Lies About Taylor Swift That People Believed

She stays out too late, got nothing in her brain. At least, that's what people say about Taylor Swift. The haters will hate, but Tay is on top of the world.

Her debut fully pop album, "1989," dominated the charts in 2014 and 2015, smashing records and taking names. A decade later, fans still want to hear what Swift has to say. In 2024, her 11th studio album, "The Tortured Poets Department," became the first album to be streamed 300 million times on Spotify in a single day. The 31 tracks included on the super-sized record are also bound to keep generating rumors about Swift's relationship history; it didn't take fans long to begin debating whether some of her lyrics are digs at her exes Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy.

"Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" became the highest-grossing concert film of all time in 2024, and by dating football player Travis Kelce, the singer became the darling of the NFL. It seems the only realm Swift can't control is the gossip charts, which release hit rumors faster than she can shake them off. Even if they are complete falsehoods, some people will take them and run with them.

Taylor Swift and her brother, Austin, did, technically, spend part of their childhood living on a farm, but let's put it in perspective. This was not a dusty plot of land with chickens and cows and rows of corn, and Swift's family was not farming to make ends meet. They lived on roughly 15 acres of Christmas trees in an affluent Pennsylvania suburb.

Taylor's mother, Andrea, worked in finance and her father, Scott, was a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch who had purchased the tree-filled acreage from a client. He also bought a chunk of Big Machine Records, Taylor's first record label. So, their money wasn't growing on those evergreens, though maybe it felt that way to the kids. Taylor reminisced on her upbringing, saying being surrounded by those firs is why she loves the holidays. "It was the most magical fun childhood," she once posted under a throwback photo (via US Weekly). "We had grape arbours and we would make jam with my mom."

According to Swift's 2009 promotional DVD, she learned guitar thanks to "this magical twist of fate:" A 12-year-old Swift was doing her homework when a repairman fixing her computer spotted her guitar in the corner of the room and asked if she played. She told him she had tried, but hadn't gotten far. He offered to teach her a few chords, and, well, the rest of the story plays out like a classic Swift fairytale: she wrote her first song using those three simple chords.

The New York Daily News tracked down that computer technician in 2015. His name is Ronnie Cremer, and he sings a much different tune about his time spent with Swift. According to the article, Cremer did fix computers, but he was also a respected local musician who was hired by the Swift family to give Taylor guitar lessons and help her record a demo. He did some computer work for the Swifts too, but that happened down the road.

"I don't know if I'm even mad at the Swifts," Cremer said, acknowledging their publicity team may have recast the story. "A 36-year-old bald guy taught her — Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5 to 8. That ain't gonna sell."

In February 2015, Taylor Swift caused an international kerfuffle when the Brazilian news outlet, O Globo, reported that her mother, Andrea, wouldn't allow her to perform in "third-world countries." Though Swift's spokespeople typically don't comment on rumors, they did speak up on this one, telling BuzzFeed "there is absolutely no truth" to the tiger mom tale. At the time, Swift had performed once in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 but had never toured South America.

Swift provided additional proof that no such parental ban was in effect in 2023 when she made her first-ever tour stop in South America. After taking the stage at Estadio Más Monumental in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during her Eras Tour, she praised the crowd for their enthusiasm. "For the very first time that I have ever even visited Argentina, you decided to sell out three stadium shows as a welcome tonight," she gushed to the audience (via ET). The singer returned the favor by giving Argentinian Swifties some major bragging rights: the first public kiss between Swift and Travis Kelce took place in their country. To finish the monumental tour's South American leg, she then headed to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil.

In his book "The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation," historian J. Randy Taraborrelli claimed that Taylor Swift bought a spacious house in Cape Cod just to own some property close to Conor Kennedy. Swift dated Robert F. Kennedy's grandson for three months in 2012, and Taraborrelli suggested that the singer fell in love with the Massachusetts coastal lifestyle. However, according to one of Conor's friends, her home purchase killed any chance she had of marrying into the Kennedy family. "This business of her buying the house on the Cape made him nervous," said the pal. "It seemed as if she was getting a little too attached, spending five million bucks on a house just to be near the guy."

Three years later, OK! reported that Swift was considering another addition to her real estate portfolio: a property near Calvin Harris' family home in Scotland. A source said it appealed to her because it looked "like a fairytale castle." Swift responded to this rumor by tweeting, "I'm not actually buying a castle," along with a relevant "New Romantics" lyric about building one. 

In a 2013 Vanity Fair interview, Swift assured fans that she does not base her property purchases on where her boyfriends live. "If I like you I will apparently buy up the real-estate market just to freak you out so you leave me," she said. "Like that makes sense."

Taylor Swift's music catalog includes plenty of songs with happy endings, but when her DJ boyfriend visited a massage parlor that was somehow associated with them, she wrote him out of her life. That's the story that erupted in September 2015 after Calvin Harris was photographed leaving a $40-an-hour Thai massage parlor on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Maybe Harris, who was Forbes' highest-paid DJ at the time, just likes a good deal.

A source claimed to Radar that Swift was livid after seeing the pics of Harris exiting the establishment, with the insider explaining that Harris had a personal masseuse at the time. When he purportedly tried to convince Swift that he wasn't guilty as sin by claiming that he only visited the massage parlor because that employee was ill, his suspicious girlfriend wasn't buying it.

One thing's for certain: Harris despised that story. "It's not going to be a 'happy ending' for everyone I sue for defamation of character for all these bulls*** stories," he tweeted. Swift did not comment, but she did favorite his tweet. While their love story didn't actually end with an argument over what Harris does to relax, Harris would fire off an angry tweet-rant about Swift a year later after a highly-publicized split. At least the song that Harris and Swift co-wrote, "This Is What You Came For," featuring Rihanna, lives on as a memorial to their 15-month-long romance.

With much hype and hoopla, Swift debuted her "Wildest Dreams" video at the MTV Video Music Awards in August 2015. There was much to discuss in that footage: Swift as a brunette standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset filming an Old Hollywood movie with a dashing Scott Eastwood and ... Cecil the lion? That's right, the romance video featured giraffes, elephants, zebras, and a big cat with the same signature black mane of the famous Zimbabwean lion illegally killed by hunters in July 2015.

Cecil's death caused an international uproar and may have been the motivation behind the lion in Swift's video, but it's highly unlikely she actually filmed with Cecil. For starters, the lion on-screen is standing closer to Swift than most house cats would allow. We know she loves kitties, but Tay is no lion tamer. Most likely, the lion is a computer generated image that may or may not depict Cecil. Swift and the film crew have not publicly discussed the lion in question. One thing we do know: all proceeds from Swift's video were pledged to the African Parks Foundation of America.

Celebrities are never ever allowed to be bloated in public, like, ever. That's how the baby bump stories begin. According to the tabloid site MediaMass, Swift was spotted with "a prominent stomach bulge" during a January 2016 "romantic dinner date" and even drank water during a toast at said dinner.

Imagine if someone zoomed in on your post-holiday belly mid-dinner. Heck, imagine if someone zoomed in on your belly at any given time. (Are you sucking in right now?) Exactly. Let's not forget, Swift wrapped up her world tour just weeks before this rumor began, and her washboard abs were bared on stage for all the world to see. Even if she had conceived in the interim, that little love child would be the size of a grain of rice.

Months later, OK! (via Gossip Cop) revived the pregnancy gossip with its own quotes from those mysterious, loose-lipped sources who always seem to know so much about celebrities' personal lives. It quoted a supposed pal of Swift as saying, "Word is she's eating twice the amount she normally does." Being the subject of pregnancy gossip is par for the course for the singer, who made a valiant effort to shut down a 2008 rumor that she and Joe Jonas were about to become parents. The frustrated singer told Access (via Today), "I didn't do anything to provoke that. Like I'm sitting there thinking, like what? Did I wear the wrong shirt?"

Taylor Swift has used pseudonyms when writing songs before, but in 2023, some fans became convinced that the "Fortnight" singer had penned a significantly longer work under a false name: a tie-in novel for the spy movie, "Argylle." TikToker @jessicalynnslocum created a viral video listing some of the clues that backed up the fan theory that Swift is the book's mysterious author, Elly Conway.

In the "Argylle" film, Bryce Dallas Howard plays the main character, a novelist who totes around a wearable cat carrier. It has a bubble window for her feline companion to peep out of, an amenity that Swift's kitties get to enjoy. The carrier also features an argyle pattern, and Swift seems fairly fond of argyle sweaters. Two of Swift's cats, Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey, are both Scottish Folds — as is the cat in the movie.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, "Argylle" director Matthew Vaughn revealed that he heard about the Swift conspiracy theory from his daughter. "I was like, 'It's not true! She didn't write the book!' But my daughter was convinced of it," he recounted. Howard, however, did admit that her character's cat backpack was inspired by the one featured in Swift's "Miss Americana" documentary. "Matthew saw this image and was like, 'That needs to be in a movie,'" she recalled on "The Tonight Show." As for Conway's true identity, The Telegraph revealed that the fictional author is actually two writers: Tammy Cohen and Terry Hayes.

Rumors that Taylor Swift is secretly bisexual or gay are so pervasive that the subset of Swifties who believe them have their own fandom name: Gaylors. Occasionally, tabloids will provide Gaylors with fodder to fuel their Swift fanfics. In 2019, OK! claimed that Swift and model Karlie Kloss' relationship went beyond friendship. "While Taylor had never been attracted to women before, she quickly developed feelings for Karlie," a source said.

It can be harmful to speculate about someone's sexuality, but this didn't prevent a publication that's considered far more reputable than OK! from publishing an opinion piece centered on Swift's sexual orientation. In 2024, writer Anna Marks wrote a guest essay for The New York Times in which she asserted that Swift might be queer. For evidence, Marks pointed to Swift's attire, the imagery in her music videos, and her lyrics. "It takes neither a genius nor a radical to see queerness implied by Ms. Swift's work," she wrote.

A source with ties to Swift slammed Marks, telling CNN, "There seems to be no boundary some journalists won't cross when writing about Taylor, regardless of how invasive, untrue, and inappropriate it is." Swift herself addressed the obsession with her sexuality in the "1989 (Taylor's Version)" prologue. She believed people wouldn't speculate about it if they only saw her hanging out with her girl squad. "I would learn later on that people could and people would," the singer wrote.

Taylor Swift has dropped some hints that she might be a little disappointed that she hasn't walked down the aisle yet. In her 2023 song, "You're Losing Me," she famously sings the heartbreaking words, "I wouldn't marry me either." And in her "Fortnight" music video, much of which takes place inside a mental asylum, she unleashes her rage while sporting a sort of bridal gown. In other scenes, she's dressed like a grieving Victorian widow. Swift and Alwyn announced their split in April 2023, so could this imagery symbolize the mourning of a wedding that never happened?

According to the popular celeb gossip provider DeuxMoi, Swift didn't sign a marriage certificate while she was dating Joe Alwyn, but the couple did have a wedding ceremony. "It was NEVER made legal ... I'm sorry she didn't tell you guys about it in a song but just because she doesn't sing about something doesn't mean it didn't happen!!!" read a post on DeuxMoi's Instagram story.

In a rare move, Swift's publicist, Tree Paine, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to adamantly deny the rumor. "Enough is enough with these fabricated lies about Taylor," she wrote. Her tweet included a screenshot of the DeuxMoi post. What Paine wrote next seemed to indicate that Swift has found marriage rumors more hurtful than most other gossip about her life. Addressing DeuxMoi, she added, "It's time for you to be held accountable for the pain and trauma you cause with posts like these."