Taylor Swift in Emo Version: The Story of the Cameo in CSI
Fill stadiums? Beat Frank Sinatra in Grammy Awards won for “Album of the Year”? Write some of the most iconic pages in pop music? No, the young Taylor Swift’s dream was different: acting in an episode of the cult series “CSI”, a phenomenon of the 2000s When the future pop star’s second album, “Fearless,” was released in 2008, Taylor Swift was 19 and in interviews she said she wanted to one day act in the series about the Las Vegas crime scene, starring William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and Gary Dourdan.
It’s not long before Taylor gets that wish. It’s the .March 5, 2009 when does cbs air the episode “Turn, turn, turn” of “CSI” – which will arrive in Italy on September 24th of the same year – which has as its protagonist a young emo girl killed by stepmother. Black hair with a white tuft, in perfect emo style, nose and mouth piercings: looking back at the video of the episode today, it doesn’t even look like her. And instead it’s Taylor Swift.
When the singer-songwriter from Reading made her debut on set in the spring of 2009, she was no stranger to the unknown: she had two albums behind her, the 2006 eponymous debut “Taylor Swift” and the same “Fearless”, while the hit “Love Story” had catapulted her to the top of the US charts. For American teenagers she is already a star, for her parents a little lessdespite having already collected guest appearances on top US TV talk shows such as – among others – “Good Morning America” and the “Ellen DeGeneres Show”. If The episode will be watched by over 20 million viewers across the United Statesin short, it is certainly not due to his cameo: simply, “CSI” is at the height of its success. The series debuted in 2000, immediately proving to be one of the most successful series on American television, so much so that it convinced directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie to guest-star in special episodes.
The episode “Turn, Turn, Turn” tells a story that unfolds over the course of an entire year, set mainly in a squalid motel. It is there that at the beginning of the episode one of the “CSI” agents, Nick, played by George Eads, finds the body of the emo Taylor Swift lying on the ground in the parking lot: “I knew her,” he says. In the same motel Nick had investigated months before the death of another woman and on that occasion he had met Haley, this is the name of the character played by the singer-songwriter, a rebel turned emo after being bullied online, accidentally stabbed by her stepmother after a violent argument. “I was dead with my eyes open, I literally had to stare into space and not breathe during close-ups, not flinch, nothing at all,” Swift reportedly said of the experience as an actress, which she would repeat several times throughout her career (such as when she played Eline in “New Girl” in 2013, and then in films such as 2010’s “Valentine’s Day,” 2014’s “The Giver,” and 2022’s “Amsterdam”).
Swift took the opportunity to also do some promotion for the album “Fearless”. How? In the soundtrack of the episode “Turn, turn, turn” there was also one of the songs contained in the album released a few months before, “You’re not sorry”, but in a remix version. The week after the episode aired, the single returned to the Billboard Hot 100.. Swift has explored the relationship between music and video intensely over the years. Just think that last year, in the second season of the series “The summer I turned pretty” alone, there were nine of her songs: “This love (Taylor’s version)”, “Last kiss (Taylor’s version)”, “Hey Stephen”, “Invisible string”, “Sweet nothing”, “Delicate (Taylor’s version)”, “Snow on the beach”, “Bigger than the whole sky” and “Exile”. Also last year, “Look what you made me do (Taylor’s version)” was chosen for the opening credits of “Wilderness”. This year, “Love Story (Taylor’s version)” was included in the episodes of “The Bear”, while in the third season of “Bridgerton” the same “Snow on the beach” appeared.
