Fans can't shake this theory about one of Taylor Swift's new songs.
Less than a week ago on Dec. 11, the singer blessed devoted Swifties with the surprise sister album to folklore, titled evermore. Ever since dropping her ninth studio album, fans have left no lyric undissected, including what sound like very carefully chosen words for the track, "coney island."
More broadly, the song juggles themes of loss, regret and nostalgia, but with a closer look—or should we say, listen—some Swifties have theorized the song references many of the star's A-list exes, from John Mayer to Calvin Harris, all within just a few verses.
To start, with the lines "Were you standing in the hallway/with a big cake, happy birthday," the song harkens back to seemingly the same birthday Swift sang about on her Red track, "The Moment I Knew," which tells the story about her boyfriend not showing up for her at her 21st birthday. As fans know well, her boyfriend at that time was Jake Gyllenhaal.
Then, with the lyrics "Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest grey?/A universe away," fans think the line is a callback to "Dear John" from 2010. On that song, which she famously wrote about Mayer, she sang, "You paint me a blue sky and go back and turn it to rain."
The next "coney island" lyric, "And when I got into the accident/ The sight that flashed before me was your face," echoes these previous ones from 1989's "Out of the Woods"—"Remember when you hit the brakes too soon?/Twenty stitches in a hospital room/When you started crying, baby, I did too/But when the sun came up, I was looking at you." The lyrics were inspired by a snowmobile accident Swift allegedly suffered with ex Harry Styles.
And, finally, there's the "coney island" line, "But when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name," which fans believe is a nod to Harris. While she was dating him at the time of her Album of the Year win at the 2016 Grammys, she later said in her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, "I had my mom, but I just wondered, shouldn't I have someone that I could call right now?"
Once again, it seems the Swifties have cracked a code. Keep scrolling to take a walk down memory lane and revisit the star's celebrity exes.