Taylor Swift has revealed an emotional connection to a Scottish band’s song that makes her want to cry.
Scottish Swifties not only awoke to a surprise double album – The Tortured Poets Department – but one that gives a nod to Glasgow group, The Blue Nile.
Guilty as Sin?, the ninth track on the pop susperstars new record, references one of the band’s best known tracks The Downtown Lights.
In Swift’s song, reported to be about her brief relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975, she suggests that the song makes her cry.
What does Swift say about The Blue Nile?
Drowning in the Blue Nile,
He sent me Downtown Lights,
I hadn’t heard it in a while,
My boredom’s bone deep,
This cage was once just fine,
Am I allowed to cry?”
Guilty as Sin? – Taylor Swift
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Listen to Taylor Swift’s ‘Guilty as Sin?’
In true Swift fashion, her mentioning of the song comes with many Easter eggs that eager fans have already discovered.
The song she mentions by The Blue Nile was released in 1989, the year in which she was born.
The lyrics of The Downtown Lights also allude to similar themes Swift explores in her new album such as uncertainty in relationships and heartbreak.
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Listen to The Blue Nile’s The Downtown Lights
The song featured on The Blue Nile’s hit album Hats, and the was their only chart entry in the US, peaking at No. 10 on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart.
Swift mentions the band again in the song’s final lines.
Who are The Blue Nile?
FacebookThe group, made up of singer and guitarist, Paul Buchanan, bassist Robert Bell and keyboardist Paul Joseph Moore, was active from 1981 to 2004.
The trio met while studying at the University of Glasgow in the late 1970s. Their debut album A Walk Across The Rooftops received great acclaim when it was released in 1984.
Reviews lauded the mix of sparse, electronic sounds, samples and Buchanan’s soulful vocals.
The band have become known for shying away from publicity and a slow work rate as result of perfectionism – four albums in two decades.
Asked about Swift, Buchanan told STV News that he was “touched that The Downtown Lights is mentioned” in her song.
The Blue Nile are considered by many critics to be among the greatest Scottish bands and have been cited as a major influence by the likes of Peter Gabriel and Matty Healy.
The 1975’s lead singer said they are his “favorite band of all time” and declared the album Hats his “favorite record of the ‘80s” in an interview with Vulture in 2016.
Healy has also described his band’s song Love It If We Made It as being inspired by The Downtown Lights.
The Eras Tour coming to Scotland
The Scottish nod comes ahead of the 34-year-old kicking off her highly-anticipated UK leg of The Eras Tour in Edinburgh this June.
The singer is set to play three sold-out shows at Edinburgh Murrayfield before heading to Liverpool, Cardiff and London.
Fans of Guilty as Sin heading to the Edinburgh show will no doubt be brushing up on the lyrics as the singer might play it as a nod to Scotland during the surprise song set in her three and a half hour show.
Swift has spoken fondly about Scotland on multiple occasions and even opened up about her Scottish ancestry during a show at Glasgow’s Hydro in 2015.
Explaining that her father had emailed her ahead of her performance to inform her of the family’s Scottish roots, she told fans that she was “proud” to be one of them.
She said: “In the subject line it said ‘tell Scotland this’, and in the email he said our whole family is from Scotland and you have to tell them that.
“So I am one of you, and I’m proud because this crowd is amazing.”
The singer then performed hit single Blank Space while swinging a golf club, and declared afterwards: “I happen to love Scottish people, personally.”
A website which outlines the ancestry of famous people, famouskin.com, also directly connects Swift’s family line to William the Lion, King of Scotland.
Both claims, though unproven, connect the royal lines to Swift through her father, stock broker Scott Kingsley Swift.
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