Today, in things that have never happened in our lifetime before now, The Offspring got a crowd to start a mosh pit with a Taylor Swift song. While the data on the headcount is still out, there’s a good possibility this was at least the largest mosh pit to a Taylor Swift song.
The Offspring attempted to set this unofficial record during their June 21 performance at Hellfest. They closed out the French metal festival this year with a high-energy headlining set, complete with pyrotechnics and an enthusiastic crowd.
So enthusiastic, in fact, that the pop-punk icons were able to get 50,000 people to mosh to “Love Story” seemingly without complaint. The pit happened around mid-set, after classic Offspring hits like “Come Out and Play”, “All I Want”, and “Staring at the Sun”. Then, frontman Dexter Holland got the crowd’s attention to pitch his plan.
The Offspring Keep Fans Guessing with Taylor Swift, Ozzy, and 19th-Century Classical Covers
“We’re going to have the biggest mosh pit to a Taylor Swift song ever,” said Holland. “You guys are going to help us. We’re going to make history tonight.”
Footage from the crowd shows a pit opening up near the stage, with a few fans starting to kick things off. The Offspring launched into the 2008 Swift hit with their own pop-punk flair, starting near the bridge. When the final chorus kicked in with the key change, the crowd converged in the center of the pit as easily as a zipper being pulled shut.
The fan-cam video posted on the band’s social media shows a rowdy pit that would typically be at odds with a Taylor Swift early smash hit. If it were anyone else performing it, most likely. But with The Offspring’s familiar sound, it suddenly becomes a song you want to punch your friends to.
Elsewhere in their set, the band covered Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”. They also included a snippet of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”. Before playing their fan-favorite hits, however, they pulled out their rendition of Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, a classical piece from the 1800s. A punk re-imagining of a classical composition and a mosh pit to Taylor Swift on the same night? No one ever said The Offspring doesn’t know how to have fun.
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