This Video Of A Delirious, Post-Surgery Taylor Swift Will Immediately Make Your Day
Swift was confronted with the clip on Jimmy Fallon, and reacted with shocked laughter.
When it comes to her public face, Taylor Swift is one of the more composed pop stars.
Of course, that’s not true of her music. Her music is some of the most emotionally vulnerable around, cataloguing her loves and losses with an intensity you’d expect to find in a diary. It’s rare that she ever writes from a position of having got something under control; she sings about what’s happening to her now. As in, ‘I am hurting now’. As in, ‘I am in love now’. As in, ‘I know now that I’ll never, ever forgive him.’
There’s a gulf then between the work and the person presenting it. Onstage, she’s a picture of composure and control. Her stage shows are complicated, multi-faceted machines, in the middle of which she stands totally still. And in interviews, she never gives away something unless she wants to. Nothing is unprompted; uncontrolled.
That gulf isn’t a problem. In fact, it’s one of the things that makes her interesting. But, it is fun to see that armour come down every once in a while — even if it’s only for half a second.
That’s the experience that regular watchers of Jimmy Fallon were treated to this week, when Swift came on for a televised interview. Most of the conversation was a cute, endearing back-and-forth. But then Fallon played a clip of Swift recovering from laser eye surgery.
To call Swift’s behaviour in the clip ‘loopy’ might even be an understatement. She puts ‘David After Dentist‘ to shame. She tries desperately to eat a banana. Her mother cajoles her about crying. She lies on a bed, and stares into space.
Of course, in typical Taylor fashion, this is a calculated revelation. Her reaction to the clip is shocked laughter, but the cynical amongst you knows that this was, in its way, just a set-up. But a wonderful set-up; a rare moment of real vulnerability that’s also extremely, extremely funny.
Watch it below: