After Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” stop in Vienna was canceled due to a thwarted terrorist plot this month, Coldplay and Maggie Rogers paid tribute to the scrapped show with a cover of Swift’s “Love Story.”
Coldplay are in the midst of their long-running “Music of the Spheres Tour” across Europe, and they brought along Maggie Rogers to open for them. They began their first of three scheduled concerts at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadion as usual, but upon playing A Head Full of Dreams cut “Everglow” on their “B-stage,” Coldplay’s Chris Martin brought Maggie Rogers back out for a special cover.
“This is something we never do, but we have to do it today,” Martin told the crowd. “Of course, we haven’t mentioned that Vienna was in the news all over the world for all the wrong reasons. But what reached us was the beauty and the togetherness and the kindness of all of Taylor Swift’s fans.”
Martin even invited some Taylor fans onstage to sing with them, asking the crowd to “find the biggest Swiftie you know.” After “testing” the fans’ Taylor Swift knowledge, Martin told the audience “We sing this song with so much love for Taylor, with so much love for Swifties, and we sing this song for young people who are brainwashed into doing stupid shit, and we send them our love too.”
Martin and Rogers then ran through their cover of “Love Story,” backed up by the stadium’s massive crowd and the two Swifties brought up on stage. “If this is not good, please, please don’t put it on YouTube because I don’t want to get in trouble with Taylor,” Martin said. “If you can sing with us that would be wonderful. This is a wonderful song.” It must have been good in the moment, since there’s a great YouTube video of the entire tribute and performance that you can watch below.
Taylor Swift also broke her silence yesterday about the foiled terror plot, writing in a lengthy Instagram post that canceling the shows was “devastating.” “Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows. In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to.” Her European tour may have finally completed, but she does have a few more North American dates left on her “Eras Tour.” Get tickets here.
Coldplay, meanwhile, are gearing up to release their 10th album, Moon Music, which arrives on October 4th. They’ve shared the single “feelslikeimfallinginlove” so far, and will reveal the album’s second single, “WE PRAY featuring Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna, and TINI” on Friday, August 23rd.
Their “Music of the Spheres Tour” — which recently garnered the title of the highest-grossing rock tour of all time — is nearly done, but they do have a handful of Australia and New Zealand dates left for later this year. Get tickets on viagogo.