Taylor Swift wowed the Scottish crowd on her first UK tour date Friday evening, earning five-star reviews across the board for her three-and-a-half-hour performance in Edinburgh.
But the star had to break off during a song towards the end of the night, first to draw attention to a fan in the crowd who needed medical help, and then to recover from a temporary injury herself.
The BBC reports that, during the ninth segment of the long show, Swift began to play the guitar for her mash-up of the songs Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve and I Know Places but stopped when she spotted a suffering fan. While she waited, Swift’s hand succumbed to the cold Scottish weather, and she told the crowd:
“Oh God! Hand cramp!”
“I’m so sorry everyone, this has never happened before but my hand is frozen, I’m just going to warm it. I’m so embarrassed. My hand’s like a claw!”
After massaging her hand for a few moments, Swift was able to continue, and the temporary blip did nothing to dampen the delight of 73,000 fans packed into the Murrayfield sports stadium in the Scottish capital city for the first date of the UK leg of Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour.
Swift told the crowd: “I had someone pull me aside and say, ‘Hey, we’ve checked this 20 times and we swear… tonight’s concert is the most highly attended stadium show in Scottish history.’”
And she delighted the Scottish fans telling them the country had inspired her lockdown albums Folklore and Evermore, saying:
“There was so much TV, so much white wine, covered in cat hair. That was my reality. So I thought, ‘I’m going to create an imaginary world and escape into it.’
“That was Folklore, and it was probably based online of videos I’ve seen of Scotland.”