DISTURBED frontman David Draiman has reiterated his admiration for Taylor Swift, commending the pop sensation for delivering live performances of her music.
Draiman, who has previously shown interest in a potential collaboration with Swift, shared these sentiments during DISTURBED‘s concert in Peoria, Illinois, on January 19. After bringing two dads and their two 12-year-old daughters up on the stage, David said to the girls: “So I take it [the fact] that you came to the DISTURBED concert, as opposed to the Taylor Swift concert, means that your parents are raising you on rock and roll.
“Hey, don’t forget: Taylor Swift still kicks a*s.” When some concertgoers started booing that remark, Draiman quickly fired back: “Don’t you boo her. You know what? I will stand up and applaud any pop artist that gets up on stage and sings live and plays a guitar live in front of a whole group of f**king thousands of girls and guys, young fans. Don’t talk s**t about Taylor Swift. She is for real. And she’s making sure that an entire generation of new music fans understand what it means to actually play music live.”
In August of the past year, Draiman expressed to Sara Parker of Philadelphia’s WMMR radio station his eagerness to perform a cover of a Taylor Swift song.
“I think that she is one of the most prolific songwriters of our generation,” he said. “I think she is insanely talented. I’d love to collaborate with Taylor if she ever wanted to, on any given day.”
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I think she’s a brilliant woman,” David continued. “I think she’s, like I said, one of the great songwriters of our time. I love her gumption. I love the fact that she gets on stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming young female fans and plays a real instrument and sings live and is the real deal. I mean, there are a number of people within the pop genre that still do it the way that she does it — Pink is one of them; Lady Gaga is one of them. A lot of these people are just so gifted and so great at what they do, and she’s certainly way, way, way up there. I have nothing but the utmost respect for her.
