Taylor Swift is embarrassing. Her greatest fans will concede that Taylor Swift is a fundamentally embarrassing person. Sometimes, it’s part of the appeal. Sometimes, it’s just something that you have to work through. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be the person who likes the Taylor Swift album that everyone else hates? It doesn’t matter that I’m right. I get all these baby critics going on Twitter and trying to dunk on me, like they have any ability to step to the God Critic over here. It would be one thing if she could properly advocate for her work. But no, she can’t even name her top five Taylor Swift songs. She just hems and haws and coughs up a couple of songs titles.
On Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert dedicated the entire episode of his Late Show to his guest Taylor Swift. She’s been on a few late-night shows since The Life Of A Showgirl came out, and she was specifically on Colbert to promote the Disney+ stuff that she’s got going on. In their conversation, Swift and Colbert hit all the normal things that Swift likes to talk about — Travis Kelce, getting her masters back, cats, the outfits that she got to wear on the Eras Tour, etc. I mostly just clicked through it. You only need to hear this lady say the same things so many times.
In one of four interview segments, however, Colbert asked Swift something that he likes to ask of the musical legends who come on his show, your Paul Simons and whatnot. Swift is a legend on that level. Sorry, but it’s true. Colbert likes to ask these towering figures to name their own five best songs, and Swift couldn’t do that. She could name her #1 pick, which was not a surprise, and she managed one more before begging off. Here’s what she said:
I think I require a little bit of time to appreciate my work, and it’s constantly changing, right? It’s a little too soon. But I will say I think #1 is “All Too Well,” the 10-minute version. I’m really obsessed with The Life Of A Showgirl right now, the whole album. So I can’t really do any of the others right now. Except I will say, somewhere in this list I think is gonna be a song called “Mirrorball,” from the Folklore album.
You knew that she was going to pick the 10-minute “All Too Well.” It’s a good pick, honestly. I wish Swift would go into that deep-indulgence zone more often. Also, “Mirrorball” is a great pick! Here’s three more: “Getaway Car,” “Long Live,” “White Horse.” There. Was that hard? No. That was easy.
Swift said that she wanted to get back to Colbert when she figured out the rest of the list, and he helpfully noted that he’s not going to be on the air that much longer. This led to a long digression that, I’ll be honest. I stopped trying to follow. If you really want to watch the full Taylor Swift interview, it’s below.
There’s a lot of Taylor Swift product out there, and I don’t feel like I need to plug it in this space.
