Postponed due to extreme temperatures, Swift shares that “the safety and wellbeing of [her] fans, and crew will always come first.”
The Brazilian leg of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour has coincided with a record-breaking Rio de Janeiro heatwave, leaving her first tour of the country since 2012 fraught with distress.
Temperatures reached as high as forty degrees celsius on Friday night, prompting the U.S. pop-star to temporarily halt the concert to address fans’ pleas for water, bottles of which the venue had forbidden them from taking in.
Of the sixty thousand attendees, firefighters report that over a thousand fainted during the three-hour concert.
23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides flew from regional Brazil to see Swift in concert, ecstatically chronicling the bucket-list journey via WhatsApp for her family back home. After queuing for eight hours outside Nilton Santos Stadium, Benevides collapsed two songs into the set-list and later died in hospital.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Justice Minister Flávio Dino declared that “the Consumer Secretariat of the Ministry of Justice will adopt immediate measures” regarding “access to water at shows and other public events”; “It is unacceptable for people to suffer, faint, and even die due to a lack of access to water.”
Footage of Swift herself struggling to breathe at the same concert has been circulating online. The fan-recorded clip was taken after she performed “Bejeweled”, one of the last tracks of the night, and shows the singer damp with sweat and scrabbling for air in short gasps. The heat suffocating the city was doubtlessly exacerbated by stage lights and exigent choreography.
The concert meant to take place the following night was postponed due to extreme temperatures, with Swift saying via Instagram that “the safety and wellbeing of [her] fans, fellow performers and crew has to, and always will, come first.”
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Taylor Swift will be playing seven shows in Australia as part of The Eras Tour, playing four shows in Sydney and three in Melbourne from February 16 to February 26 2024, supported by Sabrina Carpenter.
Words By Harriosn Jones
