Photo: Taylor Swift / YouTube
It will take a strong cup of coffee and a lot of patience to untangle the teenage love-triangular trilogy in the new Taylor Swift folklore album, which consists of the vocal anthems “cardigan,” “august” and “betty,” spelling spelling required. “Betty,” in particular served as frenzied fodder for Swift theorists – especially since the names of the song’s favorite protagonists (James, Inez, and Betty) are the daughters of Swift’s good friends, Blake. Lively and Ryan Reynolds. That could be this subtle confirmation that Swift sees herself as James, and pints of a Betty in real life? (Ahem, Mrs. Kloss.) Well, according to her, no. In a new interview with Country Radio, Swift confirmed that the ‘betty’ James is a teenage boy, which kind of undermines the whole queer-canon thing.
‘James has lost the love of his life in principle and does not understand how he can get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really give a heartfelt apology for the first time, ”Swift explained about the premise of the song. “Everyone makes mistakes, everyone really makes some mess and this is a song I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. I have always loved that you can slip into music in different identities and that you can sing from other people’s perspectives. That’s what I did to this one. Swift also confirmed that she “named all the characters in this story after the children of my friends”, probably because she thought her names were cute? Still … that does not explain Kloss’ latest Instagrams.
