Taylor Swift’s budding relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is at the center of the pop culture zeitgeist. Kelce, a two-time Super Bowl champion, has been famous for a decade, but the Swiftian microscope hits different. Just ask Harry Styles, whose past romance with Swift is back under that microscope with the arrival of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) today (October 27). Or ask Swift herself, whom people have cruelly criticized for simply dating since 2008.
Swift unpacked “‘Slut!’ (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]” for Tumblr, explaining why it narrowly missed the cut for 1989 in 2014.
“‘Slut!’ is a song we wrote for 1989, and in it, I kind of sort of cheekily play on the discussions at that time in my life around my dating life,” she said in a 48-second audio clip. “And that’s not the only time on 1989 that I’ve done that. I did that on ‘Blank Space.’ I think that when I came down to having to pick songs for the album, I think I thought, ‘OK, well, I’m gonna choose ‘Blank Space,” and unfortunately had to make some tough decisions in terms of what to put on the tracklist.”
Swift continued, “But I love this song because I think it’s really dreamy and really — I don’t know. Like, I always saw 1989 as a New York album, but this song, to me, was always California. And maybe that was another reason it didn’t make the cut because, sometimes, thematically, I just have these weird little rules in my head. But I’m so happy it’s finally gonna be something that you guys hear because I have always been proud of it. I have always wanted it to come out into the world. And now it is! So, yay!”
Listen to “”Slut!”” above.