Maybe you love Taylor Swift, maybe you hate her. Or maybe you don’t care.
But you can’t ignore her. The pop music icon is as close to a Michael Jackson level fame celebrity as we’ve seen since…1980s Michael Jackson.
The King of Pop never appeared on Saturday Night Live. But Swift has: she hosted in Season 35 on November 7, 2009. She was just 19 years old at the time, but she did a nice job in her host role, even crafting an excellent impression of Shakira.
Swift has also appeared four times as the musical guest, in addition to being the musical performer when she hosted. As a musical guest only, Swift made appearances on SNL in Season 34, 43, 45, and 47.
But this season there are many reasons to bring Swift back for a hosting gig. On October 3 she will debut her new album (conveniently one day before the S51 opener).
Swift is currently on a run of success that only a very few musical artists have ever enjoyed. Swift has sold out venues across the globe in each of her celebrated world tours. She has garnered four Album of the Year Grammy awards, the most ever.
Now a mature 35-year old, Swift has 14 Grammy Awards, 12 Country Music Awards, and an Emmy Award. She is also one of only 11 solo artists to sell as many as 200 million records.
Swift has more than 280 million followers on Instagram, 71 million on Facebook, and countless other “Swifties” who subscribe to her content, stream her songs, or watch her videos on YouTube.
In each of 2023 and 2024, Swift crushed the competition to earn the position as No. 1 most-streamed artist on Spotify.
Taylor Swift isn’t just famous. She is uber-famous.
That and her new album are a huge reason Lorne Michaels should consider her for to host the season opener on October 4, 2025.
Yes, Swift can also be polarizing: there are people who dislike her because she’s perceived as being too liberal, or because she is dating an NFL player, or they think her squeaky clean image is fake.
Haters are going to hate, but Taylor Swift as host and musical guest makes the best sense for the SNL season 51 opener.
The show has yet to announce the host for the opener or subsequent episodes. In the past that information has not been revealed until two weeks to 10 days before the show.
SNL dropped four cast members ahead of Season 51, and added five. The cast is now at 18: the largest in the history of the NBC comedy variety show.
