taylor
Taylor Swift performing New Year's Day on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.YouTube screenshot

Taylor Swift falls into the category of artists who ace at surprising their fans. But recently, Taylor appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and did something so extraordinary, that took the entire crew and audience by surprise, including the host himself.

On Monday night, the 27-year-old country-turned-pop star visited Jimmy Fallon's talk show upon a last minute notice and performed her latest ballad, New Year's Day, from her latest album, Reputation.

Also read: Taylor Swift's new album is finally here: A list of which song could be about whom

While the song itself is about the value of memories, what made it all the more apt was that earlier last week, Jimmy's mother, Gloria, passed away unexpectedly.

The 43-year-old comedian slash host had taken time off the show and the Monday episode was the first one ever since he returned. But what's more shocking is that, certain lyrical references from the song were so in sync with Jimmy's relationship with his mother, that it moved everyone to tears.

In a 15-minute monologue, Jimmy spoke about his late mother, paying her a tribute and proceeding to share a little anecdote from the past.

"When we were little, my mom would walk us to this store, me and my sister, and we would hold hands, she would squeeze my hand three times and say, 'I love you,' and I would squeeze back, 'I love you, too.'"

Holding back tears, he added, "And last week, I was in the hospital at her side and I grabbed her hand, and I squeezed, 'I love you,' and I just knew we were in trouble."

Following this was Taylor's performance of New Year's Day and to everybody's surprise, the song had lyrics that spoke about the same hand squeezing gesture.

Taylor's lyrics were: "You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi / I can tell that it's gonna be a long road / I'll be there if you're the toast of the town, babe / Or if you strike out and you're crawling home"

And as the Tonight Show producer Mike DiCenzo wrote in a thread of tweets, it took almost everybody by surprise and led them to tears as none of this was pre-planned.

taylor
Taylor Swift hugging The Tonight Show host, Jimmy Fallon.YouTube screenshot