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We love it when pop stars go the extra mile to put on a special show, but let's be honest, it's sometimes equally entertaining when the unexpected happens and it all goes a bit wrong. Superhuman is impressive, but human is more charming.

That's the cold comfort Taylor Swift is clinging to this week after the basket carrying her up above the audience at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field got stuck, leaving her hanging in mid-air.

"I'm pretty sure I'm stuck up here. It's a nice view, though," she told the crowd. "What happens now is basically I'm just chilling waiting to figure out what happens next."

And she's by no means the only one this sort of thing has happened to though, not by a long chalk.

1. Katy Perry

Katy Perry's show is a riot of theatricality and silliness, so it's no real surprise to discover that she occasionally gets caught out. Like the time in Nashville last year when she found herself stuck on a planet prop in the sky, which had to be lowered into the crowd so that she could jump off and walk back to the stage.

She also ran into trouble in 2012 when tour insurers asked her not to wear a costume that featured spinning peppermints on her chest, because they kept catching her hair, forcing her head to tuck down until, by her own account, she was effectively staring at her cleavage.

She told : "I keep being told the insurers are worried I will injure my neck. I seriously doubt it could be lethal but they want a new bra designed that will not allow hair to be caught up... What a girl does for her art."

2. ZZ Top

[WATCH] ZZ Top Glastonbury highlights

The buffalo rammed two glass cages containing the snakes
Billy Gibbons

Even on paper, ZZ Top's idea of an appropriate stage set looks a little risky. To celebrate the flora and fauna of their native Texas, the Top took live examples with them on tour during 1975-6. There were six vultures - all called Oscar - some tarantulas, a longhorn steer, a grumpy buffalo and a plexiglass pyramid full of rattlesnakes. The non-venomous animals would be invited onstage, which is absolutely not a recipe for certain disaster, right?

Billy Gibbons told Guitar World magazine: "It was disastrous. At first, everything went well: the rattlers behaved, the birds seemed to stand the noise and the buffalo grazed quietly, until one night one buffalo decided he'd had enough. He rammed two glass cages containing the snakes. Suddenly we had a dozen rattlers crawling around onstage. Our drummer (Frank Beard) suggested we play something quiet to soothe them - a stupid idea, 'cause most snakes are deaf. We didn't even attempt it. We just fled and left the roadies to minimise the damage."

The buffalo rammed two glass cages containing the snakes
Billy Gibbons

3. Beyonc茅

Spend any time thinking about Beyoncé performing live and chances are you'll picture her hair flying in the breeze as she sings. Not to let daylight in on magic, but that breeze is created by big onstage fans, ensuring the right amount of dramatic wind is running across the stage, to match the emotive wind coming out of Beyoncé's mouth.

And most of the time, that's a wonderful thing, provided hair and fan don't meet. When they do, as happened in Montreal in 2013, the stage starts to look a lot less epic. Beyoncé was singing an encore of Halo from the pit in front of the audience, getting up close and personal with the fans, when her hair got caught in a fan on the edge of the stage. Showbiz being what it is, she had to continue the song while sitting on the edge of the stage while her security guards tried to free her and a million smartphones came out to record the event.

She later posted a handwritten rewrite of the song's lyrics on Instagram, as proof that all was well.

4. U2

[LISTEN] "It鈥檚 important to be unsophisticated" - Bono and Larry Mullen Jnr

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But there should be a coda for overexcitable rock stars to the effect that if you're going to appear out of a massive glitterball lemon while on tour, make sure there are ample refreshments inside in case the doors get stuck. This is the harsh lesson U2 learned, while attempting to spoof consumerism and mass media with their Popmart tour in 1997.

Any one of their stage props could've backfired - the golden arch, the 12-foot olive on a cocktail stick - but no, it was the giant lemon that gave them the pip, and not just the once. The first time was during the encore in Oslo, when the doors jammed and the band had to escape out of an emergency hatch at the back. It did it again in Sydney (they didn't go in, that time), and then finally in Osaka, though that time the band were properly stuck until their crew could get them out.

5. Alice Cooper

[LISTEN] Does Alice Cooper regret his onstage antics?

In 30 years, I've never had a snake defecate on stage, and this one decided that was gonna be the night
Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper has been using boa constrictors as part of his act since the 1970s, so you'd think he'd know a thing or two about the attendant risks of allowing livestock onto the stage. But there appears to be one thing all animals (and people) do that he hadn't quite bargained for.

Be warned, the story he told the about a 2004 show in Los Angeles is not for the faint-hearted: "In 30 years, I've never had a snake defecate on stage, and this one decided that was gonna be the night. And let me tell you something: There is nothing on this planet more foul… I didn't realise it at first. Then all of a sudden I went, 'What's that!' 'Cause it was a really horrific smell. It left I'd say about eight piles that if you saw it, you'd say a Doberman pinscher or a Great Dane would have left a pile like that - and all down the side of my stage clothes."

So, what does any goth-rocker do when he has to try and poop-scoop a snake? Send in the clowns (or rather, roadies dressed as clowns): "So now the clowns are on stage trying to clean all this stuff up, and it smells so bad that the clowns are throwing up. Now I have clowns throwing up on stage and boa constrictor crap all over. And everyone thinks, 'What a great ending for this show.' How sick is that?"

In 30 years, I've never had a snake defecate on stage, and this one decided that was gonna be the night
Alice Cooper

6. Britney Spears

Singing is an emotional enough task without having to worry that your props or stage costume are about to let you down, so spare a thought for Britney Spears, whose Piece of Me residency in Las Vegas was not without incident. In 2015, she was in the middle of singing 3, when the zip on her mesh leotard split at the back, forcing her to stand very still while her dancers attempted to help her complete the song with her dignity intact.

The following year, she climbed the part of her stage set that looked like a tree, and stood on a ramp, ready to be lifted across the stage on a harness. This failed to work, leaving Britney stranded at the end of the ramp, vamping furiously while singing Toxic, before one of her crew unhitched her from the harness and she made her way back down to the stage. Still, if a harness is going to fail, that's the way to do it.

That night, she tweeted that the show would look very different in future.

7. Ozzy Osbourne

[LISTEN] Ozzy Osbourne on Black Sabbath's final reunion

I put my foot on this lever and several pounds of offal slowly comes and splats on the back of my head
Ozzy Osbourne

The year is 1981, and Ozzy Osbourne, former lead singer of Black Sabbath and bat-biting rock wildman, is pulling out all the stops to try and establish himself as a solo star. This meant a hugely theatrical stage show with lots of pantomime gothic touches, including a bucketful of raw offal and other meaty organs which would, when triggered, be flung out into the audience - a thrill which was intended to reestablish the original meaning of the word 'visceral'.

However, after extensive preparations and testing, the meat-throwing mechanism did not work according to plan on the first night. The result was closer to the film Carrie than a gadabout gorefest, as Ozzy told Rolling Stone: "This catapult was supposed to throw this meat into the audience. They'd been trying it out all day, so the elastic wasn't quite as strong during the show.

"I'm standing there, I put my foot on this lever and several pounds of offal slowly comes and splats on the back of my head."

Meanwhile, up in the rafters, a bat smiles in satisfaction and then flies off into the night.

I put my foot on this lever and several pounds of offal slowly comes and splats on the back of my head
Ozzy Osbourne

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