Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift Would’ve Sung “Shake It Off” Together At Glastonbury This Year
This year’s Glastonbury festival was cancelled, for obvious reasons. It would’ve marked the UK festival’s 50th year. Along with Kendrick Lamar, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift would’ve both headlined the festival. Today, we learn that they would’ve probably taken the stage together to sing Swift’s 2014 hit “Shake It Off.”
Today, Rolling Stone ran a conversation between McCartney and Swift. It’s part of the magazine’s Musicians On Musicians issue, in which a bunch of different artists talk to each other. For the McCartney/Swift summit, Swift went to McCartney’s London office, and McCartney’s daughter Mary shot photos of the two of them together. The rationale appears to be that both musicians recorded albums during quarantine. Swift worked remotely with the National’s Aaron Dessner to make folklore, the LP that she released back in July. McCartney recorded the forthcoming McCartney III entirely on his own, playing every instrument himself. It’ll be out next month.
In the conversation, McCartney and Swift talk about a lot of different things. Both of them say that their pandemic albums emerged out of idle experimentation. They talk about numerology, about the responsibility of playing your big hits during live shows, and about how they’re both sort of enjoying quarantine. It’s all very cute. Towards the end of the conversation, the two of them talk a bit about this year’s Glastonbury and about how they both wanted to ask the other to come out onstage with them. Here’s that bit:
Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.
McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.
Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.
McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”
Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.
McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!
You totally know they would’ve both done it, too. In some alternate reality, we all watched video of Taylor Swift gesturing at Paul McCartney during the “fella over there with the hella good hair” bit. McCartney III is out 12/11 on Capitol, and it’s up for pre-order here. You can read the Swift/McCartney conversation here.