Legendary Prog Metal Drummer Mike Portnoy Plays Taylor Swift Song Without Having Ever Heard It

One of my biggest bad habits — aside from being too nice and distractingly handsome — is that when I go to bed every night, I lay there for at least an hour watching stuff on my phone.

Ask any doctor, and they'll tell you that the best thing to do before drifting off to dreamland is to blast blue light from a screen six inches in front of your face straight into the back of your retinas.

Last night, I stumbled across an absolute gem of a video: legendary prog metal drummer Mike Portnoy playing a Taylor Swift song after hearing it for the first time.

If you're unfamiliar, Portnoy is one of the best drummers of all time. He's best known as the drum for progressive metal greats Dream Theater, but he's played in a bunch of other great bands like the Winery Dogs (with Richie Kotzen on guitar and vocals and Billy Sheehan on bass, so if you like bands that know how to play, check them out), and he's even done some live and studio stints with the likes of Avenged Sevenfold and Twisted Sister.

In this video, Portnoy was in the studio with Drumeo, a platform that teaches people how to play drums, but they also make incredible videos with some of the world's best drummers like Phill Collins, Stewart Copeland, and, of course, Portnoy.

They do a series where they play a song for a drummer that they've never heard, they only remove the drum track. Then, it's up to the drummer to write a drum part for that song.

The results are usually very cool, and that was the case when Portnoy took on the Taylor Swift song "Shake It Off."

Watch and enjoy:

How incredible was that? Hearing some of Portnoy's iconic fills, some double bass drum action, and that little half-time bit in a sugary, poppy Taylor Swift song is wild to listen to in the best way.

Also, the fact that he somehow managed to steer clear of this tune for as long as he did, should be documented and studied. That seems almost impossible.

Such a cool video, and there's another one where Portnoy plays the Nickelback song "Burn It To The Ground" after hearing it for the first time and improves it exponentially as well, just like he did to this Taylor Swift tune.