Taylor Swift showed up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for her first big U.S. late-night visit since dropping The Life of a Showgirl last Friday.
During the interview, she dove into what inspired some of her new tracks, especially the one everyone keeps talking about, “Wood,” and even shared what it’s really about. Taylor laughed with Jimmy about her friendship with Selena Gomez, talked about seeing One Battle After Another (“We are so lucky to be alive at the same time as Paul Thomas Anderson,” she said), and chatted about being engaged to Travis Kelce.
Rumors were swirling that Taylor rejected the Super Bowl halftime show because she wanted the rights to the footage, but she cleared things up, saying, “Jay-Z has always been very good to me.” She explained that their teams work well together, but there was never “an official offer or a conference-room conversation.” Taylor added, “We’re always able to tell him the truth, which is that I am in love with a guy who does that sport on that actual field. Like, [football] is violent chess. That is gladiators without swords. That is dangerous…. Can you imagine if he’s out there every single week, putting his life on the line, doing this very dangerous, very high-pressure, high-intensity sport, and I’m like, ‘I wonder what my choreo should be?’” Sometimes, it’s hard to picture two worlds colliding like that.
Fans think it’s cool how Taylor can be funny one second and super serious the next.
The Life of a Showgirl is already smashing records for vinyl sales in the U.S., even beating Taylor’s own numbers from The Tortured Poets Department last year, and now the album is going after the all-time sales record that Adele set with 25 back in 2015.
Over the weekend, Taylor dropped a deluxe version of the album on iTunes, which includes acoustic tracks and demos, and she also released the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” at special screenings of The Official Release Party of a Showgirl—a movie event with lyric videos and behind-the-scenes clips. Sometimes, it feels like there’s always something new if you blink.
