While on stage at her third Eras Tour concert in Toronto on Friday, the pop star, 34, recalled her emotional reaction to finding out that their track earned a nod from The Recording Academy last week.
‘The Eras Tour has been going on about a year and a half now, and so, a lot of life can happen in the phase of that tour and a lot of art can happen in the course of that tour,’ she recalled to the crowd. ‘I think you’ll remember the genius brilliant young lady you saw earlier tonight, Gracie Abrams. So, storytime, Gracie was opening up for me a year ago on the Eras Tour.’
She continued: ‘We had so many fun memories during that tour, one of which we were celebrating her getting nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys, we had, like, eleventy-hundred Cosmos, went back to my house and just started writing a song.’
The Fortnight hitmaker went on to gush that the track, Us, off Abrams’s album The Secret of Us, recently got ‘nominated for a Grammy.’
‘You can’t even imagine, like, the phone call between the two of us when the nominations came out and we saw that song was nominated,’ Swift explained. ‘It was just screeching. It wasn’t even words, it was just feral screeching for the entire call.’
As a thank you to fans for making the song a hit, the performers went on to sing a mash-up of Us and Swift’s 2014 track Out of the Woods.
Abrams previously revealed they extinguished a fire while making the song after a candle in Swift’s kitchen fell over during their songwriting session.
The singers were enjoying drinks and dinner ‘well past 6 a.m.’ after the long songwriting session when the fire started – and Swift grabbed a fire extinguisher and successfully put it out.
‘She was such a legend – I don’t know how at this hour or in our state she knew what to do,’ she told Billboard.
‘We both had an insane cough from the fire extinguisher fumes for weeks,’ the singer added.
During the night when the fire broke out, Gracie said they listened to songs from Taylor’s Tortured Poets Department: Anthology together, and were dancing and singing to But Daddy I Love Him.
She said they were dancing and singing ‘like theater kids’ to the tune, before listening to her song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived while ‘lying on the floor in disbelief.’
They started the songwriting by listening to instrumentals laid down by Aaron Dessner.
‘Something caught our ear at the same time very hard and fast. So we ran to the piano and started writing this song, Gracie told Billboard, adding: ‘I used to fantasize about that type of thing as a kid.’
Billboard also interviewed Aaron, who gushed about Gracie and Taylor’s songwriting chemistry.
‘It was just really fun to watch the chemistry of Gracie and Taylor bouncing off each other, Gracie in total wonder and awe watching how Taylor records and produces her vocal performances and builds the world,’ he told the outlet.
Abrams served as Swift’s act on The Eras tour for about a dozen shows last year before returning to the role for the for the entirety in 2024.
Swift earned multiple other nominations for her 11th studio album The Tortured Poets Department — including Album Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal album.
Fortnight featuring Post Malone — which was the lead single off TTPD — is nominated for Song Of The Year, Record Of The Year and Best Music Video.
The superstar even made history this time around as she is now the first female artist to be nominated for Album Of The Year a total of seven times.
Swift is up against popular artists like André 3000, Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Jacob Collier, Billie Eilish, and Chappell Roan at the upcoming ceremony.
She has already won Album Of The Year four times before: in 2010 for Fearless, in 2016 for 1989, in 2021 for Folklore, and in 2024 for Midnights.
At the 2024 ceremony, Swift surprised fans by announcing The Tortured Poets Department — so there’s already speculation that she may be planning something big if she wins Album Of The Year again in 2025.
In the meantime, Swift is nearly done with her sold-out Eras Tour after nearly two years on the road.
The acclaimed songwriter will hold her final show on December 8 at BC Place in Vancouver.
As for her personal life, Swift has been dating NFL star Travis Kelce, 35, since last summer and she’s fully embraced the duties that come with being a WAG.
Since going public with their romance in September 2023, Swift has attended 17 Kansas City Chiefs games.