Leave it to Swifties to get to the bottom of one of the more mysterious lyrics on The Tortured Poets Department.
In Taylor Swift’s new song “thanK you aIMee,” which is believed to be about her years-long feud with Kim Kardashian, Swift, 34, opens with a curious reference.
“When I picture my hometown / There’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you,” Swift sings. “And a plaque underneath it / That threatens to push me down the stairs at our school.”
Unsurprisingly, fans immediately began furiously attempting to connect the dots — and one might have struck gold.
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“This is the statue she is referring to in the beginning of ‘thanK you aIMee,’” one fan wrote via X. “She thinks of Kim because of the snake in the statue.”
The fan shared a screenshot of the Wikipedia page for the statue of Athena Parthenos, which is located in The Parthenon in Nashville’s Centennial Park.
“The goddess is 13 meters tall and wears weaponry and a helmet,” the page reads. “In her left hand she holds a shield and in her right a 1.8 meter high statue of Nike. Between the shield and the goddess, a colossal snake rises.”
The snake reference potentially harkens back to the early days of the beef between Kardashian, 43, and Swift. In 2016, Kardashian released audio from a private phone call between Swift and her then-husband Kanye West, purporting to show Swift’s approval of her name being used in West’s song “Famous.”
In 2019, Swift opened up about the experience, saying, “A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the Internet.”
Since then, snakes and snake emojis have been closely associated with Swift and Kardashian’s long-standing feud.
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As for the fan’s theory about the statue, he received some back-up from fellow Swifties in the comments.
One wrote, “OH WAIT UR SMART,” while another simply commented, “OMG.”
There were a couple of detractors who noted that Swift’s hometown is actually West Reading, Pennsylvania, not Nashville. However, Swift and her family did relocate to Music City when she was 14 years old and she has been intrinsically tied to the area ever since.
In fact, Swift owns two properties in Nashville, including a penthouse apartment located less than a mile away from the Parthenon and the statue in question.
