Yahoo Lifestyle Kenny Chesney Explains Why He Once Asked Taylor Swift to ‘Give Me My Money Back’
Before Taylor Swift was the pop superstar that fans know her to be today, Kenny Chesney said he once gave her some money after her planned participation in one of his tours fell through.
The country music star, who was asked about his early memories of Swift during a Jan. 16 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, recalled that the “Cruel Summer” songstress was slated to tag along on his Flip Flop Summer tour back in 2007 when she was just 17. However, shortly before the tour was due to begin, Chesney, now 56, received some unsettling news.
“That summer, my tour was sponsored by a beer company, and they came to us right before the tour started and said, ‘We can’t have a minor on the tour,’” Chesney explained while relaying the circumstances to late night host Jimmy Fallon. “Which made sense. But I had to call Taylor personally and tell her she couldn’t go on tour with me.”
Chesney added that the whole thing seems “absurd” to him now given how successful Swift has become. “So I called her, told her she couldn’t go on the road, but I said, ‘Look, I feel terrible.’ Because she was going to lose some money. And I gave her a specific amount of money—it was quite a bit of money,” Chesney said, explaining that he “wanted to make it up to her.”
Later that year, both Chesney and Swift, now 35, received Entertainer of the Year nominations at the Country Music Association Awards—and Swift was the one who took home the trophy.
“So backstage, I went up to her and gave her a big hug,” Chesney remembered before jokingly adding “I said, ‘Congratulations, but give me my money back.’”
Looking back, the “When the Sun Goes Down” singer said he “knew she had something,” though he indicated that “nobody" could have predicted what Swift would one day become.
“Nobody knows, really, that a person has the ability to really touch the world like Taylor has, and brought a lot of people together,” he said. “Sports and music bring people together more than anything we have. I truly believe that.”
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