Maya Hawke Says These 2 Taylor Swift Songs Are Like ‘Epic Poetry,’ Explains Why Eminem Is the GOAT

While facing the heat on Hot Ones, Maya Hawke praised two artists she thinks are the epitome of cool: Taylor Swift and Eminem.

In the episode posted Thursday (Oct. 22), the singer-actress braved increasingly spicy bites of chicken wings — the temperatures of which possibly even rivaled when her character, Robin, flambéed Vecna in season four of Stranger Things — and gushed about two of her favorite Swift songs. “OK, I’m going ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ or ‘Betty,'” she said when host Sean Evans asked which track would best represent the Eras headliner in the “American anthology of poetry.”

“They tell a full story like an epic poetry,” Hawke continued of the Tortured Poets Department and Folklore cuts. “They do it without using clichés. They tell an original story that plays on themes and historical ideas. And I think they’re just very fully thought through, extremely complete, kind of epic journeys. And to do a journey like that in such a condensed amount of time — it’s just concentrated humanity, you know?”

Hawke has long been a fan of Swift’s, and in 2024, she helped connect the 14-time Grammy winner with her own A-list father, Ethan Hawke, so that he could make a cameo in the “Fortnight” music video. “I think she made a generation of young people listen to music and think, ‘Oh, my life could matter,'” Maya told Rolling Stone of Swift earlier this year.

Elsewhere on the Hot Ones episode, the One Night Only star — whose latest album, Maitreya Corso, dropped in May — explained why she thinks Slim Shady should be the blueprint for artists, especially now. “The arts has really lost it’s, like, ‘F–k you’ attitude toward the industry,” she said. “[Eminem is] like, ‘I don’t need your, like, love. I’m cooler if I get bad reviews, ’cause it means I’m a rebel, right? It means I’m making something that’s not a part of your system.'”

“We really started to be like, ‘Really, daddy? Daddy, do you like it? Did my movie make money? Is it good? Do you like me?'” she continued of Em, whom she’s said is the “epic of our time.” “I miss that punk spirit. And so sometimes when I’m feeling too ‘Daddy do you love me?’ I listen to my Eminem, and I’m like, ‘I don’t care if daddy loves me. I’m free. I’m not a part of your system.'”