Taylor Swift has been known to hide easter eggs in her music, and she has done so on her new album, Folklore. The album features a song called “Betty,” and in the lyrics, Swift sings about multiple characters. Now, Swift has confirmed who these fictional people are named after.
Swift was introducing the song on Country Radio and explained the meaning behind it, saying:
“He lost the love of his love, 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 misses up sometimes. 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 kind of slip into different identities, and you can sing from other people’s perspectives. So that’s what I did on this one. And I named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids, and I hope you like it.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, everybody really misses up sometimes. This is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17 year old boy. I named all the characters in this story after my friend’s kids, and I hope you like it!” — Taylor Swift introducing “betty” on Country Radio pic.twitter.com/CQE8Vgoc4I
— Taylor Swift News (@TSwiftNewsLA) August 6, 2020
Two of the names that Swift mentions in the song are those of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughters, Inez and James, the latter of whom previously featured on Swift’s “Gorgeous.” These name-drops had fans convinced that “Betty” revealed the name of Lively and Reynolds’ third child, which neither the couple nor Swift have confirmed. Lively did share a congratulatory message upon the release of Folklore, though, writing, “Can we all please crawl inside that piano with you and live in this album… Like you, Folklore is full of heart, soul, humour, passion, intelligence, wit, whimsy, reality, imagination, strength, vulnerability, and above all things: Love.”
Read our review of Folklore here.