Taylor Swift shared her thoughts on fans attempting to figure out who her songs are about.
Swift, 36, opened up to The New York Times on Tuesday, April 28, about fan speculation on her songs as part of the publication’s “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters” ranking.
As she got candid about the “intimate” aspect of her songwriting, Swift admitted that some of her fans take dissecting her music to an “extreme” level.
“I have to know that there’s certain things that we have as a tradition between me and my fans,” Swift explained. “They love for an emotional song to be Track 5 [on an album].”
She continued, “There’s special things like that, but at the same time, there are so many of them — which is great — but there’s corners of my fan base who are gonna take things to a really extreme place. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The Grammy winner went on to say that she has “detectives” in her fan base who try to “figure out the details” behind her songs, which can make her uncomfortable.
“When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s sort of a paternity test,” Swift explained. “Like, ‘This song’s about that person,’ because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song, I did.’”
“But that’s part of it,” she added, noting that when she releases a song, she knows it’s up for interpretation. “There it goes! Hope you like it!” she quipped. “And if you never do, then I was doing it for me anyway.”
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While much of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, was inspired by her relationship with fiancé Travis Kelce, fans have theorized that other famous exes — from Joe Alwyn and Joe Jonas to Matty Healy — were muses throughout her career.
Elsewhere in the interview, Swift shared the backstory behind one of her top hits, “Love Story,” which she released in 2008. “I think the first time I felt I don’t care if people hate this because I love it so much was when I wrote the song ‘Love Story’ when I was 17,” she recalled. “Sitting in my bedroom, mad at my parents because they wouldn’t let me go on a date with a guy who was too old so I shouldn’t have been on a date with him anyway,” she said of her parents, Andrea and Scott Swift.
The pop star continued, “And this is why you need to discipline your kids because they might write songs that go No. 1.”
