Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but it looks like Taylor Swift's "betty" probably isn't the queer, sapphic anthem we've been waiting our whole lives for—at least not in the way that we've been thinking it is.
According to a recent interview she did with country radio, the "exile" singer herself is setting the record straight about who exactly the song is about, and what point-of-view she's singing from.
None— \ud83d\ude1f (@\ud83d\ude1f) 1596677378
"[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. 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," Taylor revealed about the story, meanings, and people behind the track. "I've always loved that in music you can kinda slip into different identities and you can sing from other people's perspectives. I named all the characters in this story after my friends' kids...and I hope you like it!"
When the Grammy-winning, singer-songwriter surprise dropped her eighth full-length studio album folklore late last month, Swifties and queer girls everywhere immediately took to the song, and with lyrics like "Betty, I won't make assumptions/About why you switched your homeroom, but/I think it's 'cause of me," and "Will you love me?/Will you kiss me on the porch/In front of all your stupid friends?/If you kiss me, will it be just like I dreamed it?" everyone started theorizing about who this Betty person is Tay is so fondly singing about.
While we now know that Betty is apparently named after one of her friend's kids, we also do know that she was singing the song from the point-of-view of a teenage boy named James, and while there's is an argument that can be made that Taylor singing from a boy's perspective is pretty queer, a boy singing to a girl does not a sapphic love story make.
*sigh*
"betty" is still a good track, though, and we're pretty sure Taylor's queer fans are still going to regard it as a queer anthem, no matter what...
