Stephen Colbert reacts to Taylor Swift’s album getting mixed reviews

Stephen Colbert spends most of his Late Show monologues talking politics, but on Monday night he took a brief segue into an entertainment story that’s been making unsurprisingly huge headlines: The launch of Taylor Swift‘s new album, The Life of a Showgirl. The host was quick to defend Swift from some of the mixedreviewsof the record, using an impassioned argument to do so.

“Taylor Swift dropped her new album The Life of a Showgirl to merely mixed reviews. Well those reviewers are just jealous of her talent, and of Travis Kelce’s majestic redwood,” Colbert says in the clip above, referencing lyrics from the track “Wood”.

“Yes, yes. A sequoia, it is nearly 2000 years old. I hear it has its own ecosystem. There’s protesters up in the branches to keep it from being cut down!”