Veteran comedian Marc Maron recently shared that he had to fork over a hefty sum to the reigning queen of pop, Taylor Swift.
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In his new HBO special, Maron jokes he’s fine with dying—as long as a specific Taylor Swift song is playing. Marc Maron’s Panicked debuted last week, where he shared a “near-death experience” from a hike. He said, “It was a pretty hard hike” with a “steep incline for like 150 minutes,” and revealed he passed out after a squat stretch.
“For years in the middle of that stretch, I said to myself, ‘It’s amazing I haven’t passed out,’” he recalled, per The Hollywood Reporter. “But I did pass out on this one particular time.”
Maron shared that he was navigating a period of profound grief following the loss of his partner, Lynn Shelton. “The interesting thing about grief is that when you’re in it at the beginning, it’s all-consuming. It takes over your mind, your heart, your spirit, and you can’t stop it, and you don’t know if it’ll ever go away,” he explained.
During his time of mourning, he joined the hike and started “wondering, like, ‘Why is Taylor Swift so popular?’ And then part of my brain’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you just listen to some?’”
He became interested in Swift’s success and decided to download Midnights, saying it “was the album at the time.” Maron shared that he went on a hike while listening to “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” from the album.
“And then about halfway up the mountain, this song comes on,” he said, playing the opening verse where Swift sings, “No words appear before me in the aftermath.”
“It’s already sad,” Maron joked. He played the track all the way through to the chorus. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” she belted out, which made the podcaster declare, “Oh my God!”
“So now, I’m crying. I’m audibly crying, hiking up the hill, and I’m sobbing out loud, but I just put it on repeat because I want to feel the feels,” Maron detailed. “I’m just hiking up and I’m like, ‘Oh God, this is terrible.’ And then I bend down and I’m like, oh no, and then I go up and I’m like, ‘Oh f—!’ I just, I go down. I just black out.”
“She’s going, ‘Goodbye, goodbye.’ So, you know, I realized what happened. I get it together, I brush myself off, I drink some water,” he recalled. “And I have this very deep realization, this feeling. I just thought in that moment, like, I’m not afraid to die anymore because it’s just nothing. I don’t think, I’m not afraid to die anymore as long as it happens quickly and I have time to put that song on.”
Marc Maron Shelled out Serious Cash Just for a Minute of Taylor Swift’s Song
Maron recently revealed on the Good One podcast that the song by the “So High School” singer would appear in Panicked. He worked with Jack Antonoff, Swift’s frequent collaborator, to make it happen.
“I know Jack Antonoff enough to text him, and he’s the co-writer on [‘Bigger Than the Whole Sky’],” Maron recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know what’s proper or how to do this, but we’re running out of money on this thing. It’s probably going to come out of my pocket. Is there anything you can do about this song or talk to Taylor?’”
The music producer helped the comedian secure the proper licensing to use the song in his special, which cost $50,000.
“It was doable. It was tight, but because of the ticket sales for the special, we were able to get that song,” Maron explained. However, he pointed out the fee was lighter because he only used a minute of the track.
“If I would have gone over the minute, it would have been more money,” he said.
Panicked is streaming on HBO Max.