The Greatest Celeb Taylor Swift Covers: From Sir Patrick Stewart to Cara Delevingne to Obama
Sir Patrick Stewart sent the Internet aflame with an amazing, Shakespearean spoken word rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.” But there is a long, rich history of TSwift covers.
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Taylor Swift has a habit of calling out those musicians, actors, and models she most admires, and sometimes, if all the stars in the universe are aligned correctly, those famous voices make our “wildest dreams” come true and do covers of her work.
From Sir Patrick Stewart to Kendrick Lamar, check out the greatest covers of Swift’s songs to have ever been recorded on the airwaves by celebrities.
1. Sir Patrick Stewart recited a rousing version of “Blank Space” for NPR’s “Ask Me Another,” which he then tweeted out with the question “May we join the squad”:
To which Swift replied:
And Stewart replied with one of the greatest uses of Photoshop the world has ever seen:
2. He was not, however, the first in his “squad” to do a dramatic reading of Swift’s lyrics—his BFF and X-Men co-star Sir Ian McKellen did so with “Bad Blood” yesterday:
3. Swift is a huge fan of Kendrick Lamar, and even posted a video of her lip-syncing to his song “Backseat Freestyle” last year when her album, 1989, sold 1.2 million copies its first week. Lamar returned the favor in an interview he did with The Fader, telling the magazine how much he loved “Shake it Off” and even singing a couple of bars.
4. Vance Joy must have enjoyed Swift’s cover of his “Riptide” in BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge. He uploaded a lovely cover of her “I Know Places” in May:
5. Swift’s buddy Cara Delevingne and her Paper Towns co-star Nat Wolff cruised around in a car for the German TV show Taff, bouncing along to “Shake It Off,” while wearing a mustache, sunglasses, a lei, and bunny ears. Because why not.
6. Before Zayn Malik left One Direction and ruined everything that is good in the world, he recorded a pretty low-budget cover of Swift’s “You Belong With Me,” with some lyrical changes since—as he so aptly pointed out—the original ones are “girl lyrics”:
7. Hanson continues to make your teenage girl dreams come true, with this bubbly rendition of Swift’s breakup anthem “We Are Never Getting Back Together:”
8. Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson performed “Shake It Off” at the 2014 TrevorLive party, saying, “I learned not to care what people think and to be the courage I wanted to be. And right now, I want to be a country-to-pop crossover sensation.”
9. Kelly Clarkson lent her powerful pipes to “Shake It Off” in a rich cover of it she performed at her concert in Buffalo last year:
10. Another pair of famous pals—Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara—had perhaps a bit too much fun with the app Dubsmash, instagramming videos of themselves singing “I Knew You Were Trouble”:
11. What’s better than one voice singing “Red?” Five! Just listen to Fifth Harmony’s cover of it:
12. NBA superstar Russell Westbrook instagrammed a photo of him jamming out to “Bad Blood” in his car. Apparently, he found it a “Banger!!!!!”
13. When ABC News’ Peter Travers asked Steve Carrell “for a snippet of what’s going on” in his head, Carrell didn’t skip a beat, bursting into “Shake It Off” with enough feeling to make Michael Scott very proud. “I actually love Taylor Swift,” he said.
14. While Obama hasn’t technically ever sang “Shake It Off” (at least as far as we know), the geniuses at Baracksdubs gave us a pretty fantastic idea of what it would sound like if he did: