19 Utterly Merciless Tweets About Taylor Swift’s Gentrifying BBMA’s Performance

Taylor Swift performed at the Billboard Music Awards on Wednesday night, and she had a full marching band on stage with her. If that set-up sounds familiar, it’s because Beyoncé did a (much better) version of it this year at Coachella, and soon everyone was calling the music festival #Beychella instead. 

And in case Swift somehow missed that (she didn’t), the fact that Bey’s documentary of that performance, Homecoming, was released by Netflix a couple of weeks ago probably didn’t escape her attention.

We’re not saying she straight up copied Beyoncé, and yes, we know there have been marching bands performances along with pop musicians before (Prince famously did it at the Super Bowl half-time show in 2007), but the fact that Taylor Swift thought that doing it so soon after Beyoncé did it would be a good idea just shows how out of touch she is. 

Another big problem with Swift’s performance is that Beyoncé’s performance had a whole lot of context and history behind it. Swift’s, not so much. 

And people were not shy about calling Swift out for her appropriation. It wasn’t long before #Mayochella was trending on Twitter, and the roasting was delicious. 

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https://twitter.com/mattwhitlockPM/status/1123787884790800384

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https://twitter.com/The4Real_KB/status/1123939670474334208

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https://twitter.com/ThecalmJade/status/1123939174090977282

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https://twitter.com/InhambaneAfrika/status/1123911174922416128

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https://twitter.com/TeekusRaps/status/1123817799770619904

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https://twitter.com/that_bitch311/status/1123767369854259200

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https://twitter.com/molegrl/status/1123941213407711240

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https://twitter.com/missbeygency/status/1123753536431562759

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https://twitter.com/VincentMosley6/status/1124162031823749120

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https://twitter.com/MariahMipie/status/1124316193333108737

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h/t: The Root, TooFab

Dean Altman

Dean Altman is a writer living in NYC.