Midnight Oil legend Peter Garrett slams Taylor Swift over ‘price gouging’

An Aussie music legend unleashed on Taylor Swift on-air today, slamming everything from her ticket prices to her private jet usage.

Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett’s bed might be burning once Swifties get hold of him, after he offered some blunt opinions about Taylor Swift during a radio interview this morning.

Aussie rock legend and former politician Garrett joined 107.1 SAFM’s Bec & Soda today when he was informed that he was co-host Mark “Soda” Soderstrom’s favourite artist – in other words, “his Taylor Swift.”

Seems Garrett didn’t take too kindly to the comparison.

“I’m not price gouging like Taylor, to be blunt,” he said – as Soderstrom reminisced about attending a Midnight Oil concert in 1985 when tickets were just $15.90.

Taylor Swift concert at the MCG. 2024. Melbourne. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

You’re not likely to see Peter Garrett at any of her shows this weekend. Picture: Don Arnold

“I wouldn’t begrudge anyone’s success, that’s the first thing to say. She’s obviously touching a chord with masses of people, particularly people of a certain age group who have experienced growing up at a certain time, and what she’s singing and talking about is really ringing true with them,” Garrett offered.

However, he also said that “the dollar end of it having looked at it from a distance, having been in this business forever, is pretty brutal.”

Standard-release tickets for Swift’s Australian tour ranged from $79.90 for G-reserve tickets to $379.90 for A-reserve tickets. She also offered fans multiple VIP packages, reaching an eye-watering $1249.90.

This VIP Package cost $1249 per ticket.

But some fans complained about the lack of added value in the packages, which included premium seats with add-ons such as a tote bags, collectable pins, stickers and postcards.

Garrett didn’t stop there, also complaining about Swift’s ongoing domination of the ARIA albums chart.

This week, five out of the top 10 albums on the ARIA chart are by Swift. Last week her albums made up the entire top five.

Aussie artist Jessica Mauboy, whose last album debuted at number one, this week had to settle for a #10 debut for her latest album.

Last week's ARIA chart: An all-Taylor top five.

“She is so pervasive, she has become such a phenomenon, that she is displacing artists left right and centre. In our ARIA top 100 chart – that’s the Australian record industry chart – I think at one point in the last week or two, we only had three Australian artists in that top 100,” Garrett said.

“Not good enough! And that’s not me crying about it, I’ve had an incredible run. But I think about the younger artists coming through and it’s extremely hard for them now.”

Sensing he was on a roll, the hosts then asked Garrett – a vocal climate change activist – what they made of Swift’s frequent private jet usage, which in the past two weeks alone has seen her fly from Japan to Las Vegas to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce at the Superbowl, then out to Australia, then have the jet flown to Hawaii to collect Kelce and bring him to Australia.

Swift’s private jet is clocking up the air miles. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

“She’s not setting a good example. I’m sure they could sit up the front of a Qantas plane or a Japan Airlines plane and she’d still get a tummy tickle,” he said.

Garrett noted that one of his favourite bands, The Rolling Stones, also tour the world in their own private jet.

“Sometimes people just need to grow up a little and realise we do live on a finite planet with finite resources and we can’t continue exacerbating the climate crisis – end of my rant on that one!” he said.

Garrett’s on-air “rant” comes as Swift is set to perform the first of four sellout shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium tonight, to a combined audience of roughly 320,000 fans.

Last weekend, she kicked off her Aussie tour – and accidentally reignited a long-running interstate rivalry – with three huge shows at Melbourne’s MCG.