Taylor Swift has confirmed that she named the three characters in her song “Betty” after her “friends’ kids.”
Several fans theorized when her album Folklore was released that “Betty” must be the name of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ third child after the song also included the names of their first two kids Inez and James.
[“So, the song ‘betty’ is about a 17-year-old named James learning to apologize, because James has lost the love of his life 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. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody really messes up sometimes, and this is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. And I always loved that in music you can kind of slip into different identities and you can sing from other people’s perspectives. So, that’s what I did with this one. I named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids.”] SOUNDCUE (:38 OC: . . . my friends’ kids.)
Folklore is categorized as an alternative album but Swift’s “Betty” is her latest country song on radio and streaming services. The hit follows her country collaboration with The Chicks, “Soon You’ll Get Better,” which was released on her pop album, Lover, in August 2019.
Lively and Reynolds, who tied the knot in 2012, have been close with Swift for years. The actress and actor’s eldest daughter’s voice was previously included in her 2017 track, “Gorgeous.”