The Beatles’ Ringo Starr Proclaims Taylor Swift Is This Generation’s Beatlemania

The Beatles’ Ringo Starr is singing Taylor Swift ’s praises, even suggesting that she is at the popularity level of his own legendary band.

When asked whether Swift, 34, and her musical empire is the “closest thing” to Beatlemania for this generation, Starr, 84, replied, “I do.”

“I think Taylor Swift is great anyway,” Starr told American Songwriter in an interview published on Saturday, October 19. “She’s pulling them in, you know.”

Starr explained that he crossed paths with the Eras Tour performer when she was a young teenager. “When we talk about her, I always have to mention that the first time I met her, she was 14,” he said. “She was at the Grammys with her mother. And then, I saw a photo of her the other day, just yesterday, of her and her mother.”

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He added jokingly about Andrea Swift, “So, mom’s still at it.”

Starr noted that there have been other singers who have drawn fan reaction comparable to the Beatles’ historical movement. “ Madonna was just out again, she was pulling them in,” he said. “So I think Taylor is the now one, we are the still now.”

Starr isn’t the only Beatles member who has been supportive of Swift’s musical abilities through the years. In 2018, Paul McCartney revealed he partly drew inspiration from Swift and her fans for his tune “Who Cares.”

“I was actually thinking about Taylor Swift and her relationship to her young fans. It’s sort of a sisterly thing,” McCartney, 82, told BBC at the time. “And I was imagining talking to one of these young fans and saying, 'Have you ever been bullied? Do you get bullied?' Then I say, 'Who cares about the idiots? Who cares about all this? Who cares about you? Well... I do.'"

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McCartney shared that he and Swift even had a conversation about coordinating their album release dates so as to not conflict with one another.

“I did the Rolling Stone cover with Taylor Swift, and she just emailed me recently and she said, ‘I wasn’t telling anyone, but I’ve got another album,'” McCartney recalled during an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show in December 2020. “And she said, ‘So I was going to put it out on my birthday.’ And then she said, ‘But I found out you were going to put [your album] out on the 10th. So I moved it to the 18th.’ And then she found out we were coming out on the 18th so she moved back to the 10th. People do keep out of each other’s way. It’s a nice thing to do.”

Less than four years later, McCartney traveled to London’s Wembley Stadium to attend Swift’s Eras Tour in June. He watched from the VIP tent alongside fellow artists like Peter Gabriel and Jon Bon Jovi .