#trending: Steady, lah! Taylor Swift’s dancer Kameron Saunders nails Singlish slang at S’pore concerts

SINGAPORE — Kameron Saunders has made a name for himself for being the sassiest dancer on Taylor Swift’s dance team and the only dancer with lines during her show.

The 31-year-old made waves online for dropping Singlish phrases during the concert performance of the song We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.

At one point, Swift sings, “So he calls me up and he’s, like, ‘I still love you'. And I’m, like, I'm just, I mean this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together.”

After that line, Saunders would usually throw in a localised phrase.

For the first 53 shows of The Eras Tour in the United States, Saunders stays true to the line “like ever”.

Then on the 54th show in Mexico, Saunders sang “nunca”, which means “never” in Spanish.

The dancer infuses his own flairs for international shows, incorporating the countries’ native languages and slang into the line.

During the Japan leg of the tour, he responded with "zettai nai," conveying "impossible" in Japanese, while in Australia, he adopted the Aussie accent to deliver "like, naur."

In the past four nights of Swift’s show in Singapore, which begun last Saturday (March 2), Saunders has gone through different variations of the Singlish version of “like ever”, including “no, lah”, “siao, ah”, “walao, eh” and “alamak”. 

His sassy delivery of the line has set off the crowd every single time, fuelling anticipation for what he will say during the remaining two shows in Singapore.

Fans tossed in their own proposals, imagining that he might say “jialat”, “aiyoh” or “don’t play play” for the next two shows.

We are putting our bets on “buay tahan”, the Malay-Hokkien phrase for “intolerable”.

His delivery of “walao, eh” — an expression of annoyance in Hokkien — in particular, has impressed fans tremendously, with them saying that he had nailed the accent. 

A TikTok video of Saunders performing the line on the third day of the concert on Monday had almost 430,000 views and 25,200 likes within three days.

One online user said: “This guy is killing it.”

Another commented: “He’s becoming more and more Singaporean as the days go by.”

Saunders, who is a professional dancer and choreographer, has worked as a backup dancer for American pop singer Lizzo and is performing in the musical period film The Color Purple, which opened in Singapore at indie cinema The Projector on Thursday.