The Real Reason Taylor Swift Won’t Tour As Usual With ‘Lover’

Instead of touring for the better part of a year, Taylor Swift announced plans for Lover Fest, a 16-date event with just 4 U.S. dates. It turns out that this is for more than one reason. The singer revealed she wants to stay close to home.

“I also wanted to be able to work as much as I can handle right now, with everything that’s going on at home,” she told Variety.

Swift is referring to her mother’s cancer. “That’s the reason,” she said. “I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on.”

Andrea Swift, 62, was first revealed to be fighting breast cancer in 2015. Her cancer returned while Swift was being filmed for the upcoming Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.” Swift revealed that a brain tumor was found in her mother while she was undergoing chemotherapy. “So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family,” she said.

Swift called her mother “the guiding force” and noted that she didn’t take the decision to open up about her health lightly.

The 30-year-old previously hinted that her mother’s health was the reason that she didn’t want to go on a nine-month tour. “I’ve got some pretty intense things happening with my family right now. I can’t go on a long tour that I can’t go home to my family for,” she told Apple Music last year.

She is playing 16 dates for Lover Fest. There will be two dates in California at SoFi Stadium and two dates in Massachusetts at Gillette Stadium. She’ll play 10 dates in Europe, including a headlining set at London’s Glastonbury Festival, and two dates in Brazil.

Admittedly, her mother isn’t the only reason she is doing the festivals. “I wanted to be able to perform in places that I hadn’t performed in as much, and to do things I hadn’t done before, like Glastonbury,” she told Variety. “I feel like I haven’t done festivals, really, since early in my career — they’re fun and bring people together in a really cool way.”