Flashback: Taylor Swift Dresses Like Kiss to Crash Keith Urban’s Show
Halloween only rolls around once a year, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other occasions — say, a sold-out show in Kansas City, Missouri, during your band’s final performance on Keith Urban’s Escape Together World Tour — worthy of dressing up in costume and letting your freak flag fly. That’s what Taylor Swift did on August 8, 2009, when the singer and three members of her road band stormed the stage during Urban’s headlining set, decked out in classic Kiss garb.
Sporting face paint, platform boots, black wigs and spandex pants, the Kiss clones chose their entrance wisely: during the first chorus of Urban’s then-current single, “Kiss a Girl,” which had climbed its way up the pop and country charts earlier that summer. They stayed onstage for the remainder of the song, taking super-sized strums on their instruments and even lining up beside Urban for some synchronized dance moves. To emphasize the whole “kiss” theme, they also recruited two backup singers to hit the stage dressed up as super-sized Hersey Kisses.
Urban more or less held it together throughout the performance, despite being flanked (and dwarfed) by four towering, tongue-waggling “knights in Satan’s service.” He even traded a few lyrics with Swift, who had paused her own Fearless Tour — a headlining trek that stretched from April 2009 to July 2010 — to join Urban’s crew on the road for a handful of summertime shows. Swift never served as the opening act for another major tour again, and as the performance of “Kiss a Girl” winds to a close in the video below, it’s easy to see her hunger for the spotlight. She yanks off her wig as soon as the final chord rings out — just to make sure everyone realizes that the girl who looks exactly like Taylor Swift in Ace Frehley’s Spaceman makeup is, in fact, Taylor Swift in Ace Frehley’s Spaceman makeup — and lingers onstage while her bandmates exit, unwilling to join them until she speaks to the audience one final time.
“We’d like to thank Keith Urban for a great tour!” she shouts into the mic before blowing a kiss to the audience and walking into the wings, looking like she owns the place. Although the fan-shot video ends there, Swift actually returned to the stage again that night, joining Urban’s band for a set-closing performance of “Somebody Like You.” You can take Taylor off the stage, but you can’t take the… well, actually, no, you really can’t take Taylor offstage, can you?