Taylor Swift may be prone to leaving out Easter eggs for her fans, but she admits that fans can go to extreme places when trying to decode her songs and that widespread decoding is still “weird” for her.
While sitting with New York Times For her appearance on the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters list released Tuesday, the singer-songwriter reflected on how the inspiration behind her songwriting became an obsession for fans.
“There are corners of my fanbase who will take things to a really extreme place,” Swift said. “There’s nothing I can do about it. There are people who will try to do detective work, find out the details – who is this? What is this?”
“Where it gets a little weird for me is when people act like it’s a paternity test,” she said. Like, “This song is about this person.” “Because I say, ‘This guy didn’t write the song, I did.’” “But that’s part of it,” she added.
Swift has never publicly specified the themes of her songs (aside from giving a “Ty” Easter egg in her liner notes Speak now album to her song “Back to December” to indicate that she was talking about her ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner) but that didn’t stop fans from trying to put two and two together.
In the weeks leading up to her album release Section of tortured poets Fans initially speculated it would be about her breakup with her ex-boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, given how similar the album’s title was to the “Tortured Man Club” WhatsApp group chat, which Alwyn said he’s part of Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. One of the songs on the album, “So Long, London,” also seems to refer to the British actor’s breakup.
Following the album’s release, fans also pointed out lyrics that seemed to refer to her reported relationship with 1975 frontman Matt Healy. Other fans have assumed that Swift’s songs are about John Mayer’s “Dear John” by Swift, and Harry Styles’s 1989 Album and Jake Gyllenhaal for the song “All Too Well”.
Despite the extensive analysis, Swift expressed the importance of adhering to her own “perception” when writing the song.
“You have to hold tight to your perception of your art and your relationship to it, and then you just kind of have to do it [mimes blowing it out] There he goes. I hope you like it. And if you don’t do it now, I hope you do it in five years, and if you never do it, I was doing it for me anyway.
in times In the profile, Swift also spoke about her songwriting process and the origins of some of her most popular singles including “Love Story.” Other songwriters on the list include Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Dolly Parton, Diane Warren and others.
