Pop Emergency! Taylor Swift joins The 1975 at their London O2 Arena show

The 1975 were joined on stage by Taylor Swift at their show at London's O2 Arena tonight (Thursday 12th January).

The first of two shows at the venue, Taylor made a surprise appearance as the band continue the UK leg of their 'At Their Very Best' tour. Rumours before the show also suggested Harry Styles and Phoebe Bridgers in attendance.

Taking to the stage after Matty's usual raw meat eating sesh, Taylor asked “Is it alright if I sing?”, before playing her current hit 'Anti-Hero'. She then followed it up by covering The 1975's 'The City', taken from their self-titled debut album.

Earlier on, The 1975 were joined again by Adam Hann's wife Carly Holt joined the band for only the second time to perform 'About You' - the song she appears on from 'Being Funny in a Foreign Language'.

On the US run of the tour, special guests were an occasional treat, with both Bridgers and Jack Antonoff making appearances to play through a couple of songs.

The 1975 ('Being Funny in a Foreign Language) and Taylor Swift ('Midnights') both released new albums within a week of each other last year. In an interview at KROQ's DTS Sound Space last November, Matty Healy confirmed that the band had collaborated with Taylor on some songs for her record, but that work never saw the light of day. “Yeah. We actually worked a bit on that. But then [that] version of it never came out,” he revealed." It [didn’t work out] for reasons that are not to be criticised. She’s amazing.”

Before that, internet rumours had suggested The 1975 may make an appearance on 'Midnights' itself. In response, Healy tweeted: “You guys actually thought Taylor Swift was gonna have me on her album [laughing face emojis].”

A day later (11th October), when in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, Matty expanded on the topic. “Oh no, we’re not [working together],” he said. “We’d love to… love to work with Taylor Swift. [I] love Taylor Swift… think she’s one of the best songwriters. Yeah, no… we haven’t done that. We’d love to though, wouldn’t we?”

Drummer George Daniel answered: “Yes please.”

Healy joked Taylor was “probably” watching the interview, and was “pining for a feature on a 1975 track”.

You can read our recent cover feature with The 1975 in full here. The band also told us all about their At Their Very Best tour in their own words. You can read that here. We were at Brighton for the first date of the UK run on Sunday (8th January). You can read our report here.

You can grab a copy of our The 1975 covered December 2022 / January 2023 edition below.