Taylor Swift not only sings about “Bad Blood,” she’s ready for a bloodbath.
The pop star says in a new column that her “biggest fear” was suffering a violent attack similar to the Manchester or Las Vegas concert massacres and that even when she’s not on stage, she carries military-style bandages anywhere she goes, just to be safe.
“My fear of violence has continued into my personal life,” she writes in Elle magazine’s April issue. “I carry QuikClot army grade bandage dressing, which is for gunshot or stab wounds.”
She doesn’t say if she also carries an actual gun to prevent getting shot in the first place, but she is known to be surrounded by burly bodyguards.
Swift did say, though, that before her 2018 “Reputation” concert tour, which played in places the size of NFL stadiums, she worried that her crowds might be targeted.
“After the Manchester Arena bombing and the Vegas concert shooting, I was completely terrified to go on tour this time because I didn’t know how we were going to keep 3 million fans safe over seven months. There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put into keeping my fans safe,” she wrote.
“We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.”
In May 2017 in Manchester, England, 22 people, many of them young fans, were killed in a terrorist bomb attack after an Ariana Grande show. Five months later in Las Vegas, a lone gunman firing from a Mandalay Bay hotel window slaughtered 58 at an outdoor country music festival.
In her column, which includes 30 pieces of advice based on the wisdom the singer has accumulated before her 30th birthday, Swift also weighs in on the #metoo movement.
The former teen star in August 2017 successfully sued a Denver-based radio DJ for groping her in 2013.
“I believe the victim. Coming forward is an agonizing thing to go through. I know because my sexual assault trial was a demoralizing, awful experience.”
She also said she waited to speak out on politics until the 2018 midterms because she didn’t believe she had enough knowledge of government before.
Swift endorsed two Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee, prompting President Donald Trump to announce he liked her music “about 25% less.”