A new Taylor Swift Easter egg has been revealed, and it was hiding in a place no one wanted to look: in her DNA. Genealogy company Ancestry announced today that Swift is related to none other than Emily Dickinson. How they came to this conclusion is unclear – did they have a saliva swab done? — but according to Ancestry, the Massachusetts poet is apparently Swift's sixth cousin, three times removed. At this point it feels like calling them related, but that's just one blogger's opinion. The alleged familial bond between the two writers comes just about a month before the release of Swift's 11th album, aptly titled The Tortured Poets Department. However, this is just the latest connection between Swift and Dickinson.
Fans first saw Swift as a potential Dickinson fan when Evermore came out in late 2020. In the album's closing and title track, Swift sings: “This pain wouldn't be for evermore.” Dickinson ends the poem “A sister I have in our house” with the words “Sue – forever!” Depending , however important it is to you, it could be that Swift opts for a word that has a little more flourish, or that she acknowledges Dickinson as both an influence and a cousin.
A year after the release of this album, the song “Ivy” was featured on the Apple TV+ show Dickinson. Fans had previously speculated that this song was about Dickinson and her sister-in-law Sue (from the aforementioned poem), with whom the poet was in love. In the series, “Ivy” appeared in the episode where Emily and Sue have a sex scene. But wait, there's more!
Evermore was released at midnight on December 10th – Dickinson's birthday. Swift told Entertainment Weekly that the inspiration for the Folklore album cover was “this girl sleepwalking through the woods in her nightgown in 1830.” Who was born in 1830? Yes, the French poet Frédéric Mistral, but also the American poet Emily Dickinson. Do you think I'm done?
In 2022, while accepting the Nashville Songwriters Association International award for songwriter artist of the decade, Swift revealed that she divides her songs into “song lyrics, fountain pen lyrics and glitter gel pen lyrics.” You won't believe who she mentioned when describing the Quill song lyrics.
“If I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after seeing a movie where everyone wore poet shirts and corsets,” Swift said, referring to another 19th-century author, “if my text sounds like a letter from Emily.” Dickinson's great-grandmother sewing a lace curtain, that's me writing in the quill genre.” What she didn't know at the time was that Dickinson's great-grandmother was her…twice-removed fifth cousin was? Sorry, I won't pretend to understand how this all works. What I know for sure is that it's time for Swifties to add a new color of (invisible) string to their boards.
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