Whether by happenstance or fate, Griff and Taylor Swift crossed paths at a Kendrick Lamar concert in November 2022 and the interaction led to the British singer-songwriter opening for Swift on the Eras Tour.
“It was a bit coincidental because she just announced the supports for America,” Griff says over the phone. “It was literally the next week I went to a Kendrick Lamar set with my brothers. I was sitting in a box, and I looked to my left. She happened to be in the box next to me, and so I kind of waved, and then we ended up talking.”
Swift mentioned she’d love to bring the 23-year-old out on tour.
“It was very, very surreal,” Griff says about being asked to perform in London on the Eras Tour. Performing in front of 89,000 screaming Wembley fans is an experience few will ever know. “Everyone was texting me. My phone was blowing up. … It was amazing, and it was really cool to do it in my hometown as well.”
More:Taylor Swift adds three opening acts to her summer Eras Tour concerts in London
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Sarah Faith Griffiths, who goes by Griff, grew up northwest of London in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. Shortly after releasing her song “Mirror Talk” with Warner Records in 2019, the Chinese-Jamaican singer told MTV the first music she listened to by choice was Swift’s album “Fearless.” In 2021, she won the Brit Award for Rising Star. Before the Eras Tour show on June 22, Griff opened for Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran.
Five years after her first single, Griff feels like she’s only just beginning. On Friday, she released her album “Vertigo,” which delivers the pain of young love breakup wrapped in 14 euphoric pop tracks.
“Vertigo” is a imagery filled experience of dagger-to-the-heart lyrics with catchy dance hooks, begging the questions: Do you dance? Do you cry? Do you dance while crying?
When asked, “Who hurt you?” Griff laughs.
“Everyone’s like, ‘You OK girl?'” she says. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m good, I’m good.'”
The background of “Vertigo” includes heart monitor beeps and breath catches akin to a dance remix of Swift’s “You’re Losing Me.”
“I think I spent a lot more time on like the productions and the lyrics on this album,” Griff says before specifically talking about the title track. “I think it kind of sums up the whole feeling of the album, like it’s heartbroken and it’s desperate, but it does like climax into that like vertigo-ish bridge where there’s so many arcs and synths. It gets super dizzy.”
“Astronaut” could be a true “Track 5,” which Swifties know as the intentionally plucked vulnerable song Swift puts on all her albums. Griff’s fifth track where she riffs along a melancholic piano melody is purely coincidental.
“It actually wasn’t intentional,” she says about placing the song in the fifth position. “I’ve been looking at the track listing like that is such a funny coincidence.”
Similar to her song “Cycles,” “Tears For Fun” has a conflicted dichotomy where sad lyrics meet dance rave choruses. The overarching question of the song is when you experience multiple breakups, are you just getting into relationships to collect tears?
“It definitely felt like when I was writing it, it was for like almost a concert or for like a room of people to be able to sing and yell in a really like cathartic way,” Griff says. The song’s melody is addictive. Don’t be surprised if you’re humming it later.
If her song “Vertigo” is the scene setter, the ending song “Where Did You Go?” serves as the thesis. She asks the question from different perspectives, both literally and metaphorically, throughout the album.
“I’m asking that to different people,” she says. “Like in ‘Into the Walls’ I’m listening to, I think I’m asking myself where did you go?”
But in “Astronaut”: “I’m asking it to, like, someone or a relationship. And I think there’s like many times where that’s kind of the overarching question. And it’s so many things about loss and stuff in the album.”
The song leaves the audience in a sudden and fierce halt to sit in the art just consumed like the darkness that follows a breakup you didn’t see coming.
“It’s like a less conventional pop song,” she says. “It’s not even recorded to tempo. It’s all free time, and it’s such like a story and a narrative. Every time I listened to it, it just kind of felt like, nothing should really follow it.”
Although Griff will not be on the Eras Tour when Swift goes back to Wembley Stadium for five nights in August, she will embark on her own world tour starting Tuesday in the United Kingdom. She will travel to Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe through the end of the year.
“This is gonna be my first proper time touring the world from a headline sense,” Griff says.
In October, she will open nine shows across the United States for another performer connected with the Swift Universe, Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Tour is sold out in the states. There are resale tickets available for $150 and up.
Griff will headline shows in in Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix in the fall.
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