Swifties Set Off Earthquake Monitors In Edinburgh

There’s been a debate flying around the news scene recently questioning whether Taylor Swift really is the biggest pop star of all time. Well, how’s this record for her roster? Last week, Edinburgh Swifties partied so hard at the superstar’s three Murrayfield concerts that the British Geological Survey (BGS) noticed earthquake-like tremors up to six kilometres away.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Extended Version) © 2023 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Causes Edinburgh Earthquakes

Swift performed in the Scottish capital on Friday 7, Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 June, and tremors were felt during all three shows, but most strongly on Friday, when Swifties shifted the ground by 23.4 nanometers. On all three nights, tremors were at their strongest during Swift’s Reputation track, ‘Ready for It?’, with fans reportedly transmitting enough power to charge 6,000 car batteries. Now, if only we could actually harness that energy, solving the climate crisis might just be within grasp…

With a concert capacity around 73,000 people, other favoured songs included ‘Cruel Summer’, ‘Shake It Off’ and, perhaps most surprisingly, Swift’s ballad ‘Champagne Problems’.

‘Clearly Scotland’s reputation for providing some of the most enthusiastic audiences remains intact,’ commented BGS seismologist Callum Harrison. ‘It’s amazing that we’ve been able to measure the reaction of thousands of concert goers remotely through our data.’

This is not new for Swift, whose Seattle 2023 concert holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Greatest seismic activity caused by a music concert’, causing the equivalent to a 2.3-magnitude earthquake thanks to 72,171 enthusiastic fans. Although the Edinburgh concerts did cause a shake detected by BGS monitors, it’s unlikely lay people would have felt them.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Extended Version) © 2023 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The news follows reports that the UK leg of Swift’s Eras Tour could boost the economy by a whopping £1 billion. Amusingly, during recent General Election campaigning, politicians have scrambled to confirm their favour for Swift, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in particular describing himself to The Independent as a ‘proud Swiftie’, expressing his excitement over welcoming Taylor to London in August.

Heading south from Edinburgh, Swift is currently in Liverpool – aka, Taylor Town – for three nights, a city that has been preparing for the pop titan’s arrival for months by transforming the city into a Swiftie haven. Next, she will perform in Cardiff for one night only before travelling to London’s Wembley Stadium for three nights. Then it’s over to Dublin, Amsterdam, Zürich, Milan, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Munich, Warsaw and Vienna before she returns to London for five more nights to wrap up the European leg of the Eras Tour. With a concert capacity over 90,000, more tremors might well lay in our future.