Superstar Taylor Swift broke her weeks-long silence over the cancellation of three Austrian concerts due to a terrorist threat, saying on social media that she was “showing restraint.”
The 34-year-old, whose “The Tortured Poets Department” was Billboard’s 2024 midyear top-selling album, wrote on Instagram that she was “waiting to express [herself] at a time when it’s right to.”
“My priority was finishing our European tour safely,” Swift wrote Wednesday, “and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.”
Swift had been quiet about the cancellations until Wednesday’s statement, fueling questions and criticism from some fans over her non-response.
Swift was scheduled to perform Aug. 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 fans for each concert, with a potential 30,000 more outside.
Show organizer Barracuda Music announced on its website that Swift’s three sold-out shows were canceled as a precaution. Barracuda said it confirmed with government officials “a planned terrorist attack” at the venue.
“We have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety,” the organizer noted.
“Having our Vienna shows canceled was devastating,” Swift wrote. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows. But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”
Three men have been arrested, including a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots and an 18-year-old Iraqi.
The main Austrian suspect had allegedly pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group online shortly before the planned attack, authorities said.
He was “clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill ‘infidels,’” Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the Austrian Directorate General for 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 died in a knife attack during a Swift-themed dance class. A 17-year-old boy was arrested; prosecutors did not disclose a motive.
“These were just little kids at a dance class,” Swift wrote in a statement on Instagram. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”
Swift wrapped up her European Eras Tour on Saturday at London’s Wembley Stadium. The tour began in Paris on May 9.
“I was heartened by the love and unity I saw in the fans who banded together,” she wrote. “I decided that all of my energy had to go toward helping to protect the nearly half a million people I had coming to see the shows in London.”