The Weeknd Remembers the Time Taylor Swift Pet His Hair: 'She Was Just Drawn to It'

Maybe you missed this cute anecdote about Taylor Swift petting The Weeknd’s hair for like 15 minutes.

It happened earlier this year at Sam Smith’s Grammy party, a night that The Weeknd recalls in a Rolling Stone cover story about his current breakout. He says:

“Everyone was hammered. Sam had just won, like, every Grammy, so he was having the time of his life. Max Martin actually left because everyone was so drunk. Unfortunately, that was the one month I decided to stop drinking. Everybody was having a great time, all these cool things were happening, and I was shaking, like — ‘Fuck, I really want a drink.’”

So, it’s established that everyone was drunk. The Weeknd was then introduced to Swift, who he says, “actually schooled me on my own shit.”

“She was like, ‘I’ve been listening to ‘The Morning’ for years — it’s one of my favorite songs ever! I mean, she might have just Googled it. But she seemed genuine.”

While impressing The Weeknd by spewing facts about The Weeknd, Swift for some reason kept petting his hair. There seems to have been no preface of “Can I touch your hair?” As with all things Taylor Swift, it’s a subconsciously offensive move (albeit while drunk), though The Weeknd didn’t find it that off-putting, or at least didn’t express it outwardly:

“I think she was just drawn to it — she must have been a little gone off a few drinks. And of course I’m not going to be like, ‘Hey, can you stop?’ I mean, it felt good! But when she started petting my hair, that’s when I was like, ‘I definitely need a drink.’”

It felt good, but…please don’t.

Swift told this story before during a BBC interview with her best friend Ed Sheeran that went something like this:

Taylor: I woke up to an e-mail from The Weeknd, and he was like, “You told me how beautiful I was for like 15 minutes straight and started to pet my hair.”

Ed: His hair is very pattable.

Taylor: It looked really cool that night and I apparently went on and on about it.

BBC host: This sounds like quite the evening. You petted The Weeknd.

Taylor: Yeah, I just thought—

BBC host: Like an animal.

Taylor: I was like “You’re so magnificent.”

Swift, of course, saw it as more of a funny story than an annoying “please don’t touch my hair” moment.

The Weeknd—who gets asked about his hair a lot and purposefully styles it that way, which still doesn’t mean you should just go ahead and touch it—says the look is Basquiat-inspired.

“I want to be remembered as iconic and different,” he explains in the Rolling Stone piece. “So I was like, ‘Fuck it—I’m gonna let my hair just be what it wants.’ I’ll probably cut it if it starts interfering with my sight. I can kind of see it right now. But if I cut it, I’d look like everyone else. And that’s just so boring to me.”