Taylor Swift Says Her Travis Kelce Ode "Wood" Lyrics Started from an "Innocent Place"
The artist talked to Jimmy Fallon about the inspiration behind several Life of a Showgirl tracks as the audience danced and sang along.
Taylor Swift promises she didn't start writing "Wood" as a song filled with dirty jokes.
When the singer-songwriter appeared on The Tonight Show on Monday, October 6 and took Jimmy Fallon through the details of her new songs from The Life of a Showgirl, including the one that compares her new fiancé to a redwood tree.
Swift also broke down "Opalite," "Wi$h Li$t," "Father Figure," and "The Life of a Showgirl." While talking about the title track, she explained the release's overarching themes were centered around "show business and a public life."
"Honestly, we all have a public life now," she told Fallon. "We all are mandating our relationship with social media and social circles and gossip, so I was like, I want to focus on the playful, fun, funny, humorous sides of that."
"Wi$h Li$t," she said, was inspired by Happy Gilmore, while "Father Figure" was meant to invoke the energy of Succession's Logan Roy. But "Wood" might be the song Swifties are talking about the most.
RELATED: Taylor Swift Explained Why She Dances So Hard at Awards Shows: "I Used to Get..."
Taylor Swift says "Wood" lyrics weren't about Travis Kelce in that way at first
"I brought this into the studio and I was like I wanna do a throwback, kind of timeless-sounding song, and I had this idea like, 'I ain't gotta knock on wood,' and it would be all these superstitions," Swift told Fallon. "And it really started out in a very innocent place...I don't know what happened, man."
RELATED: Taylor Swift Talks Her Giant Engagement Diamond & Marrying Travis Kelce: "He's My..."
Lyrics include lines like, "Forgive me, it sounds cocky, he ah-matized me and opened my eyes, redwood tree, it ain't hard to see, his love was the key that opened my thighs."
"I got in there, we started vibing, and I don't know," she told Fallon. "I don't know how we got here, but I love the song so much."
Why Sabrina Carpenter is featured on The Life of a Showgirl
She also explained why she got a friend and fellow artist to feature on the final track.
"The first thought I had was Sabrina Carpenter," she shared. "She's, like, the quintessential showgirl. She's such a funny person. She is so tough in the right ways and soft and vulnerable in the right ways, to be an artist that is dealing with the kind of absolute mayhem that these artists get subjected to when you're putting out art publicly."
She wrote some lines specifically for the "Manchild" singer — and October 18 Saturday Night Live Host and Musical Guest — who "loves to write a clever little jab at men."
Fallon pointed out that there must be very few people who, like Carpenter, can relate to aspectws of Swift's life, but she explained that that's not exactly the point.
RELATED: Taylor Swift Is Staging a TAY/KOVER of Late Night with Seth Meyers
"With Sabrina...I've never come up as a new artist in the moment that she's coming up, where she's had social media...Like, I remember when someone told me about Instagram, and it was like on my second or third record," she said.
"We'll never be able to have identical experiences, but as entertainers, one of our main jobs, I think, is to be a mirror for people," Swift continued. "You look into the art we make, you see yourself back. The way you feel about our art has a lot to do with the life experience that you're having at this point in time, and that's why I'm happy I have so many different albums."
Watch Taylor Swift's full album interview with Jimmy Fallon above — and don't miss Swift's return to Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday, October 8!
