Mike Portnoy plays Taylor Swift: “I swear I’ve never heard her”

After Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stewart Copeland and many others, Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater was also recently a guest on the Drumeo video series on YouTube, and accepted the challenge called “For the First Time”, for which he had to play a song on the drums that he had never heard before. The drummer, who rejoined the “Pull me under” band in 2023 after thirteen years, found himself having to deal with a Taylor Swift song, swearing he had never heard it before.

As the potentially only person in the world who has never previously heard the 2014 hit “Shake It Off”, Mike Portnoy launched into a drum cover of the pop star’s song for Drumeo without initially knowing what song it was.

In the video, after playing the song for the first time, the Dream Theater drummer is seen asking: “Is this something popular?”. When told that the track has more than 3 billion plays on Spotify, Portnoy then assured that he had never heard it, saying: “It sounds like something out of Disneyland in Japan, or something.”

Despite Mike’s desire to find out whose song it was, the Drumeo crew tasked him with trying to learn the song before knowing its provenance. Portnoy, however, admitted that he struggled to take notes: “I don’t think I could improve on what I did spontaneously,” he explained, before complaining about the lack of key changes and the massive presence of verses, choruses and rap passages in the song. He continued: “I don’t understand anything about it, so I’ll improvise on it, I guess.”

Only after listening to “Shake It Off” a couple of times and playing it was Portnoy told who was behind the track. “Oh my god, it’s Taylor Swift?! Simply the greatest artist on earth,” the drummer then exclaimed: “The greatest artist in the world and I don’t know a single one of her songs. My daughter will have a blast seeing this.”

With Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy will release the new album “Parasomnia” on February 7th, his first with the band since “Black Clouds & Silver Linings” in 2009.