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Taylor Swift is revealing why she’s a diehard Dateline fan.
The singer, 36, has been vocal about her love for Dateline for years, and she recently confirmed that her obsession with the NBC investigative news series has not waned.
During an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Dec. 10, Swift talked about how she unwinds when she’s not working, and referred to Dateline as a favorite pastime.
“My kind of profession is coming up with ideas for stuff. So, if I can turn off the ideas for a second? Very exciting,” she told host Stephen Colbert. “I’ll put on — I’ll put on my Dateline, do you know what I mean?”
The singer’s love for Dateline goes so deep that she actually used it as inspiration for a song on her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.
She explained that the concept behind her song “Florida!!!”, which explores haunting themes about hiding bodies and features Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch, was drawn from Dateline.
“I’m always watching like… Dateline, people have these crimes that they commit, where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida,” Swift said on iHeartRadio as she introduced her album. “They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in.”
“I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks: I want a new name, I want a new life, I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all,” she continued. “So that was the jumping-off point behind where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? ‘Florida!!!'”
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Swift has even hosted Dateline stars on various tours. Dennis Murphy, who has been a correspondent for the series since the ’90s, told Parade in 2018, that the singer is “the most wonderful human being,” as he recalled being invited to the Reputation tour.
“She invited us to come to her stadium tour and we got to go to the green room. When I introduced myself, she said, ‘I know who you are.’ That was mind-blowing,” Murphy told the outlet, calling Swift “a great Dateline watcher.”
Murphy also shared a story Swift’s dad, Scott, had told him while he was backstage at the sold-out tour. “I got to meet Taylor’s dad, and he told me that she called him up once and told him she had watched three Datelines in a row. She was interested in forensics as a kid, he told me, so that was great to hear.”
