After playing arenas filled with tens of thousands of people all over the world for two years on the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift made her return to the stage by surprising a bunch of fans at the sold-out Tight Ends and Friends benefit concert. It was a tiny gathering in comparison to her normal shows, and her performance of “Shake It Off” immediately went viral. Now, San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle has opened up about how this all happened.
In her first live performance since buying back her music, Swift took the stage with country singer Kane Brown to perform her 1989 hit at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville. After spending time with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, while he put on Tight End University’s summer training camp, she decided to play a small part in the fun by singing for the attendees.
Fox News:
spotted at various TEU events during the week. It also tracks that she’d get up on stage and sing a song with the other artists at the concert.
While this isn’t something she’s known to do, Swift’s love for surprises (her surprise song set and album drops prove that) and her generosity toward her fans (she was also recently visiting Swifites at a children’s hospital) make this choice make a lot of sense to me. Kittle loved it too, and so did the crowd, as the 49ers star said:
She was fantastic. For the venue that, I think, it was maybe 1,000 people, that was the loudest 1,000 people I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It was an incredible experience. I think everybody had a lot of fun just watching that one live.
I’m not shocked at all that the room absolutely exploded when Swift took the stage and explained that they chose to do this performance over some drinks that night. Any time she sings anywhere, that kind of reaction happens, but when you get to experience something like you can see below, it’d be hard not to scream as loud as humanly possible:
In the same interview, Kittle explained that they had a great turnout for this charity concert last year, and they wanted it to be even bigger this year. I’d say getting Taylor Swift to perform accomplishes that goal. However, they also got some of the biggest names in country music to get on stage too, including Kane Brown and Luke Combs:
We had a blast last year with Jelly Roll and Jon Pardi and Chase Rice. We were like, ‘All right, let’s try to do it up big again. Greg Olson convinced Luke Combs to just come and watch…And then me, Greg and my wife kind of bullied Luke into performing, like, ‘Oh, come on man. Taylor Swift said she might perform. You’re going to not perform?’ And so he went out and did a song with Jordan Davis, which was awesome.
All around, this sounded like a wickedly fun event where everyone got to “Shake It Off” with Taylor Swift and a bunch of other major musicians.
What makes it even better is that the proceeds from that night went to charity. Talk about a way to celebrate a summer training camp!