Taylor Swift is gay. Here’s how I know.
a deep dive into a performance artist playing a singer
Taylor Swift is a name almost everyone in the world knows. She is one of the most prolific songwriters and singers of all time, and certainly of the 21st century. She has been putting out music for 19 years and has seen great success almost every step of the way. However, she is now reaching new heights in fame and success that we haven’t seen since maybe the Beatles. She is also doing it at 35 years old. In her words, she is a “geriatric pop star” and yet, people still want more. Why? And possibly more importantly, how is she creating this demand?
I have been a self-proclaimed Swifty since Fearless came out when I was 4 years old. I memorized the lyrics of You Belong With Me and Love Story while laying under my princess themed bedding, listening to the songs on my iPod shuffle, and imagining singing the lyrics to my pre-school crush. When I got an iPod touch in third grade, the first thing I did was download all of my favorite Taylor Swift songs on iTunes, and I would look at the album covers on the small screen and wish my hair looked like hers. In fourth grade, I made countless Video Stars to 22 and We are Never Getting Back Together. In sixth grade, me and my friends made up a dance to Shake It Off during recess (which I can still perform on command). When my very first boyfriend cheated on me when I was 15, I cried to All Too Well, Dear John, and Last Kiss. At 21, I went to the Eras Tour with my best friends and I scream-sing The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived in my car and I cry to The Prophecy. This is just a short list of the ways Taylor Swift and her music has embedded itself in my memories and life, and I am far from alone in these experiences.
There is something very special and comforting about having an artist whose music has grown with you and been there for you in your vulnerable moments throughout your life. It creates this bond between you and the artist, as if you know them and they know you; you’ve felt the same ways, you’ve gone through similar things.
Of course, that is not the reality of the situation. No matter how well I know Taylor Swift’s lyrics, or how intently I have watched all of her interviews, or how closely I look for easter eggs, or how many tabloid stories I read, I do not know Taylor Swift. She herself has said, “I can show you lies” so why do I feel like I know what she is up to?
In 2009, on the way to see the Hannah Montana Movie with my best friend, her mom said, “I’m excited, I like Miley Cyrus! She can actually sing, unlike Taylor Swift!” Which prompted me to defend Taylor Swift for the first time in my memory. Saying, “If she can’t sing, then why is she on the radio?” I remember feeling proud of my response (it was pretty quick-witted for a 5 year old, if I do say so myself). However, she replied with one word that both stumped me, and has stayed with me since that April afternoon 16 years ago, “politics”.
Of course, at that time, I had no idea what politics meant, or what it had to do with Taylor Swift’s singing. However, in the present world where Taylor Swift is a billionaire and has a larger platform and influence than any current entertainer, she seems inextricably linked from politics.
And yet, she still feels relatable. How?
Taylor Swift seems like a very down to Earth and humble person. She goes out of her way to tip staffers at high-profile events she goes to. She gave her truck drivers $100,000-$200,000 Christmas bonuses during the Era’s Tour. She fills up the food bank at every city she travels to. She surprises sick children in the hospital from time to time. She wrote a song for a mom blogger she followed who lost her son to cancer, and donates all of the proceeds from that song to charities to fight against cancer. She goes above and beyond what most celebrities do.
She has a dating life with aspects every girl understands. She has situationships and breakups and ex’s and fun honeymoon stages and people she goes back to over and over again, just like the rest of us. Of course there are always clips and videos that go viral where us fans get a glimpse into her world and these relationships. With these glimpses, we can fill in the blanks we’ve been wondering about: Are they still dating? Are they going on trips? Is the relationship going well? How is he treating her? Is he going to her events? Is she going to his?
Then, she releases albums and she tells us how all these things we’ve heard about and seen in her life really felt like. We all feel like we’re there with her and understand her when she talks about crying at the gym, and feeling like she was sinking with the relationship, and how she thought she could fix this guy, and how she feels lied to, and how she doesn’t know if she’ll ever find love, and how she really wanted this old relationship to work out, and all the other horrible and amazing feelings we all have experienced at one point or another. She is able to put these feelings into words in such special ways, she can describe your feelings better than you can. She is also able to morph these feelings into stories in her songs; it sometimes feels like she is talking about your life rather than her own. And if it doesn’t feel like she’s talking about you, there’s still the chance to learn more about what Travis Kelce is like as a boyfriend. It is captivating.
Taylor Swift has called herself a storyteller many times. She claims her storytelling is what sets her apart from other artists. I think when people hear that, they think she is only talking about her songs (and I think that is by design). However, Taylor tells stories through far more mediums than just songs; her entire public life is the story, the songs are just the main character’s monologues.
Because of Taylor’s incredible work at storytelling outside of her music, people often don’t truly look at the content of her lyrics. They take the first meaning they get when they hear it – which typically aligns with the rest of what they have seen or heard about – and accept that as what she means. I think that is an act of disrespect to her writing.
She has incredible lines in her music, like:
“Now you hang from my lips / Like the Gardens of Babylon / With your boots beneath my bed / Forever is the sweetest con” - Cowboy Like Me
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?” - the lakes
“Do you miss the rogue / Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? / Will you forgive my soul / When you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?” - Coney Island
“If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh / Down that passage in time / Back to the moment I crashed into you / Like so many wrecks do / Too impaired by my youth / To know what to do” - Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
“He was a hot house flower to my outdoorsmen / Our maladies were such we could not cure them / And so a touch that was my birthright became foreign” - How did it end?
“I was in my tower weaving nightmares / Twisting all my smiles into snarls / They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you aware" / What happens if it becomes who you are?” - Cassandra
Her music is chock full of metaphors and allusions and imagery that people overlook because they are focused on what it sounds like, or what this means about her breakup, or even just because they’re not thinking about it that closely. These aspects are where the real story has been told for years.
Throughout all of Taylor’s 11 albums, there is a common thread of a secret or forbidden love, her struggle with her religion, and the influence of those around her.
In her debut album released in 2006, she included the song Invisible. In this song, she is talking to her muse and telling them that the girl they’re interested in doesn’t see the real them, and even if she did, she would never be interested. Taylor, on the other hand, understands her muse and wants them to see that they’re the same. However, for some reason she can’t tell the muse this, and the muse doesn’t notice. Interesting lyrics in this song include:
“She's never gonna love you like I want to
And you just see right through me but if you only knew me
We could be a beautiful, miracle, unbelievable
Instead of just invisible”“Like shadows in a faded light
Oh we're invisible
I just wanna open your eyes
And make you realize”
In her second album, Fearless, she released the song Love Story. This is a song about a forbidden love, where she wants to run away in order to be with this person; she can’t be with them due to other people. She compares it to Romeo and Juliet, a famous tragedy about two secret lovers who ended up killing themselves after running away from their parents rules. Taylor also refers to herself as a scarlet letter in this song, which basically means her identity is a sign of shame or judgement in society. Interesting lines such as:
“So I sneak out to the garden to see you
We keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if they knew
So close your eyes
Escape this town for a little while”“'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter
And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet"
But you were everything to me”“they're tryna tell me how to feel
This love is difficult, but it's real”
In her third album, Speak Now, she released the song Sparks Fly. This is a song about a muse that is dangerous, something about being with this person is reckless and Taylor struggles with knowing she shouldn’t give in, but still wanting to. Interesting lines such as:
“You're the kind of reckless that should send me running / But I kinda know that I won't get far / And you stood there in front of me just / Close enough to touch / Close enough to hope you couldn't see / What I was thinking of’
“My mind forgets to remind me you're a bad idea / You touch me once and it's really something”
“It's just wrong enough to make it feel right”
“I'm on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it's no good”.
In her fourth album, Red, she releases the song Treacherous. This is a song about a muse that Taylor really wants to be with, but being with them is risky and dangerous. However, despite the danger that comes along with this relationship Taylor gives in. However, they are still separated in some way with Taylor following this person home, rather than going home with them. Interesting lines such as:
“Put your lips close to mine / As long as they don't touch / out of focus, eye to eye, / ‘till the gravity’s too much” ,
“This hope is treacherous / This daydream is dangerous / This hope is treacherous” ,
“That nothing safe is worth the drive / And I will follow you, follow you home”
In her fifth album, 1989, she releases the song Wonderland. In this song she is talking about a relationship with a muse where they created their own special world, like wonderland, and they lost control of the relationship. They tried to keep this relationship a secret, but people began to find out and they had to end it. Interesting lyrics such as:
“Haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds?”
“Too in love to think straight / All alone, or so it seemed / But there were strangers watching / And whispers turned to talking / And talking turned to screams, oh”
“And we pretended it could last forever / We found Wonderland / You and I got lost in it / And life was never worse but never better”
In her sixth album, Reputation, she releases the song Dancing With Our Hands Tied. This is a song about a muse she loved in secret. This relationship ended because of people talking about their relationship, but she misses them now. Interesting lines such as:
“I loved you in secret / First sight, yeah, we love without reason” ,
“And darling, you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis / People started talking, putting us through our paces / I knew there was no one in the world who could take it”
“I loved you in spite of / Deep fears that the world would divide us”
“I'd kiss you as the lights went out / Swaying as the room burned down / I'd hold you as the water rushes in / If I could dance with you again”
“Oh, 'cause it's gravity / Oh, keeping you with me”
In her seventh album, Lover, she releases the song False God. This is a song about a relationship with a muse that is very challenging to make work, but Taylor thinks they’ll be able to fix it. She refers to it as “getting away with it” as if the relationship is a crime, and also refers to their love as a False God, which is a reference to the sin of worshipping a false God, kind of aligning this love with sin and breaking rules. Interesting lines include:
“We were crazy to think, crazy to think that this could work / Remember how I said I'd die for you?”
“They all warned us about times like this / They say the road gets hard and you get lost / When you're led by blind faith”
“But we might just get away with it / Religion's in your lips / Even if it's a false god / We'd still worship”
In her eighth album, Folklore, she releases the song The Lakes. This is a song about not fitting in with society and its rules and wanting to escape to “the lakes” which is a reference to the lake district where lake poets of the romantic era lived (it is speculated that two of these male poets were in a romantic relationship). She also makes a point to say she wants to bring her muse, who she names “you” to the lakes with her to escape. Interesting lyrics are:
“Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you / Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / I'm setting off, but not without my muse”
“And I want you right here / A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground / With no one around to tweet it / While I bathe in cliffside pools / With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief”
“I'm setting off, but not without my muse / No, not without you”
In her ninth album, Evermore, she releases the song Coney Island. This is a song where she is apologizing to a love that left her for not making her a bigger part of her life. Taylor talks about how all she has earned isn’t worth it if she hurt this person to get it, she feels bad for abandoning this person/not giving them what they needed in the relationship. Interesting lyrics are:
“Sorry for not making you my centerfold / Over and over / Lost again with no surprises / Disappointments close your eyes”
“What's a lifetime of achievement / If I pushed you to the edge? / But you were too polite to leave me”
“Were you waiting at our old spot / In the tree line, by the gold clock? / Did I leave you hanging every single day?”
“And when I got into the accident / The sight that flashed before me was your face / But when I walked up to the podium / I think that I forgot to say your name”
In her tenth album, Midnights, she releases the song Paris. In this song, she talks about how she and her muse are hidden away from the world in their own space that she compares to a make-believe Paris. She says that she is able to keep this romance and love by keeping it a secret. She also says she wants to move with this muse to somewhere with a smarter culture and be able to be honest about how she feels. Interesting lyrics are:
“Privacy sign on the door / And on my page and on the whole world / Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours”
“I wanna transport you / To somewhere the culture's clever / Confess my truth / In swooping, sloping, cursive letters / Let the only flashing lights be the tower at midnight / In my mind”
In her eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department, she releases the song Guilty as Sin? In this song, Taylor talks about how she is longing for this muse, but there is something about being in this relationship that would make her guilty of something, and the use of sin connects it to the idea of being against the rules of religion. She grapples with the idea of guilt and if she would be guilty for just having these thoughts. She also talks about how other people are impacting her thoughts about her situation, and comments that if they want her to suffer to conform to conventional expectations, they would be pleased with the way she has handled this relationship.
“I keep these longings locked / In lowercase inside a vault / Someone told me / There's no such thing as bad thoughts / Only your actions talk”
“What if I roll the stone away? / They're gonna crucify me anyway / What if the way you hold me / Is actually what's holy?”
“If long suffering propriety / Is what they want from me / They don't know how you've haunted me / So stunningly / I choose you and me / ... Religiously”
“Without ever touching his skin / How can I be guilty as sin?”
I picked one song from each album that explored these topics of a secret, forbidden love, but there are many more throughout her entire discography. There are also a number of songs about her issues with the music industry and the boxes she’s been put in. She also has mentioned throughout many songs how she has never really grown up and she is still struggling with the same issues from her past. She also makes references to famous gay writers of the past quite frequently, people like Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings, Virginia Woolf, and William Wordsworth.
Obviously, there are a number of different reasons a love could be a secret or forbidden, a lot of artists have issues with the music industry and the constraints it puts on them, and many people have an internal struggle about not growing from past mistakes. These things alone can’t be enough to prove Taylor Swift is gay, especially considering it seems like it would be relatively easy for her to come out if she were. However, there is one word at play in her career that people often forget about: Politics.
Taylor Swift was a child when she first rose to stardom. Being first managed by her parents and then Scott Brochetta, with whom she signed a 13 year long contract in 2005 at age 15. At this time, society was still very homophobic, and a label executive who is trying to market a performer for mass consumption would likely have a stake in making sure that performer fits into the status quo that is expected of them. While this may sound crazy to those of us in the “real world”, other gay celebrities in Hollywood have talked about this.
Last summer, Chris Colfer, who is famous for playing Kurt on Glee, shared that he was pressured to stay in the closet for his career, as was everyone else. He said he was told coming out would ruin his career and when he tried to push back by saying that people would be able to tell, he was told that if he never mentioned it, he would be rewarded in the end. He also said on a podcast just last week, that he is friends with people that are still in the closet because of this now, and that they are often in fake relationships for the sake of their careers.
When Taylor Swift’s contract with Scott Brochetta ended, she had wanted to buy back her masters from him. However, instead he sold them to Scooter Braun with no warning right as she was announcing her first album outside of her contract called Lover. Scooter Braun is a prolific manager in Hollywood, having worked with people like Justin Bieber, Kanye West, and Ariana Grande. Taylor Swift has been outspoken about her severe dislike of Scooter Braun, though she has never said exactly why (possibly unrelated, but I feel the need to mention that in 2023, a large swath of musicians left his management all at once and there were rumors he was being investigated by the FBI. Shortly after this, allegations against Diddy started coming out. Specifically by his ex Cassandra Ventura).
There are a number of songs on Lover that are very Pride-centric, with lines such as “shade never made anybody less gay”, “Why be mad? When you could be GLAAD?”, and “But one of these things is not like the others, like a rainbow with all of the colors, babydoll when it comes to a lover, I promise that you’ll never find another like Me”. Additionally, the aesthetic for this album was hearts and rainbows, and she released a documentary about this album focused heavily on gay pride. In this documentary Taylor specifically said that gay pride was one of the things that makes her who she is. She also released the first single for this album on Lesbian Visibility Day and posted about the release with the caption “ME! Out now”.
With the way this album was marketed and the lyrics in the songs, it seems as though she was planning on coming out as gay with the release of this album. However, the surprise sale of her masters for her previous six albums changed her plans. If she saw her coming out as an opportunity to finally own herself, having someone she dislikes own and profit off all her previous work would certainly ruin that entire concept.
Since the sale of her records, there has been a distinct change in Taylor Swift’s prerogative. She had previously been releasing an album every two years and doing a tour for that album. However, after Lover dropped, she released two surprise albums six months apart from each other. These were both intensely sad breakup albums, which she said were fiction, as she was apparently still dating Joe Alwyn. Then, she began releasing her versions of her old albums with additional tracks that had been cut from the first release. She released the first two, then dropped Midnights and announced the Era’s Tour which was a tour for all of her albums in one. Then she released another two re-records, and dropped The Tortured Poets Department while on tour.
This consistent and intense output of music and performance over the past five years is what has created the Taylor-mania we have seen. She toured all of her albums so that she catered to all of the people that “like her old stuff, but don’t love the newer stuff”, while also re-releasing those albums and recreating the buzz and excitement around them with the formerly unreleased songs.
At the same time as all of this, she has gotten into the most public relationship she has ever been in with Travis Kelce, at the same time he was winning Super Bowls. She has achieved the perfect image of Americana: pretty, skinny, blonde white girl who is beloved by all for her musical talent, dating the star wide-receiver of the best team in the NFL. Yet, in her music she is critiquing the music industry and society’s expectations for her (Que Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?).
She is fitting the mold perfectly, in a way few have ever achieved before her, yet if you look at her lyrics, there is nothing she wants more than to break from this mold (Que But Daddy I Love Him). There are two separate stories Taylor is telling right now, and I have a feeling that the one everyone thinks they know about, is the one that is fictional.
I wholeheartedly believe that after Taylor releases the last 2 re-records she has left (Taylor Swift and Reputation), she will come out as gay and reclaim herself completely.
But, what do I know! I don’t really know her ;)