Taylor Swift won't name names in her songs, but she has made one revealation: her 1989 single "Bad Blood" may not be about who you think it is. (Cough, cough, Katy Perry.) In her lengthy Chuck Klosterman penned GQ profile, the pop superstar said that the song is actually about an ex-boyfriend.
Swift remained a bit obtuse in her interview when asked about "Bad Blood," but she said that when she told Rolling Stone that the track was actually about an ex-friend, she was just covering up for a certain ex-boyfriend, whom she felt more of a loss of friendship with than a typical break up.
"You're in a Rolling Stone interview, and the writer says, 'Who is that song about? That sounds like a really intense moment from your life.' And you sit there, and you know you're on good terms with your ex-boyfriend, and you don't want him-or his family-to think you're firing shots at him. So you say, 'That was about losing a friend.' And that's basically all you say. But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant... It was not a song about heartbreak. It was about the loss of friendship," Swift said.
Though she didn't mention the part of the quote when she said, "She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I'm surprisingly non-confrontational -- you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It's awkward, and I don't like it," which Klosterman points out narrowed the field of possible candidates (down to Perry), Swift remained insistent that her interview was a red herring.
"I just needed to divert them away from the easiest target. Listen to the song. It doesn't point to any one person or any one situation. But if you'd listened to my previous four albums, you would think this was about a guy who broke my heart," she said.
Though miscommunications happen about who Swift's songs are about, from Perry to Harry Styles to other ex-boyfriends such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Joe Jonas, she said that she will never name names. "I've never named names, so I feel like I still have a sense of power over what people say-even if that isn't true, and even if I don't have any power over what people say about me," she said. "The fact that I've never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I'm holding."
