Happy Birthday to Mama Swift: “My mom’s my best friend, I’m obsessed with my mom” – Taylor Swift

gave an emotional performance of her 2008 tribute track for Mama Swift, “The Best Day” — but not before recalling the sweet story of how she sneakily surprised her mom with the song all those years ago.I secretly recorded a song on Fearless,” she told the crowd, sitting at her piano for the second of her two nightly surprise songs (the first one was “Hey Stephen,” another Fearless favorite). “It was very sneaky and fun.”

The “Anti-Hero” singer went on to say that it was very difficult to write and record “The Best Day” without her mom knowing, as she was just 16 or 17 at the time. “I wrote this song just compiling these sort of core childhood memories I had of not just her as a mother, but her as a friend,” she continued. After playing it for the first time for her mom, Andrea Swift, she asked, “Did you like the song?”

Andrea, however, didn’t even realize it had been written about and for her. “It’s such a beautiful song. Where did you find it? It sounds exactly like the things we went through,” Swift’s mom replied, according to the star.

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“I was like, ‘Mom, I wrote it and recorded it secretly, it is our memories,” Swift explained to her, which she said moved Andrea to tears. “It was the sweetest thing ever because I just think she couldn’t have comprehended that I would write a song about the two of us.”