Taylor Swift revealed that the names of her characters in her new song, ‘betty’ — Inez, James, and Betty — were indeed borrowed from her ‘friend’s kids.’ The pop star opened up even more about the song’s backstory!
It wasn’t just a coincidence. It appears that Taylor Swift, 30, indeed revealed the previously secret moniker of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds‘ third child in her new song, “betty,” which arrived with the release of her eighth studio album Folklore on July 24. Taylor sparked speculation that she let the cat out of the bag, since she also used the names of her famous friends’ two other children — James, 5, and Inez, 3 — in her new song. Taylor indirectly confirmed this to be true in an interview for Country Radio on Aug. 6.
“I named all the characters in this story after my friend’s kids, and I hope you like it,” Taylor revealed during the interview, which you can listen to in the snippet above! Blake and Ryan would fit the bill as Taylor’s “friends,” a title they’ve held since 2015! The famous couple’s first daughter, Inez, even lent her voice to the intro of Taylor’s 2017 song “Gorgeous.”
Of course, “betty” isn’t actually about Blake and Ryan’s children. Rather, Taylor just borrowed their names for the characters in her song, and explained the lyrics’ backstory further in her interview with Country Radio.
“He lost the love of his love, basically, and doesn’t understand how to get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really, really give a heartfelt apology for the first time,” Taylor said on the radio program, referring to the character “James” in her song. She continued, “Everyone makes mistakes, everybody really messes up sometimes. This is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. And I’ve always loved that in music you can kind of slip into different identifies and you can sing from other people’s perspectives, and that’s what I did in this one.”
Blake wrote a highly complimentary review for Folklore after the album’s release — and not just because her children’s names made a cameo! “Thank you Taylor Swift. Can we all crawl inside that piano with you and live in this album….Like you, Folklore is full of heart, soul, humor, passion, intelligence, wit, whimsy, reality, imagination, strength, vulnerability, and above all things LoVe,” the Gossip Girl actress wrote on Instagram on July 25. She concluded on a sweet note, writing, “We love you.”