What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Singapore: Taylor Swift has been taking a well-earned breather the last couple of days after knocking over the first block of her six sold-out Singapore shows. Alas, there have been no public sightings. Presumably, she is hunkered down in her hotel suite getting over a little cough that has sent local Swifties into a fretful TikTok tizz that Tay Tay is burning herself out.
The parallel Swift story, however, which surely no foreign affairs think-tanker marked on their 2024 geopolitical calendar, has been rolling without a break. Singapore, it seems, has peeved some of its neighbours (notably Thailand and the Philippines) by paying the megastar’s team for exclusive regional concert rights.
This has meant no Swift for Bangkok or Manila – or anywhere in South-East Asia, bar the rich and evidently crafty city state at the end of the Malay peninsula.
Accordingly, Swifties have come from everywhere to spend their hard-saved cash on Singapore’s extraordinary food scene and expensive hotels. I happened to be on a flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday morning, when it quickly became evident the plane was filled with homeward-bound concertgoers from Swift’s first three-hour show the previous night.
Her hits clamoured from tinny mobile phone speakers as passengers re-watched their concert footage with girlfriends and partners. By the time we’d reached cruising height, most of the tuckered out Swifties were asleep, including my Filipino row-mate Sean. When he woke up, I asked him if it was frustrating to have to travel so far and spend so much (undisclosed) money in Singapore. “Oh, quite so,” he said. “And now all the South-East Asian countries are arguing about it.”
Singapore is reported to have paid Taylor Swift at least $US3 million to ensure she did not perform anywhere else in South-East Asia. Credit: Jason South
In a business forum speech last month, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin saw fit to reveal he had inside information that the pesky Singaporeans were paying Swift up to $US3 million ($4.6 million) per show to keep her for themselves. (Singapore has denied this figure, and there is speculation that amount was the entire exclusivity fee, rather than for each show. Either way, it’s a secret.)
Philippines MP Joey Salceda followed up by calling on his nation’s foreign service to issue Singapore a please explain. The great Singaporean swifty was counter to the “consensus-based relations and solidarity on which the ASEAN was founded”, he said. “Our countries are good friends. That’s why actions like that hurt.”
How Singapore pulled a swiftie and started a cultural arms race
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07.03.2024
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Singapore: Taylor Swift has been taking a well-earned breather the last couple of days after knocking over the first block of her six sold-out Singapore shows. Alas, there have been no public sightings. Presumably, she is hunkered down in her hotel suite getting over a little cough that has sent local Swifties into a fretful TikTok tizz that Tay Tay is burning herself out.
The parallel Swift story, however, which surely no foreign affairs think-tanker marked on their 2024........
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