Taylor Swift tremors no big shakes for a bit of Madness

It was all going on when Taylor Swift was performing with her The Era’s Tour in Los Angeles at the SoFi stadium in August 2023. As the crowd responded to the atmosphere and her performance their dancing and moves were noticed way beyond the stadium. They were spotted by Caltech and UCLA researchers monitoring seismic movement. 

The 70,000-strong crowd of Swifties’ movements, especially in several of Swift's big numbers, were triggering reports on the equipment used to track and monitor earthquakes. The scientists were looking out for this after seeing a similar effect after Swift played at Lumen Field in Seattle in July. So they set up extra monitoring equipment and sensors in LA last August.

The biggest movement was detected from the point when Swift sang “Shake It Off”, registering a magnitude of 0.851 in the local area around the stadium. Four of her other songs registered between 0.645 and 0.849. The researchers reckoned they could detect an impact from 43 of the 45 songs Swift performed. Everyone’s allowed a real, slow couple of songs, aren't they? 

Call that a tremor Taylor Swift? 

Over in the UK though there’s perhaps a band and their fans asking what all the fuss is about. Earth tremors with a magnitude just under 1 at a concert in LA? That's a hold-my-beer moment for Madness fans. 

On August 8 and 9, 1992, UK band Madness were performing at their own festival Madstock at Finsbury Park, London. On each night tremors were reported by local residents Three nearby apartment blocks with reports of cracked windows and broken balconies had to be evacuated for safety reasons.

Lead singer Suggs, as reported by Metro, linked it to one specific song. “Anyway, 35,000 people turned up and when we started “One Step Beyond” they started jumping up and down in unison. And as it said there they had to evacuate flats. Then it happened the exact same time the following night [when we played]. So yeah, Madness caused an earthquake, which is something to go on the CV.“

The British Geological Society attributes the tremors to the Madness concert. But as measurement devices were over 30km away they didn't record the exact levels. Some other estimates reckoned it could have been up to 4 on the Richter Scale, which is pretty earth-shaking for the UK anyway. 

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