It’s been six years since Stephen Colbert joined indie folk band The Mountain Goats on stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater for a rousing rendition of their song “This Year” on The Late Show—but fans are cheering all over again after the show resurfaced the performance clip over the weekend.
The song, whose chorus begins “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me,” feels especially poignant now, with CBS having canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert but giving the host ten more months to continue speaking comedy truth to power.
But “This Year” had already struck a chord with Colbert back in 2019. In his introduction to the performance, Colbert notes that the track wasn’t from The Mountain Goats’ then-new album—but that he’d asked them to play it “because it’s one of my favorite songs of theirs.”
An exuberant Colbert joins the band about 90 seconds into the clip, belting out the chorus and sticking around for the rest of the song, which transforms into a duet with frontman John Darnielle.
Posting the performance to its social channels, The Late Show captioned the clip: “We are, indeed, going to make it through this year. Throwing it back to an epic performance by Stephen & the Mountain Goats.”
The message wasn’t lost on fans. “That’s the theme for this season, isn’t it?” one commenter wrote on TikTok. Another added, “This is so cool and so devastating at the same time.”
“I’ve seen this before but in context with everything going on, this made me SOB (but his dancing also makes me die laughing every time omg),” a fan commented on Instagram.
Watch Colbert’s performance of “This Year” with The Mountain Goats at the top of this post.
