A rare thing happened this weekend: Taylor Swift gave an official, extremely public confirmation about the subject of one her debated song lyrics.
Even though they’re often riddled with hints and Easter Eggs and fans sometimes feel super confident about their meaning, Taylor Swift songs are, generally-speaking, explicitly left open to various degrees of interpretation because Taylor has a mostly-firm policy about not confirming who specific songs and lyrics are about. I mean, iykyk, but she won’t, like, actually say it. Generally.
On Friday, during the first performance of her three-night stint in Philadelphia, however, Taylor made an exception to this rule and ended all debate about the meaning behind a reference in the evermore song “Gold Rush,” which she played as one of the night’s surprise songs.
The lyric in question is, “I see me padding across your wooden floors / With my Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door,” and it’s the Eagles T-shirt that’s been the subject of minor debate among fans. The debate: Is it a T-shirt professing some musical fandom or sports fandom (specifically, is it for the band The Eagles or for the Philadelphia Eagles football team)?
So, what’s the meaning behind The Eagles T-shirt lyric in Taylor Swift’s “Gold Rush”?
Since Taylor decided to answer this burning question while surrounded by thousands of people from Philadelphia (not to mention the fact that she considers the city—which is a little over an hour away from where she grew up—her hometown), the answer should be pretty easy to guess: The football team.
“There was sort of a I don’t know how large the debate was the debate about I have a lyric that says, um, ‘my Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door,'” she explained to a preemptive swell of applause from the audience who could feel their vindication coming. “I saw some people wondering if it was the band The Eagles or the team The Eagles. Guys like come on, like, I’m from Philly, of course it’s the team.”
So, there you have it.
Kayleigh Roberts is the weekend editor at Cosmo, focused on celebrity news and royals. She’s a Ravenclaw who would do great things in Slytherin. To learn more about her, google “Leslie Knope eating salad GIF.”