How to keep Taylor Swift safe: ‘Anywhere she goes is a security issue’

Taylor Swift has endured multiple stalkers and crazed fans over the years. Photo / Getty Images

The plot to kill concertgoers at the Vienna leg of her tour shows her status as one of the world’s biggest stars also makes her a target.

In 2010, I found myself at the sharp end of Taylor Swift’s security detail. The teen magazine I worked for at the time had sent me to interview her and we had spent the week in London together.

She hadn’t yet become a household name in the UK and her entourage seemed to consist of just her mother, her manager, a publicist and an assistant. I was invited to the aftershow party following her gig at the O2 but, as the crowd thinned out, a burly man with a headpiece asked me to leave. “Friends and family only,” he told me, as he manhandled me out the door.

In the 14 years since, Taylor’s star has risen substantially and her security detail has beefed up, too. In fact, Swift’s security operations would now match that of any member of the British royal family or American President. I probably wouldn’t even be allowed through the door.

This week, Swift was forced to cancel three planned performances in Vienna after Austrian police disclosed a plot to “kill as many people as possible outside the concert venue”. Two people have since been arrested on suspicion of planning the attacks. It comes just a fortnight after three girls were killed at a Swift-themed holiday dance club in Southport, north-west England.

Taylor Swift’s fame and fortune – 14 Grammys, a record-breaking tour, the first musician to reach billionaire status solely from her music – make her a possible target for anyone from ambitious criminals to deranged extremists. She has endured multiple stalkers and crazed fans over the years and her security has resorted to controversial methods to keep her safe.

In 2018, Swift reportedly used facial recognition software at her concerts to stop known stalkers or harassers from entering any venues. In February, the singer brought down the full heft of her mighty legal team upon Jack Sweeney, a 21-year-old student who tracks emissions from celebrity private jets and shares details of them on social media, claiming it constituted “stalking and harassing behaviour”.

A 19-year-old Austrian citizen, identified as Beran A, confessed to planning to drive a car into a crowd of ticketless Taylor Swift fans outside the arena in Vienna and attack them with machetes. Photo / Vienna Police Department

Things have certainly become more hi-tech than they were in 2017, when there were rumours 12 security guards had smuggled Swift out of her New York apartment in a large suitcase, although a video captured on her Eras tour disclosed she hides in a broom cart to get to the stage unseen.

Last month, a video made by a fan at a concert in Zurich went viral on TikTok after it appeared to show her security guard following her every move across the stage without looking away from the crowd, suggesting he either has her choreography memorised or was being fed information on her moves via an earpiece.

Another clip of her tour caused a stir in 2023, when Taylor waved to fans while her eager bodyguard wildly scanned the crowd for threats. “Give this man a raise!” and “He is ELITE” were just a couple of the comments. That particular security guard has reportedly since left the US to join the Israel Defence Forces. Many close protection officers (CPOs), as bodyguards are known in the industry, will have prior law enforcement or military backgrounds.

“Obviously, anywhere she goes is a security issue,” says Clark Hunt, the chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs, which – if you’re not a Swiftie – is the American football team Taylor’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for. “It’s something that we’ve helped her security team handle when she comes to the games in Kansas City. She has a really talented security team.”

For reasons that are unclear, Swift's security is more relaxed when she’s with Travis Kelce, her NFL star boyfriend. Photo / Getty Images

Videos of the singer clubbing with Kelce and friends at the Super Bowl victory party disclosed that any time anyone even walked past her, one of her private security guards – dressed casually except for the telltale earpiece – stepped in between Swift and the stranger.

Even Kelce himself has praised Swift’s bodyguards for their dedication. “They’re great, they’re good people,” he said, after a video of him appearing to push her bodyguard out of the way as he ushered her into a car caught people’s attention. “I didn’t push them. I placed my hand on the gentleman’s back to let him know I was behind him. If I would have pushed him he probably would have turned around and tasered me,” Kelce joked.

But, clearly, keeping Swift safe is a serious business. When she landed in Cardiff this June for a show, her convoy of black-windowed cars was reportedly given a police escort to the Principality Stadium gig.

The Metropolitan Police’s Special Escort Group typically provides security only to the royal family, Cabinet ministers and “visiting dignitaries”. If the fan who spotted the police flanking Swift’s convoy was correct, then it would appear that she is afforded a higher level of protection in Britain than any other civilian.

Occasionally, Swift's security team are so overzealous that even the singer herself has to ask them to stand down. Photo / Getty Images

Of course, Swift isn’t the first superstar to enlist protection services, but the industry has become more sophisticated in the past couple of years. An experienced CPO will set you back anything from about £800 ($1700) a day, or £80,000 ($170,000) a year.

The exact number Swift has remains undisclosed, but insiders suggest during her Eras tour, she has 83 full-time CPOs, including four personal guards at all times – known in the trade as the “Quartet Formation” – and an extra 140 individuals around the venues whenever she needs access. It’s not quite the “Star of David” formation of six bodyguards at all times – the kind of high-level protection afforded to monarchs and presidents – but it’s close enough.

Swift’s security team is also responsible for her safety at home and when she goes out to public places such as clubs or restaurants. They visit premises in advance, and conduct research on every employee she might come into contact with. They are trained never to get in the way, but to stay close enough to step in if need be. And as we all know from the film The Bodyguard, it can be an intimate role.

Occasionally, Swift’s security team are so overzealous that even the singer herself has to ask them to stand down. In 2023, Taylor interrupted a show in Philadelphia mid-song and seemed to tell a security guard off for holding back a fan. “Hey, stop, she wasn’t doing anything,” Swift yelled.

But however officious Swift’s security team are, it appears they can relax a little bit when Kelce is around. A video of the pair at a gala dinner recently did the rounds, and when Kelce came back from the bathroom and put his arm around her, Swift’s CPO appeared to slump a little and get out his phone for a quick scroll.

“Whenever I’m on a date, I’m protective, yeah, sure,” Kelce said. “You always have that kind of feeling, that self-awareness, I guess… You’ve just gotta know where the exits are.”