We knew we were never, ever, ever having Taylor Swift over

We knew the Philippines just can't deal with all the Swifties. But—despite work to prevent such a "snub" from happening again—some people are still keen to call foul.

When the prime minister of Thailand alleged that the government of Singapore made sure that Taylor Swift would not make a stop anywhere else in Southeast Asia for her ongoing Eras Tour, there wasn’t much of a reaction here in the Philippines. Some may have taken the news of the pop superstar not having a stop in the country—never mind that Spotify data says Quezon City is one of the top cities in the world listening to her music—but we knew why. But then, a few days later, a prominent lawmaker sought the Singaporean ambassador to explain the allegations anyway.

Joey Salceda, representative of the province of Albay, insisted that what the Little Red Dot supposedly did is not “what good neighbors do” and went as far as asking the Philippines’ foreign affairs department to officially register its opposition to the alleged move, citing how it supposedly “runs contrary to the principle of consensus-based relations and solidarity on which the [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] were founded”.

This, the hill you’re going to die on in a quest to increase your clout further on the national stage, really?

The Singaporean government did confirm that it provided a grant to AEG, the organizers of The Eras Tour, although it did not confirm any specifics, particularly whether they asked that the tour not make any other stops in Southeast Asia. And besides, if you think about it, this is the sort of thing any country would do to attract business to its borders. Perhaps the idea of governments wooing a chart-topping musician rather than a major multinational company is kinda alien to most, but it does make sense. Imagine the impact of Taylor’s six concerts—kicking off tomorrow (2 March) and running until next Saturday (9 March)—on the country’s economy. Imagine Swifties from neighboring countries spending their money on hotels and restaurants and other tourist attractions in Singapore.

I’d say the country needs it, after sluggish growth in the past year due to weak exports and inflation impacting consumption. I mean, Orchard Road was unusually empty when I went there last October. Clarke Quay was almost a ghost town. Not a great sample size, but I think it’s indicative of some issues nonetheless.

(Side note: this isn’t going to be your typical Once Monthly essay, because I am going to talk a fair bit about such un-musical topics as infrastructure development and quality of life. Blame my day job: I work for an industry association, which means I get good insights from colleagues in both the government and the private sector. This is an essay I’ve always wanted to write, so please indulge me.)

I suppose Singapore’s challenge would be whether it can accommodate roughly 330,000 fans across the week. Hotel and airfare prices shot up for Eras Tour week. (It’s why my brother and his wife, who bought tickets, ended up selling theirs—plane tickets were averaging USD 370 per person one way.) I can also imagine what this might mean for the locals. Would the concerts have a short-term negative effect on prices for them? Would the Swifties price them out?

But at least Singapore is able to host shows like this. Critically, they are able to bring thousands of fans in and out of the National Stadium—heck, in and out of the country—across the week. The country is home to what is generally recognized as one of the best airports in the world. Its public transport system is the envy of its neighbors. Sure, the National Stadium and the Philippine Arena can both accommodate 55,000 people at one time, but can you imagine going in and out of the latter after a concert? It’s bad enough that, during their visit to the country a few weeks ago, Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin couldn’t help but comment on the terrible traffic in Manila. No, he wrote a song about it. In the presence of the Philippine president. Who reportedly flew in via government chopper to watch.

The Philippines is a country of over 7,000 islands, and the concentration of economic activity, for better or worse, is in and around the capital, Manila. Throughout the decades government investment in infrastructure, particularly in public transport, has been woefully inadequate. Only in recent years was there a concerted effort to build these networks, both to alleviate congestion in the greater Manila area, as well as to promote economic development in other parts of the country. (Sorry for sounding like a kid, but: we’re finally having a subway!) And even then it’s been slower than many want, partly because some of these projects were caught up in the question of who gets to fund them, and if it’s China, whether it’s a good idea—but that’s geopolitics, that’s a wholly different discussion, and I am not diving into that.

Despite those limitations, it hasn’t stopped major international acts from touring here. Coldplay did two nights in their ongoing Music of the Spheres tour, after all. (Singapore had six, but they were in a much smaller venue.) Arena-selling pop acts, whether from the west or from Korea, have made the Philippines part of their tours, and the music festival scene here is bubbling nicely. (Last weekend saw a new indie-leaning music festival, Bobapalooza, held in the same place where Wanderland, the long-established festival, will be held next week.) The technical expertise to mount the events is there, and the appetite (at least for certain genres and acts) is certainly strong. But for Filipinos, going to these shows can be quite a chore, if only because getting to and from venues—even if they are within Metro Manila—is a challenge.

Take my experience with last year’s Mamamoo concert. It was held at the Araneta Coliseum, a 16,000-seater arena that most of you may remember as the home of the Thrilla in Manila match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. That is just north of dead center of Metro Manila, and is served by two train lines and a major bus route. Yet my friends and I planned to go there as early as ten in the morning for a concert that would start nine hours later. (Sure, there was the soundcheck party at three, too.) The trains don’t serve every part of the capital. It’s not a problem for me, who lives along EDSA, the capital’s major thoroughfare, but it is for friends who were scattered along the south, a mostly residential area where NIMBY-ism prevails.

So, you end up driving instead. Manila’s development unfortunately remains car-centric, and it serves no one. Traffic remains an issue, so imagine what time I, the designated driver of this party of four MooMoos, had to wake up, pick up friends, find parking, and get a good enough spot to wait for the gates to open. The concert ended at ten; after a really late dinner, I got home at almost two in the morning!

And this isn’t the Philippine Arena yet. This massive venue, built by the Iglesia ni Cristo, a prominent and influential religion in the country, is located in the town of Bocaue in Bulacan, north of Manila. It’s an hour’s drive away from me. This isn’t really a problem in other countries, I know, but again, our traffic is terrible, and there is no other way to get there—the area is not (yet) served by any form of rail transport. When Bruno Mars performed there last year traffic was so bad that a tweet from Eat Bulaga! host Maine Mendoza, talking about how she missed all but the last two songs of the concert, went viral. When Harry Styles performed there as part of his Love On Tour, err, tour, my brother and sister-in-law rented a van for their entire party so they could easily get in and out of the inevitable snarl along the highway that serves as the only access point to the venue. And yet the lack of other venues large enough to accommodate crowds beyond 15,000 or so people means major K-pop concerts from the likes of Twice and Blackpink are still held there.

Well, there is one more potential venue… but it’s further north, around a two-hour drive on a good day from Manila. Clark, formerly a US Air Force base in the province of Pampanga, is being fashioned as the country’s newest logistics and entertainment hub—its airport has space to grow, and a rail line is being built connecting it to Manila—and is a focal point of the thrust of previous president Rodrigo Duterte to shift growth away from Metro Manila. The New Clark City development was home to the 2019 Asian Games, and its main venue, the New Clark City Athletics Stadium, was recently the site of Enhypen’s Fate tour. But imagine the complaints and jokes from fans who find the venue too far. What more if you’re an Engene from the other islands of the Philippines?

But the funny thing about Taylor Swift “snubbing” the Philippines is that it has spurred certain parts of the government to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I heard that the group overseeing the Clark International Airport is planning to build an event venue that is, in their words, worthy of Taylor. Funny if they put it that way, but I suppose it makes sense. You have the airport, you have the hotels, you have the nightlife surrounding it—might as well build the event venue, similar to Singapore Expo near Changi. And it’s not just the Philippines doing so: other Southeast Asian countries are on it—and once again, it will be an arms race of sorts, which means, well, knowing the Philippines… we’ll have to get used to being closer to the bottom than the top. (Also, I must say, “Swiftonomics” is not a term I expected to emerge from all this.)

But in any case, we’ll have to settle with the fact that these plans will take a while to materialize. And yes, I know it’s not just about these things. Mounting shows like the Eras Tour is an expensive undertaking, and don’t get me started about how high our logistics costs is—that’s my day job, I know—and how it could deter artists from bringing very demanding shows here. Also never mind most Filipinos’ tendency to equate progress with shiny buildings rather than social safety nets. We’ll have to accept that all this work on better transport networks, especially, would benefit the next generation of fans more. Maybe Taylor and Travis Kelce would have a daughter, and maybe she would follow her mother’s footsteps and become a pop superstar, and maybe she would have her own Eras Tour, and maybe she would stop here.

That said, the thinking that we should have a Taylor Swift show because we are a special country and we deserve it? That our neighboring countries should give us one show because that’s what good neighbors do? It’s clearly political posturing—and to a segment of the population that isn’t that open to pandering, even—and yet ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it.