Taylor Swift admits hiding in cleaning carts was a 'weird idea'

USA Today

2 days ago

Taylor Swift is finally opening up about a year-old open secret that was born out of "a weird little side of me."
In her debut appearance on the "New Heights" podcast on Aug. 13, Jason Kelce asked the popstar whose idea it was to roll into the backstage area of the Eras Tour via a cleaning cart that emerged from the bowels of a stadium.
"Mine. That's my type of weird idea," she told Jason and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
She went on to explain her reasoning for this not-so-covert mode of transportation, which never failed to evoke screams from fans with a side-stage view. "When you're putting on a first show of a tour like that, you're not just performing for an entire stadium; you're performing for the entire internet. And so I wanted to curate and really romanticize the images they were seeing first," Swift said.
"I didn't want them to see my first outfit and my first look, which would have given away what the first era was before – when I'm walking up the ramp behind the stage, there's all these fans seated behind the stage at certain angles; they would have been able to film it," she continued. "I didn't want that to be the first thing people saw from the Eras Tour."
Though every one of her 149 shows across the globe was livestreamed by dedicated fans, Swift – the consummate "showgirl" – was still dedicated to making an entrance.
Not Taylor Swift popping out of the janitor cart during the #arlingtontserastour @taylorswift @taylornation #tstheerastour #eras #taylorswift #janitorsoftiktok
"I wanted it to be the huge 'Lover' motif, and they are surprised and delighted by the fact that 'Lover' is the first era we're doing," she said. "And it's the first time they're seeing that Versace bodysuit all lit up. … Once the lights hit that thing – oh I love that outfit so much – and so it was really about preserving the sanctity of a surprise moment."
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And apparently, the cleaning cart was supposed to be a onetime bit.
"I kinda thought I might only do it for night one, and then I just got attached to it. I was like, I find this fun," Swift said. "There's a weird little side of me that likes sneaking around."
As Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's Taylor Swift reporter, described in his first-person account at a Portugal concert in July 2024: "At the end of the dancer and instrumentalist line-up is a cleaning cart pushed by a few production members. The cart rolls all the way to a set of black stairs only visible to those in restricted view seats. One worker opens a door, and you can see Swift exit in her "Lover" bodysuit and Louboutin heels."