Sombr has admitted that sharing a stage with Taylor Swift came with one very specific survival strategy: don’t look directly at her.
Sombr, real name Shane Boose, was picked by Swift herself to perform at her Songwriters Hall of Fame induction in June, taking on her tracks Cardigan and Dear John while she watched from the crowd, bobbing along and mouthing every word with a huge smile on her face.
For an artist who was still a relative newcomer at the time, performing someone else’s discography back to them, especially when that someone is the biggest pop star on the planet, is a lot to hold together in the moment. Sombr’s fix was simple. Just don’t look at her.
Sombr Explains Why He Avoided Eye Contact With Taylor Swift
In a new Variety cover feature, Sombr revealed exactly what was going through his head onstage.
“If I looked at her for three seconds during the performance, my mind would have completely blanked because that’s Taylor Swift, That’s a goddess,” he said. “I remember looking at her for a split second while performing and almost losing it, but then I looked away.”
Swift didn’t hold back her reaction either. She later took the stage herself to call his performance perfect, praised his songwriting as so exceptional it made her feel envious, and told the room that Sombr is the future. What actually got to Boose, though, wasn’t the praise. It was hearing her say his real name out loud, which he says brought him to tears.
The two have a history that goes back further than that night. After Swift name-checked him in a rare interview as an artist she’d been listening to, Sombr sent a thank-you note to her team. She wrote back with a letter and a necklace, and the two have stayed in touch since.
It’s a wild trajectory for an artist who was, by his own account, never supposed to be on Swift’s radar at all, let alone trading letters with her. His debut album, “I Barely Know Her,” has since racked up more than 4 billion streams, and moments like this one only underline how fast his rise has been.
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