News from London: Taylor Swift in Town – By Hemantha Yapa Abeywardena
Taylor Swift, the American megastar and the singing sensation, is currently on tour in the United Kingdom and understandably, her fans have gone wild – millions of them.
Miss Swift’s fans, known as Swifties, are desperate to see her live and willing to pay exorbitant prices for front-row seats, just like fans, who crave the best view in boxing, pay for ringside seats.
Judging by the unravelling phenomenon wherever she sets her foot in, ‘Swifties’ may well be in the Oxford Dictionary in due course as a noun, exactly the way ‘google’ took a spot – at first as a noun and then, a verb in that order; the exponential growth of the fanbase across the globe can only make it much quicker, if not swifter.
In Edinburgh, she performed to packed audiences last week that was reported as earth-shattering; some say it was strong enough to cause even a mini-earthquake, recording a measurable movement on the Richter Scale. Concert events of this kind do cause seismic vibrations, thanks to rhythmic stamping on the mother Earth and evidence is well documented – not to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Some fans of Miss Swift go beyond the usual ecstatic state in the concerts and that raises the prospect of medical emergencies; in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, it was no exception.
Ms Swift, in those not-so-rare moments, pauses and time and again, has been proving that patience is a virtue, indeed; she waits until the dust settles down and carries on performing until, say, the next fan faints or the show comes to its logical end.
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Miss Swift’s favourite attire has been just a pair of knickers below her hips and a loose garment as the top. The form of dress – perhaps the most efficient form of getting rid of heat energy that she undoubtedly generates due to heavy dancing – however, does not draw on criticism even from the conservative-minded in Britain, because she is not an attention seeker for the wrong places of her mortal anatomy; she, on the contrary, solely focuses on her singing and the corresponding dancing that perfectly matches the former. That means she hardly arouses controversy in the domains outside her singing career.
Miss Swift’s chosen dress code is a far cry from that of another celebrity wife that grabbed headlines in Italy recently.
The model in question is known for her jaw-dropping – and eye-popping – dresses that leave very little to imagination, while on holiday in the staunchly Catholic stronghold; for instance, she was in an Italian restaurant the other day, wearing a transparent dress without an underwear and the traditional customers, according to some eyewitness accounts, who usually drink soda for complementing meals, started drinking whisky, having spotted her in a corner with her husband – perhaps as a form of shock-absorption therapy.
Ms Swift, by contrast, is not into erotic, lewd exhibitionism. She is a real singer who has morphed into a megastar from being a country singer in the US. She is very good at it, indeed.
With a phenomenal fanbase that could be billions worldwide, she is the best influencer at present in the world. In this context, if a politician, in the US or anywhere else in the world, is lucky enough to get her onto a stage, it will be a short-cut to a certain victory. I doubt Ms Swift will ever go down that lane, though.
Having broken up with her British boyfriend about a year ago, Ms Swift explicitly showed signs of a heartbreaking experience. In order to get out of the vacuum left behind by the former, she soon fell in love with the US NFL star, Travis Kelce’s; she has been madly in love with the player ever since and her fans hope – and pray – he will proportionately reciprocate the sentiment without breaking her heart again.
Miss Swift, despite her busy schedule, is head over heels in love with him. Mr Kelce joins her in a few days during the UK leg of her tour.
They have booked £3250-a-night farmhouse in Oxfordshire for their stay; the choice, instead of star hotels, shows Miss Swift wants to rekindle her romance with the man she loves on fairly regular basis, without going through yet another heartbreaking experience.
Still In her mid-30s, she has a whole life ahead of her to pursue the chosen career and her rivals, if any, will have to wait years, if not decades, for her to fade into oblivion, of course, if they see a rival in her.
The phenomenal success that Miss Swift achieved in a relatively short period of time shows that the spark of the American creativity and entrepreneurship is well and truly alive for the rest of the world to emulate, if willing.
