In this essay, I demonstrate that pop artists and the general public who engage with US pop culture understand Christian theological constructions better than biblical scholars might expect. To illustrate this, I examine the mainstream Christian purity theology captured in Taylor Swift’s song, ‘But Daddy, I Love Him‘ from her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024).[1] The release of this album was the launch of her 149 day long world tour that generated 2 billion USD in ticket sales only.[2] Swift’s tour ended on December 9, 2024 and attracted 10,168,008 fans in total, setting a new Guinness World Record for the highest attendance for a music tour by a female artist.[3] Given such worldwide influence, this massive scale of contemporary biblical reception in pop culture calls for serious scholarly attention.
[1] Taylor Swift (2024) Taylor Swift – But Daddy I Love Him (Official Lyric Video). [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/U2W173hRfyA?si=sB4C0lFYZvrFKlnK
[2] Beaumont-Thomas, B. (2024) ‘Taylor Swift’s Eras tour smashes touring revenue record with more than $2bn in ticket sales’, The Guardian, 9 December. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/dec/09/taylor-swifts-eras-tour-smashes-touring-revenue-record-with-more-than-2bn-in-ticket-sales
[3] Guinness World Records (2024) Highest attendance for a music tour by a female artist. Available at: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/775987-highest-attendance-for-a-music-tour-by-a-female-artist
* The song’s lyrics are displayed on the left column, and my comments appear on the right column. You may begin by reading the lyrics on the left, then read the comments on the right from top to bottom to follow the textual rhythm and context.
‘But Daddy, I Love Him’ Lyrics
Verse 1
I forget how the West was won
I forget if this was ever fun
I just learned these people only raise you to cage you
Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best
Clutching their pearls, sighing “What a mess”
I just learned these people try and save you
… cause they hate you
Comments
As she says “these people” only raise you to cage you, we learn that the 3rd person plural pronoun, they, is used to refer to parental figures. From “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best,” the audience learns they are Christians wearing nice attire for the church attendance. “These people” who try to save her are motivated by hate. They clutch their pearls and murmur a complaint instead of a head-on confrontation with the “mess.” The daughter “just learned” something that she believed otherwise up until now: why they raise her. And the real intentions of “these people” raising her as revealed to her on this very Sunday was to keep her in the cage because they(or parents) hate her.
Or I wonder do they(or parents) hate, not her, but what her morality represents for them? The hate directed at inferior morality, perceived as impurity that must be purged out of the community as dirty contaminant, sin. This theology of purity culture of theirs is grounded in retaliation. The perceived threat to their existence is substantiated in their consciousness as an actual invasion that must be retaliated to make things right.
Pre-Chorus 1
Too high a horse
For a simple girl to rise above it
They slammed the door on my whole world
The one thing I wanted
Here, she mourns her lost authenticity rather than lost purity, illustrating that for her, there is no purity without authenticity. Other people around her are on surveillance, entrapping her outside her “whole world” by robbing agency to access her “whole world” from her. Through these contextual clues, we learn that she is perhaps underaged or in her young adulthood, a life stage typically referred to by healthcare professionals as emerging adulthood experienced by people aged 15–34 where poor sleep and declining mental health are often observed as well as incomplete economic independence.[4]
[4] Rod, N.H., Davies, M., de Vries, T.R., Kreshpaj, B., Drews, H., Nguyen, T.L. and Elsenburg, L.K. (2025) ‘Young adulthood: a transitional period with lifelong implications for health and wellbeing’, BMC Global and Public Health, 3(1), p. 25.
Chorus 1
Now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned
Screaming “But Daddy I love him!”
I’m having his baby
No, I’m not, but you should see your faces
I’m telling him to floor it through the fences
No, I’m not coming to my senses
I know he’s crazy but he’s the one I want
She is now running with her “dress unbuttoned,” which gives the audience visual clues to what this scene would look like. She is probably not allowed to do that under the parental surveillance. Screaming “But Daddy I love him!” seems desperate and unplugged. The designation of “Daddy” is very telling regarding three points: (1) “these people” are now reduced down to a single person, “Daddy”; (2) addressing him “Daddy” instead of “Dad” or “Father” depicts hierarchy in addition to relational dynamic that reflects praxis of Christian patriarchal headship; (3) taken together, the other parent is not a “Daddy” which means her parents are in a heterosexual union. Yet, her mother is nowhere to be found in the song. We simply do not hear from her and cannot know her presence. Her voice is and her opinions are muted. But as we saw in the beginning of the song, Sarahs and Hannahs participate in the system that locks up the daughter’s “whole world” through this muteness.
Verse 2
Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid
Tendrils tucked into a woven braid
Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all
He was chaos, he was revelry
Bedroom eyes like a remedy
Soon enough the elders had convened
Down at the city hall
She says her plans, as a dutiful daughter, were “laid,” which is a passive action. Then, by whom, were they paid? And those plans were “dutiful,” leaving no room for her own agency.
Pre-Chorus 2
“Stay away from her”
The saboteurs protested too much
Lord knows the words we never heard
Just screeching tires and true love
She hears “Stay away from her” but points out there surely were more words iterated either in the head only or spoken in secret behind her back. The comparison of those words to “screeching tires” envisions the violent audible experience of hearing such words. And “(screeching) true love” imagines sensory remarks of the words being etched on her tender emotions and defenseless integrity.
Chorus 2
And now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned
Screaming “But Daddy I love him!”
I’m having his baby
No, I’m not, but you should see your faces
I’m telling him to floor it through the fences
No, I’m not coming to my senses
I know he’s crazy but he’s the one I want
She knows “he’s crazy but he’s the one I want.” She wants “crazy.” “Crazy” gained a new meaning. “Crazy” is no longer taboo for her. she goes on to say “I’m having his baby.” in attempting to persuade them to give her the mission to be with him even though she really is not pregnant. Why would pregnancy be a persuasive agent? It is not rare that a pregnant woman is coerced to marrying the father of the baby because that is the best way to conceal the faulty narrative. But in her case, the man is too unacceptable. This scenario still does not allow her to be with him, the “crazy” one.
Post-Chorus
I’ll tell you something right now
I’d rather burn my whole life down
Than listen to one more second of all this griping and moaning
I’ll tell you something about my good name
It’s mine alone to disgrace
I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing
She makes a rash confession, “I’d rather burn my whole life down.” Earlier she said the only thing she wanted was her “whole world” but here it is her “whole life,” meaning the one that she is living now. But the world out there, which offers her all that room to breath is out of her reach. She doesn’t care about her “whole life” where she has to hear all the griping and moaning. She reclaims the previously disgraced “good name” of her own. It was hers all along, and if it were to be disgraced, the accountability lies only in her, no more. There are “all these vipers,” which are venomous serpents. And they are dressed in empath clothing that is clearly separate from their embodied essence.
Bridge
God save the most judgmental creeps
Who say they want what’s best for me
Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see
Thinking it can change the beat
Of my heart when he touches me
And counteract the chemistry
And undo the destiny
You ain’t gotta pray for me
Me and my wild boy
And all this wild joy
If all you want is gray for me
Then it’s just white noise
And it’s just my choice
While she could curse on these vipers, she prays for them by saying “God save the most judgmental creeps.” Perhaps their sanctimonious performance of soliloquies are their private prayers to God that they believe have power to change the divine will. But her “destiny” with her “wild boy” (now, we know he is crazy and also wild) do not need prayers. She criticizes their performative piety and weaponization of intercession by renaming their praying as graying “white noise” that has no efficacy on her “choice.”
Verse 3
There’s a lot of people in town that I
Bestow upon my fakest smiles
Scandal does funny things to pride
But brings lovers closer
We came back when the heat died down
Went to my parents and they came around
All the wine moms are still holding out
But it’s over.
She is surrounded by many people in the community but is isolated by the heat of the scandal between them. She is however pulled toward her lover even more than those who rejects her “whole world” and “true love.” Although the intensity has gone down, “all the wine moms” are still out there, dormant in her neighborhood. But her parents finally came around and this parental permission was the catalyst to her victory, “it is (now) over.”
Chorus 3
Now I’m dancing in my dress in the sun and
Even my daddy just loves him
I’m his lady, and oh my God
You should see your faces
Time, doesn’t it give some perspective
No, you can’t come to the wedding
I know he’s crazy but he’s the one I want
She is dancing in the sun, in her dress (no description of buttons undone) because her “daddy just loves him” She implies that her foes make supposedly funny or weird faces by invoking “and oh my God, you should see your faces” and reject further social relationships by not inviting them to her wedding with the “crazy” and wild” one.
Post-Chorus
I’ll tell you something right now you ain’t gotta pray for me
Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy
He was chaos, he was revelry
If all you want is gray for me
Then it’s just white noise, and it’s my choice
She doesn’t want their prayers because they are just graying for her, making white noise. She says “it’s my choice.” She chooses her “wild boy” and the “wild joy” and to believe that a prayer that seeks divine validation for their dehumanizing their neighbor is not a prayer.
Outro
Screaming “But Daddy I love him!”
I’m having his baby
No, I’m not! But you –
Should see your faces
But oh my God you should see your faces
In the end, the same screaming out “But Daddy I love him!” no longer carries grueling desperation. What’s left is the sulky neighbors who might want to look at themselves in the mirror.
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