Taylor Swift: Quake it off

Taylor Swift’s hit Love Story shook the ground more than any other tune during her first three nights at Wembley, followed closely by Shake it Off, according to seismologists who set up monitors at the stadium.

Love Story on the opening Friday 21 June concert produced the strongest ground shaking – around the equivalent to a harmless earthquake of magnitude 0.8.

Reaction to Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s surprise appearance on stage on the Sunday also registered strongly on the seismometers.

Look What You Made Me Do, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart and Karma were also big ground shakers, according to scientists from University College London.

Taylor Swift’s first UK dates in Edinburgh registered seismic activity from 6km (3.73 miles) at monitoring stations.

For the first three nights of the Wembley dates, the venue invited the seismology team from UCL’s Department of Earth Sciences to set up nine measuring devices around the stadium.

Fans’ dancing has the biggest earth-shaking impact. But the scientists said the ground moved in different ways depending on the song, possibly reflecting different dance moves.

Love Story led to strong up-and-down movement, while Shake It Off led to strong side-to-side movement, the scientists said.

“Being a Swiftie since I was 13, I never thought my job … and Taylor Swift would collide together,” said PhD student Paul Burke, one of the researchers.

He said he hoped the studies showed that being a scientist didn’t mean you were confined to a lab.