To say Taylor Swift is shaking up the music industry is no metaphor. Last weekend, fans at her Edinburgh Eras Tour concerts danced so much that the British Geological Survey recorded seismic activity.
That’s right. And Friday’s 73,000-person crowd shook the earth the most, with monitoring stations detecting activity from 6km (3.73 miles) away.
Her most seismic hits at Murrayfield Stadium, the BGS revealed, were “Shake It Off” (naturally), “…Ready For It” and “Cruel Summer.”
It was the first of 17 dates in the U.K. for the global superstar whose Eras Tour is projected to boost the country’s economy by 997 million pounds ($1.2bn).
Almost 1.2 million fans are estimated to attend the U.K. tour dates with an average of 848 pounds ($1,085) spent on each ticket.
It will finish with a record-breaking eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium as Swift continues her 152-show tour.
Peter Brooks, a behavioral scientist who was recently featured in a “Swiftonomics” report produced by British bank Barclays, likened Swift’s impact to the fan crazes associated with Elvis and The Beatles: “Whoever came up with the phrase ‘money can’t buy happiness’ clearly wasn’t a Swiftie. There’s growing evidence that spending on experiences boosts happiness and well-being more so than purchasing physical items, especially if that experience is shared with friends and loved ones,” Brooks said.
This follows Swift fans during the first two nights of the Seattle stops on her Eras Tour also causing seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, which was dubbed “Swift Quake.”