Seth Meyers recently applauded Taylor Swift for her exceptional talent and creativity in writing her own monologue for her appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 2009. Meyers, during his interview on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, discussed how most hosts rely on the SNL staff to write their monologues, but Swift had a different approach in mind.
Meyers expressed his admiration for Swift, saying, “It really speaks to what a force of nature she is and the depths of her talent. Here’s a 19-year-old who nobody is really helping out; nobody gave her a manual of how to do that show. And yet, she came to us and said, ‘I wrote a song for the opening monologue.’ So we brought Taylor into Lorne’s [Michael, series creator] office, and she sings this song which is not only a beautiful song by a beautiful singer, it’s a perfect SNL monologue. Fully formed.”
The monologue song performed by Swift, titled “Monologue Song (La La La),” featured references to various headlines from that time, including Swift’s relationships, breakups, and the infamous incident with Kanye West at the VMAs.
Meyers went on to say, “To this day, I’ve never had a moment like that where someone brings you a fully gift-wrapped present and it’s exactly what you need it to be. When she finished I should’ve said, ‘Now Taylor, just for you, I want to look at you and read what we had written for you just so you know how much fucking worse it was. Not only is your song great, but you cannot even begin to imagine how shitty what we were doing for you is compared to how great what you did for yourself is.’”
During Meyers’ tenure at SNL, he served as both a cast member and a writer for 12 and a half seasons before leaving in 2014. He currently hosts NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. However, Meyers did return to SNL in 2018 as a guest host.
