During his highly anticipated new HBO stand-up special, Marc Maron joked that he’s “not afraid to die anymore,” under one condition — a very specific Taylor Swift song has to be playing.
Marc Maron: Panicked arrived Friday, and the comedian recounted a self-described “near-death experience” that occurred one day when he was hiking. He explained, “It was a pretty hard hike” with a notably “steep incline for like 150 minutes,” and one day, the worst happened: he passed out after doing a squat stretch.
“For years in the middle of that stretch, I said to myself, ‘It’s amazing I haven’t passed out,’” he said. “But I did pass out on this one particular time.”
Maron explained that during this time in his life, he was grieving 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 said.
During this period of mourning, he decided to take part in the hike, and while he was on the way to the adventure, he began “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?’”
His interest in Swift’s stardom led him to download Midnights, which he noted “was the album at the time.” Maron recalled heading out on the hike and listening to “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” from the album.
“And then about halfway up the mountain, this song comes on,” he said as he began playing the opening verse, to which Swift sings, “No words appear before me in the aftermath.”
“It’s already sad,” Maron quipped, and continued playing the track up until its chorus. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” she sang, which led the Stick actor to yell, “Oh my God!”
“So now, I’m crying. I’m audibly crying. I’m hiking up the hill and I’m sobbing out loud, but I just put it on repeat because I want to feel the feels,” he recalled of the specific mourning moment. “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 fuck!’ I just, I go down. I just black out.”
When Maron came back from passing out, the first thing he heard was Swift singing the track’s signature opening chorus line.
“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 said. “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.”
Last Friday, Maron teased that a track from the 14-time Grammy Award winner would be featured in Panicked during an episode of the Good One podcast. To ensure he’d be able to include the bit with the song in the stand-up special, he enlisted the help of his friend and Swift’s frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff.
“I know Jack Antonoff enough to text him, and he’s the co-writer on [‘Bigger Than the Whole Sky’],” Maron explained. “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 steered the comedian in the right direction to acquire the correct licensing for usage, and he was able to include the song in his special — for a fee of $50,000.
“It was doable. It was tight, but because of the ticket sales for the special, we were able to get that song,” he said. “I think the other thing was it’s up to a minute,” he added, explaining that he paid to use only a minute of the track. Maron noted, “If I would have gone over the minute, it would have been more money.”
Maron’s Panicked comes on the heels of him announcing the end of his WTF with Marc Maron Podcast after 16 years. The final episode of the long-standing podcast will release later this fall, though an official date hasn’t been set quite yet.