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Taylor Swift is best known and beloved as a storyteller, often weaving personal details, cultural references, and double entendres into her songs.
"I love to communicate via Easter eggs. I think the best messages are cryptic ones," she told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. She cited clothing, jewelry, and music-video sets as favored hiding spots, adding that she has been "encoding messages into the lyrics" since her debut album in 2006.
Because Swift is proudly meticulous and intentional with her art, fans delight in dissecting her lyrics and visuals, treating each album like a trail of breadcrumbs to be found and interpreted.
A certain branch of Swifties, known as "Gaylors," have long found queer subtext and themes in her music — particularly sapphic listeners who find solace and camaraderie in Swift's accounts of quiet yearning, forbidden love, and female intimacy.
In fact, some believe that dismissing the queer narratives in Swift's music does "a disservice to her genius and lyrical prowess."
Songs like "Welcome to New York" and "You Need to Calm Down" boast overt nods to LGBTQ causes, while others contain subtle phrases and slang that are widely known within the gay community — and therefore highly unlikely to have flown beneath Swift's diligent radar.
Insider's music team analyzed 41 songs in Swift's catalog from a queer perspective, listed below in chronological order.
Note: This article has been updated since its original publish date to include songs from "Midnights" and "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)."
"Mary's Song (Oh My My My)"
"Mary's Song (Oh My My My)" was apparently inspired by a couple who lived next door to Swift's family while she was growing up.
Swift seems to narrate the story from Mary's perspective, opening with a female pronoun: "She said, I was 7 and you were 9 / I looked at you like the stars that shined."
Because the other half of the couple is neither named nor gendered in the lyrics, Swift seems to fill the role herself, as if...