Taylor Allision Swift is the red-lipped, blonde-haired, politically neutral billionaire popstar queen of America.
She is the most famous person on Earth. Her football star romance with the literacy-challenged Kansas City Chiefs tight end with a tight end, Travis Kelce, has brought in over a billion dollars for the NFL. Between 2023 and 2024, Swift blessed cities worldwide with an economic boost from her four-hour show, The Eras Tour, which totaled over $10 billion.
On August 25, Swift’s Instagram engagement announcement sparked joy in the hearts of millions. The New York Times called the proposal, “A tiny piece of joy in a sea of troubles, a little bit of brightness in the dark.” The Op-Ed went on to say, “Maybe there still are good men. Maybe love still wins.”
However, for a large subset of Swifties, the engagement triggers panic, hysteria and dread. This dedicated community of over 50,000 has been called crazy, dead, homophobic and gay, but they feel more alive now than ever. This is the strong, the dedicated and the delusional. This is Gaylor.
Level One: Lover era = queer era
Doctrine: During the Lover Era, Swift became a queer-adjacent, LGBTQ+ rights advocate, who may be queer herself.
Evidence: From 2019 to 2020, Swift had a rare spree of what some would call political activism. Most of this was targeted towards the LGBTQ+ community.
Swift was being hit with a lot of pushback for her vague-at-best political presence after Trump’s first term, so she executed a cultural pendulum swing and became more politically vocal than ever.
On Lesbian Visibility Day in 2019, Swift tweeted, ‘Me! Out now.’ The announcement for her single, to many, doubled as a coming-out entendre. The music video for “Me!” did nothing to stifle this belief, as it featured the pansexual ex-Mormon Panic! At the Disco lead, Brendon Urie, in a flurry of pastel rainbows and women in suits. Swift said the song is about individuality, being yourself and expressing yourself. While on her short-lived Lover tour, Swift performed “Me!” with Brendon Urie, while wearing a rotation of egregious, extremely bright, rainbow outfits.
On June 17, 2019, Swift released her second “Lover” single, “You Need to Calm Down.” This song received praise as an LGBTQ+ anthem that “claps back” at homophobia. The music video features a cast of all queer celebrities, including RuPaul, Ellen and Tan France. Swift sports a blue, pink and purple wig (bisexual flag colors), and joins her gay friends in the fight against homophobia with uninspired and vague lines such as, “You need to calm down! You’re being too loud!”
Other songs off the “Lover” album have also been highlighted for their adjacency to queer themes. In “The Man,” Swift muses about how different her life and career would be if she were a man rather than a woman, highlighting the double standard present in many popular criticisms of her life. The music video for “The Man” features Swift in full drag, acting out these scenarios.
Level 2: The Lover era = coming out era
Doctrine: Swift was planning on coming out during the Lover era. Some say these plans were spoiled because of COVID, while others cite a much more personal disaster that happened in Swift’s life in 2019- Scooter Braun’s acquisition of Swift’s label, Big Machine Records. This gave Braun full ownership of Swift’s masters, without her consent or knowledge.
Swift was outspoken about this business deal’s effect on her freedom and mental health, calling Braun a “manipulative bully.” This copy dispute defined the past five years of Swift’s career, as she has re-recorded all of her albums to release ‘Taylor’s Version,’ which she owns. This May, Swift officially bought back all of her masters from Braun.
Evidence: On June 15, 2019, Swift played a surprise show at the Stonewall Inn- a historically important location for LGBTQ+ rights where the Stonewall riots took place in 1969. Lover Era Gaylors say that Swift was supposed to play a second show at Stonewall on June 30, 2019- the day that Braun bought Big Machine Records. This second show was supposed to be her coming-out, but the sour record deal spoiled it.
Gaylor Reddit posts from 2023 read, “[Swift’s coming out] would have renewed people’s interest in her music that she did not own. People would rush to her older music, trying to find clues, etc. Scooter would’ve benefited from her coming out with each curious stream.”
Level 3: Kaylors
Doctrine: Between 2013 and 2018, Swift dated her BFF, Karlie Kloss.
Evidence: Kloss and Swift met in Nov 2013 and continued to be publicly inseparable throughout Swift’s 1989 era. The pair went on trips together and held hands on the streets of New York. A 2014 Rolling Stone profile revealed that Kloss had her own room in Swift’s apartment. The pair went on to touch each other all over the cover of Vogue in 2015.
The BFFs eventually had a private falling out that leaked into the public eye during Swift’s Reputation era- around the same time that Kloss got married. ‘Kaylors,’ who believe that Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift dated, speculated that “Reputation” is partially about this breakup. A Kaylor evidence website, created in 2012, lists Swift songs about Kloss that span from “1989,” through “Reputation,” and into “Lover.”
Swift was on a media hiatus leading up to the drop of “Reputation,” so the only people informed about the album’s lead-up were a secret, elite group of Swifties who allegedly attended “Secret Sessions,” in which they were personally invited to Swift’s home to listen to tracks off the album pre-release.
Apparently, during these secret sessions, Swift over-emphasized how “Reputation” was about her current boyfriend of one year, Joe Alywn. Kaylors cite this move as suspicious, since a key move in Swift’s playbook is to never reveal who her songs are about, no matter how obvious and over-speculated.
A 2017 Reddit post from a Secret Sessions Swiftie reads, “Basically, Taylor made us promise that if anyone made any accusations of who this song is about, that we tell them it is 100% about her angel boyfriend of one year. This isn’t a secret, she told us to tell people.”
When “Reputation” dropped in 2017, thousands of Gaylors awaited, loudly and impatiently, to dissect the lyrics for even a trace of something that could be construed as anything remotely close to queerness.
A 2017 Kaylor Tumblr Blog compiles much of this evidence, starting with the prologue:
[“… Gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for men they can attribute
to each song..”
“… slideshows backing up each incorrect theory?” (How could
she be so sure that each theory would be incorrect?)
“… We think we know someone, but the truth is we only know
the version of them they have chosen to show us.”
She’s really out here telling everyone that they don’t know her
on an album largely centered around the themes of a secrecy &
hidden love. You do the math!]
This blog goes on to cite evidence from nearly every song on the record, cross-referencing Instagram posts with music video screenshots and gossip-blog articles. A lyric from “Don’t Blame Me,”- “I once was poison ivy but now I’m your daisy”- is brought up with pictures of Kloss wearing a yellow daisy behind her ear while hanging out with Swift- “Did Taylor pick this daisy for her? I need to lie down.”
“Dancing With Our Hands Tied” is pinned as the most obvious Kaylor track. It is said to reference “kiss gate,” an incident in which sasquatch-siting esc grainy photos were said to have captured a drunk kiss between Kloss and Swift at a 1975 concert on Dec. 4, 2014.
This was a rare incident in which mainstream tabloids dipped into Gaylor lore. People released an article titled, “Taylor Swift’s SHOCKING ROMANCE.” Swift tweeted the morning after, asking the media to stop accusing her of dating her friends as a 25th birthday present. She proceeded to like a Tumblr post about Gaylor that called Kaylor shippers freaks. Public interaction between the pair is said to have been much less sparse after this incident.
“Dancing With Our Hands Tied” kiss gate lyrics include:
“I, I loved you in secret, First sight, yeah, we love without reason”
“I’d kiss you as the lights went out, swaying as the room burned down”
“If I could dance with you again… I’d hold you as the water rushes in”
The water rushing is said to be the media storm that ensued. Tumblr comments also point out that the lights were going out as the pair was photographed together at the 1975 concert.
Cornelia Street
Taylor Swift rented a house on Cornelia Street in New York City from 2016 to 2017 while her home in Tribeca was being renovated. Swift and Kloss would frequently hang out at this house, which had a garden gate where the pair was regularly photographed exiting and entering the home.
This home is the inspiration and namesake for a song off Lover in which Swift writes about being drunk in a car and in love on Cornelia Street.
We were in the backseat
Drunk on something stronger than the drinks in the bar
“I rent a place on Cornelia Street”
I say casually in the car
The Cornelia Street garden gate, as well as being drunk in a car, is further referenced in “Cruel Summer,” also off Lover.
I’m drunk in the back of the car
And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (oh)
Said, “I’m fine, ” but it wasn’t true
I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you
And I snuck in through the garden gate
Every night that summer, just to seal my fate (oh)
And I screamed, “For whatever it’s worth
I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?”
Kaylor truthers speculate that both of these songs are about Swift’s, ‘the one that got away’- Karlie Kloss.
Some say Kaylor’s falling out around 2019 is because Swift wanted to come out, but Kloss didn’t. This is tied to the previously discussed Lover Era coming-out theory. Others accuse Kloss of betraying Swift in the Scooter Braun masters situation. Kloss and her husband, Joshua Kushner, were seen on vacation with Scooter Braun in 2019, shortly after Swift condemned Braun as a bully for buying her masters.
Gaylors of today have numerous theories to explain Swift’s recent engagement and openly expressed sexual attraction to Travis Kelce on her new album, Life of a Showgirl. From NFL bearding contracts to elaborate performance art and satire, Gaylors are relentless in their re-framing of Swift’s art and life. All of this will be discussed in an upcoming sequel to this article, as K-Ute Radio continues to investigate the phenomenon that is Gaylor.