Taylor Swift Recalls Screaming "But Daddy I Love Him" During Teenage "Tantrum" in Resurfaced Clip

Easter egg of Easter eggs.

Taylor Swift performs during the Stagecoach music festival at the Empire Polo Fields on May 3, 2008 in Indio, California.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Taylor Swift foreshadowed her song "But Daddy I Love Him" some 16 years before it came out.

In a resurfaced interview with Popsugar from 2008, the singer explained how her banger "Love Story" came about.

"This song, I wrote it right after my one epic teenage tantrum that I ever threw in my whole life," she said. "I remember screaming something like, 'but Daddy I love him!' and running out and storming into my room and slamming the door, and then I sat down on the floor and wrote [it]."

"Love Story," from the album Fearless, contained the lyrics, "That you were Romeo, you were throwin' pebbles / And my daddy said, 'Stay away from Juliet,'" among others directly referencing parental disapproval.

The 2024 track "But Daddy I Love Him" (from The Tortured Poets Department) contains echoes of "Love Story" in that it's also about a forbidden love of sorts—but this time the disapproval seemed to come from Swift's fans rather than from her dad.

See lyrics such as: "Soon enough, the elders had convened / Down at the city hall / 'Stay away from her'"

While Swifties thought this song was about their fave's ex Harry Styles before it came out (because of a T-shirt he once wore bearing the words "but Daddy I love him"), the widely accepted narrative now is that it's about her fans disapproving of her fling with controversial musician Matty Healy circa May 2023.

In what appears to be a response to the criticism of her choice to date Healy, Swift sings on the track, "I’ll tell you something right now / I’d rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin’ and moanin’ / I’ll tell you something ’bout my good name / It's mine alone to disgrace / I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing"

Taylor Swift and Matty Healy seen leaving 'The Electric Lady' studio in Manhattan on May 16, 2023 in New York City.

Taylor Swift and Matty Healy briefly dated circa May 2023.

(Image credit: Photo by Robert Kamau / Getty)
Iris Goldsztajn
Morning Editor

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.