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Marc Maron announced at the beginning of the summer that he was ending his WTF podcast this fall. I wasn’t that surprised: he’s been hosting the show for 16 years, there’s now an oversaturation of celebrity podcasts, and Marc is doing well with his own comedy and acting work. The most recent role I saw him in was The Order, where he had a small but pivotal part, and I can definitely picture him continuing along that vein of supporting yet impactful roles. (Sidenote: Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult were each disturbingly great in the movie, too.) And as for his comedy, Marc’s next show, Marc Maron: Panicked, premieres on HBO Max this Friday. While Marc has said, “I feel this is the best work I’ve done. Everything came together,” he still felt that something was imperative for pulling the whole thing off: getting to use the Taylor Swift song “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” for a specific moment in the show. So he reached out to Jack Antonoff to get the ball rolling… and $50,000 later he was granted the use of one minute of the song!
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.
…“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.
“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.
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 he 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.
So… Jack Antonoff was no help, right? That’s the moral here? No, I jest the multi-millionaire music producer! I actually know someone who handles all the licensing for an artist, and it is a business. So the fee Marc landed on probably came down to Taylor commanding big bucks to begin with, plus other factors, like the song isn’t just being used in his stand-up but airing in a special on HBO Max. The viewership that network garners will have upped the price tag quite a bit. So if there truly is a moral of this story, I’d say it’s that the stand-up can stand up on its own without the music! The jury will be out until the special airs (again, this Friday!), but I’m betting now that I’ll watch it and think, “The song wasn’t THAT crucial.” Certainly not to the tune of $50K! Also, “There’s a lot of longing and sadness and isolation and processing these overwhelming feelings of melancholy,” is a brilliantly concise summation of Taylor’s oeuvre.
On a completely different note, I would like to comment on Marc’s mustache. I have been on record as generally anti-mustache. Mr. Maron is an exception to the rule. Why? Because he wears the stache, the stache isn’t wearing him.
That sounds low for 1 whole minute, considering it is Taylor Swift and the project is on HBO. The artists most of the time make most money through licensing. So, it costs a lot of money to the productions. I listened to office ladies podcast, they listed the expenses for each episode. It was almost always the song license that was one of the most expensive items in the list.
I’ve seen Marc Maron live three times now and he’s wonderful. If he says the music is necessary for the bit, I’d believe it. He’s also been on the Apple TV+ show Stick and he’s easily the best part.
Looking forward to the new special!
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve always liked his podcast even though I don’t keep current on it.
You go to ASCAP for licensing, I think.
Actually, in the case of Taylor Swift you go to her brother Austin. He’s been in charge of her music licensing for years now.
I haven’t always been a fan of Maron as an actor because he tends to play himself — a grumpy middle-aged guy who is left of Clint Eastwood but you can still see him yelling at kids to get off his lawn — but it totally works in Stick. He and Owen Wilson play well together and their characters’ history means there are a whole lot more stories for the show to reveal. Very much looking forward to seeing the 2nd season, even though I’m even less of a fan of golf!
“Bigger than the Whole Sky” is generally thought to be about a miscarriage. Considering his late partner went through one, it makes me wonder what the segment is going to be about.