GAYLE Spills the Tea on How Taylor Swift Asked Her to Open for The Eras Tour: ‘I Feel Like This Is a Dream’

GAYLE went to the 2022 MTV Europe Music Awards on Sunday (Nov. 13) and dished about how she ended up as an opener on Taylor Swift‘s upcoming Eras Tour.

“Obviously I’ve known about Taylor, for forever, like my whole entire life — I can’t remember a time where I didn’t know Taylor Swift,” the teen sensation told Entertainment Tonight from the red carpet in Düsseldorf, Germany. “My best friend and I went to [an] awards show and Taylor Swift happened to be there, and I did a performance and some very cool things happened after that.”

The awards show she’s referring to was September’s Nashville Songwriter Awards, where she performed her breakout hit “abcdefu,” which was voted one of the 10 “songs I wish I’d written” by the NSAI Professional Songwriter Members. Honored as the organization’s Songwriter-Artist of the Decade, Swift also happened to be in attendance at the show, and the pair ultimately snapped a cute selfie together.

“She was just like, ‘You did a great performance — I’m gonna call you,’” GAYLE went on. “Now I’m here, and I can’t believe it. I feel like I’m lying. I feel like this is a dream. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

GAYLE is one of many openers on Swift’s tour — including Paramore, Beabadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, Girl in Red, MUNA, HAIM, Gracie Abrams and OWENN — but don’t expect to hear a Taylor song in her own setlist for the shows. “I’m not gonna do a Taylor Swift cover, I feel like for obvious reasons,” she told ET. “She does it all great. I can’t do it any better.”