random than a concert. For Taylor Swift, I collected about 10 hours of data where rhythm controlled the behavior.
‘The music, the speakers, the beat. All that energy can drive into the ground and shake it.’
Swift kicked off the North American leg of her record-breaking Eras tour in Glendale, Arizona on March 17 — drawing an estimated 150,000 superfans to the city.
The pop powerhouse belts out 44 of her biggest hits during the show that spans over three hours and has featured a number of special guests — from Swift’s ex-boyfriend Matty Healy to rapper Ice Spice.
The U.S. leg of her sixth headlining tour will conclude with a slate of Los Angeles concerts at the Sofi Stadium in August.
She will then take the tour to Latin America, performing shows in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. The Latin American leg concludes in Sao Paulo on November 26.
Tour will pick back up in February 2024 with back-to-back shows in Japan before Swift takes Australia and Singapore by storm.
The highly-anticipated European leg will kick off on May 9 and consists of 48 dates spanning from France to the United Kingdom.
Swift announced she would be going on tour for the first time in four years last June ahead of the release of her tenth studio album Midnights.
She described it as a ‘journey’ through all of her musical eras as she’s explored country, pop and folk over the span of her 17-year career.
After months of excitement, tour tickets went on sale in November.
But Ticketmaster’s catastrophic pre-sale debacle left pre-verified fans waiting in a virtual line for hours and others unable to purchase tickets at all.
Swift spoke out amid the chaos, telling her devout fanbase that she was just as ‘pissed off’ as everyone else is.
‘It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,’ she began in the lengthy post on Instagram.
‘We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house.’
Taylor went on to explain – without mentioning the company by name – that she chose to use Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system because she thought it would ‘improve the quality of her fans’ experience,’ despite it being ‘really difficult’ for her to ‘trust an outside entity.’
‘I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team, who care as much about my fans as I do,’ she continued.
‘It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.’
The Cardigan songstress added that there were ‘multiple reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets’ and that she’s currently ‘trying to figure out how the situation can be improved moving forward.’
‘I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,’ she said.
‘It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.’
She concluded her message with a note to those who weren’t able to get their hands on a ticket, writing, ‘All I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us all to get together and sing these songs.
‘Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.
The organization finally apologized to Swift and her fans, citing bot attacks and massive demand as the culprits.
The controversy triggered a lawsuit from fans and a furious response from Swift herself.
Fans who were successful in getting tickets also complained about the exorbitant prices, which were due to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing scheme, which raises the prize significantly when demand is high.
