Taylor Swift Confirms One Theory About ‘betty’, But Not The Queer One

With each new Taylor Swift album comes a set of theories, as fans and tabloids alike try to decipher her lyrics to see what can be gleaned about her life. The surprise-released folklore, released just a fortnight ago, is no exception — in particular, the track ‘betty’ restoked the embers of rumours that the singer was queer.

Given that the track is written about being in love with a girl — a girl called ‘betty’, no less — it makes sense that fans, eager-eyed and ready for Easter Eggs and secret messages, were willing to read it as a coded coming out.

Then came the idea that the song was part of a love-triangle trilogy on the album, which shifted perspective between characters, James, Inez and Betty — ‘betty’ saw Swift sing as James about Betty. This much was confirmed in a recent interview on Country Radio (via Vulture).

“James has lost the love of his life basically and doesn’t understand how to get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really, really give a heartfelt apology for the first time,” Swift said.

“Everybody makes mistakes, everybody really messes up sometimes and this is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. I’ve always loved that in music you can kinda slip into different identities and you can sing from other people’s perspectives. So that’s what I did on this one.”

Still, that’s not to say queer audiences can’t connect with the song — as Madison Kircher wrote in an essay called “Taylor Swift’s Songs Can Be As Gay As You Want”, her lyrics are open enough that queer experience can be read into them for the listener, rather than to decipher the singer’s own sexuality.

She did, however, confirm one fan-theory in the interview. Fans noticed that James, Inez and Betty are all children of Swift’s famous friends, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds — and it’s not a coincidence. She said she named the characters after ‘friends’ kids’, which is cute.

Listen to ‘betty’ below.