In a recent chat with the Los Angeles Times, Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott looked back on working with Taylor Swift. When asked if he could predict where Taylor was headed back in 2008, he said there is no one bigger than her in music.
“I don’t think anybody could. You look at it now and it kind of makes sense,” the rocker said. “But if you think back to 2008, there was no such thing as what she’s accomplished. I know anybody that was there when The Beatles and The Stones came over will go, ‘Wait a minute…’”
“But for people born this century or in the ’90s, this is a phenomenon that’s never been seen before — technically bigger than The Beatles and The Stones combined, at least commercially,” the singer compared the two bands to Swift. “It’s insanity, the amount of tickets she sells. But I always knew she’d be big. And for all the hardships she’s gone though — the people who’ve tried to trip her up over the years at certain parts of her career — she’s just dusted herself down. She’s a fantastic role model for a generation of kids.”
Elliott teamed up with Swift 16 years ago for an episode of CMT’s ‘Crossroads.’ Back then, Swift was just starting her music career with country songs.
The frontman talked about Def Leppard teaming up with Swift in a 2018 chat with Rolling Stone magazine.
“The whole thing came together because somebody walked into our dressing room with a laptop,” Elliott explained who offered to work as partners at first: He goes, ‘It’s Taylor Swift, she’s doing this interview, and she said there was only band that she would ever do a ‘Crossroads’ with, and it was Def Leppard.’ We went, ‘Wow, okay, get in touch with her, see what she thinks.’ Lo and behold, couple of months go by and, all of a sudden, we’re doing this show.”
To this day, Elliott’s kids still don’t believe their father sang with Swift. “It’s a strange thing. My kids, who are 14, 7 and 4, have never seen me with Taylor Swift. And I’ve told them, they didn’t believe me,” the rocker said during another interview a few months ago. “Because my kids are Swifties. And they didn’t believe that daddy had sung with Taylor Swift. So I had to pull the DVD out and put it on. And they were just like this. [Opens his mouth wide]”
Elliott also said in many different interviews that Swift was great and she did a good job.