Marc Maron Reveals the Cost to Use a Taylor Swift Song — and the Mutual Celebrity Friend Who Helped Him Get Access

Marc Maron said getting the rights to Taylor Swift’s music doesn’t come without a hefty price tag.

The comedian and podcaster, 61, spent major dollars in order to use a specific song from the pop star’s catalog for his upcoming stand-up special, he revealed on the July 25 episode of Vulture’s Good One podcast.

Licensing Swift’s song “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” — a bonus track on the 3am Edition of her 2022 album Midnights — cost about “$50,000,” Maron said.

He added that he felt he needed the specific track for a pivotal moment in his HBO special, Marc Maron: Panicked, so he reached out to a mutual friend, Jack Antonoff, for help.

“I know Jack Antonoff enough to text him — and he’s the co-writer on that song,” 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?’ “

Maron said Antonoff, 41, advised him to go through official music licensing channels, and he was ultimately able to get approval to use the track.

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“It was doable,” Maron said, adding, however, that the tens of thousands of dollars only covered the use of one minute of the song.

“I would have gone over the minute, [but] it would have been more money,” he explained.

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Maron said he doesn’t know if Swift, 35, has heard the specific joke in the special that her team signed off on, but he was “manifesting” that she would indeed like it if she did — for the sake of his project.

“It had to happen,” Maron said. “The real fear [was], like, [if] she doesn’t let you use it, and then what do you do? You can’t do the bit on the special.”

While Maron didn’t reveal the content of the bit in question, he has spoken about Swift’s music — and his journey to becoming a Swiftie — in the past.

“I’m an open-minded guy, and I like music. I [wanted] to try to figure out what it is about Taylor Swift that everyone never shuts up about,” he said on a May 2023 episode of his long-running podcast, WTF with Marc Maron.  

Maron said he ended up listening to Swift’s Midnights album on a hike, and he was impressed with what her heard. 

“I’m like, ‘Alright. I get it.’ It’s pop music, but it’s not dance music [and] it’s, sort of, emotional. There’s a lot of longing and sadness and isolation and processing these overwhelming feelings of melancholy,” he recalled.

When previously discussing the new special, the comedian said, per Deadline, that he felt like “this is the best work” he’s ever done, adding, “Everything came together.”

Maron’s latest creative endeavor comes two years after his last HBO special, the critically acclaimed From Bleak to Dark, which explored grief and the experience of losing his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marc Maron: Panicked premieres on HBO on Friday, Aug. 1, at 8:00 p.m. EST. It will also be available to stream on HBO Max.