Taylor Swift foreshadowed her song "But Daddy I Love Him" some 16 years before it came out.
In a resurfaced interview with Popsugar from 2008, the singer explained how her banger "Love Story" came about.
"This song, I wrote it right after my one epic teenage tantrum that I ever threw in my whole life," she said. "I remember screaming something like, 'but Daddy I love him!' and running out and storming into my room and slamming the door, and then I sat down on the floor and wrote [it]."
"Love Story," from the album Fearless, contained the lyrics, "That you were Romeo, you were throwin' pebbles / And my daddy said, 'Stay away from Juliet,'" among others directly referencing parental disapproval.
screaming BUT DADDY I LOVE HIM??!!!!!pic.twitter.com/QiFEha8PENJune 4, 2024
The 2024 track "But Daddy I Love Him" (from The Tortured Poets Department) contains echoes of "Love Story" in that it's also about a forbidden love of sorts—but this time the disapproval seemed to come from Swift's fans rather than from her dad.
See lyrics such as: "Soon enough, the elders had convened / Down at the city hall / 'Stay away from her'"
While Swifties thought this song was about their fave's ex Harry Styles before it came out (because of a T-shirt he once wore bearing the words "but Daddy I love him"), the widely accepted narrative now is that it's about her fans disapproving of her fling with controversial musician Matty Healy circa May 2023.
In what appears to be a response to the criticism of her choice to date Healy, Swift sings on the track, "I’ll tell you something right now / I’d rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin’ and moanin’ / I’ll tell you something ’bout my good name / It's mine alone to disgrace / I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing"
