Marc Maron bid adieu, waving farewell to a substantial sum of money. The podcast maven revealed the steep price he paid to incorporate Taylor Swift's haunting ballad, "Bigger Than The Whole Sky," into his upcoming comedy special, "Marc Maron: Panicked." This tune played a pivotal role in closing out his stand-up performance. "I believe it amounted to around $50,000," Marc elaborated on Vulture's "Good One" podcast on July 25th. "I pulled out all the stops to get that joke in front of her."
Although the 61-year-old comedian knew he had to include the song in his show, navigating the rights acquisition proved daunting. So, he reached out to Taylor's friend and collaborator, Jack Antonoff. "I'm familiar enough with Jack Antonoff to text him; he co-wrote that song," Marc continued. "I said, 'I'm clueless about the proper procedure or how to go about this, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel financially. It might end up coming out of my own pocket. Can you intervene or speak to Taylor about this track?'"
Jack advised him to follow the established protocol and see where it led. Fortunately for Marc, despite the exorbitant $50,000 fee for using less than a minute of the song, it worked out. "It was manageable," he remarked about the cost. "We earned sufficient funds. It was tight, but thanks to ticket sales for the special, we could secure that song."
For Marc, the heart-wrenching tune, initially a bonus track on Taylor's 2022 album "Midnights," was worth every penny. "My bond with that song, and just the mere fact that I play it on my phone," he said. "It had to happen."
He's not alone in his insistence on including a Taylor Swift song in his project. Author Jenny Han personally reached out to the 35-year-old artist regarding the use of her music in Amazon's adaptation of "The Summer I Turned Pretty." "I penned a letter, a handwritten note to her," she shared on the "Open Book" podcast in January. "I conveyed how much it would mean, not just to me, but I believed to the fans as well." She added, "That was the gift I yearned to give, because I thought, 'They're going to freak out.' And we were incredibly fortunate to obtain more than just one song."
