You probably know that Taylor Swift is currently travelling around the world on her Reputation Stadium Tour, and this past weekend she made her first stop in the UK with two shows in Manchester.
Throughout the tour, Taylor has been making speeches about her life and her year-long break from the public eye, and just last week she gave a moving speech about Pride Month and the LGBT community.
And at her Manchester show on Friday, Taylor took the opportunity to pay tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack at Ariana Grande's concert in the city last year.
"Whenever I think about Manchester – and it's always been this way – I think of how absolutely passionate and exuberant you are about music," she said. "Concerts are supposed to be about innocence, about joy, and about excitement, and about escaping from things that stress us out."
tonight at her manchester concert @taylorswift13 made a beautiful speech in tribute to the victims of the attack at @arianagrande’s show last year https://t.co/Vbu7GXcTkb
She went on to praise the city's resilience, and said it was "an honour" to play a show in Manchester.
What happened just over a year ago in this city was an attempt to steal that innocence and steal that joy, steal that excitement, steal that escape. Ever since then you've shown such strength and such exuberance. You've shown that you care. You've shown that you're never going to let anyone forget about those victims, and you've shown that you have such incredible resilience to keep dancing and to keep the innocence and to keep the joy and to keep the excitement. I just wanted to say, Manchester, it is such an honour to play for you tonight.
Camila Cabello – who is one of the support acts on the Reputation Tour – also posted a tribute on her Instagram.
"I've met so many beautiful people today who've told me this is their first show since that day," Camila wrote.
Fans were touched by Taylor's speech, with many saying it meant a lot to them and brought them to tears.
i cried my eyes out at this, i love her so much for doing this i love her i love her i love her my favourite person in the world 💗💗💗 https://t.co/LlcyHXAgqP
i loved taylor’s speech about manchester and i literally sobbed the whole way through 💖
taylors speech dedicated to the manchester victims on friday meant so much to me. i’ve been thinking i’d be so anxious to be at such big stadium shows after what happened last year, but i really felt nothing but happiness and i couldn’t stop SMILING i’m so happy
And some people said it completely changed their perspective of "Dancing With Our Hands Tied".
also i just want to say taylor’s manchester speech before dancing with our hands tied changed my perspective entirely on that song. it was really incredible of her to dedicate it to the manchester attack & i cried so much at her speech 💔❤️
taylor’s speech about Manchester was beautiful i will never listen to dancing with our hands tied the same again
💖🐝
