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Taylor Swift: ‘I Was The Most Intensely Impacted By Emo Music’

Mary Varvaris

Taylor Swift cited Fall Out Boy and Dashboard Confessional's lyrics when looking back on music that impacted her career in a new interview.

Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift(Credit: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/MCA Nashville)
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It turns out that Taylor Swift is just like the rest of us: she loves emo music, and she knows it isn’t just a phase.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Swift – not currently in a typical album promotion cycle – opened up about her songwriting process, her biggest hits, and more in a rare, 30-minute chat.

She also discussed her ongoing love for emo music and how bands like Dashboard Confessional and Fall Out Boy inspired her as a songwriter.

Approaching the subject, Swift shared, “I was the most intensely impacted by emo music, right? Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba. Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz’s lyrics. How they take a common phrase, and then they just twist the knife of it, right?”

Getting specific, Swift cited lines she deemed influential from Fall Out Boy’s Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down and Dashboard Confessional’s Hands Down.

“Like, ‘I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song. Drop a heart, break a name.’ Right?” she said, fondly looking at the Fall Out Boy classic.

She continued, “Like, it’s ‘drop a name, break a heart,’ but they switched it. And those are the kind of lyrics where I would read the lyrics to those songs — or the specificity of Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional, where I’d be reading those lyrics, and I’d just finish reading a line and just go, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Reacting to Swift’s comments, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba posted on Instagram: “@taylorswift has been so kind to me over the years. To hear her express how my songs affected her was a lovely surprise. Everything is connected. I feel fortunate to be a link in the chain.”

You can watch a snippet of the interview below.

Of course, Swift’s love for 2000s emo music is an open secret, but to see her discuss the music so candidly is cool, nonetheless.

The Love Story singer has a decades-long friendship with Paramore’s Hayley Williams, as the pair released music around the same time from a young age in Nashville. Williams also appears in Swift’s Bad Blood music video and can be heard on Castles Crumbling, from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), released in 2023.

Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump also appears on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), heard on the track Electric Touch. Swift has also previously joined forces with Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie, who features on the Lover lead single, ME!. Additionally, Paramore opened for Swift on the UK and European leg of her Eras Tour.