Emma Stone Had A Curious Contribution To Taylor Swift's Tortured Poets Department
Taylor Swift's "Florida!!!" off her eleventh studio album "The Tortured Poets Department" is packed with surprises. In an iHeartRadio audio clip discussing the track, the Grammy winner revealed that she finds time in her busy schedule to binge-watch "Dateline" and perhaps more surprisingly draws songwriting inspiration from the long-running show too. "People, you know, have these crimes that they commit where they immediately skip town and go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in," she explained (via Today). "I think when you go through a heartbreak, there's a part of you that thinks I want a new name. I want a new life." However, the inspiration pales in comparison to the fact that Swift's BFF Emma Stone features on the track.
After fans delved into the album's credits, they took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share that the actor got a mention for contributing "oddities" to "Florida!!!" Interestingly, Stone may have inspired the album in more ways than one, as fans reckon that Swift drew certain parallels to the actor's Oscar-winning performance in "Poor Things" in her "Fortnight" music video. The "Blank Space" hitmaker donned a similar Victorian gown to the one the two-time Academy Award winner wore in the film (via X). Both works also feature a shot of an unwilling woman having a medical procedure done on her brain with electrical currents. To make matters even stranger, "The Tortured Poets Department" may not be the first Swift album for which Stone acted as a muse.
Did Taylor Swift write When Emma Falls In Love for Emma Stone?
Taylor Swift's 2023 re-release "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" featured a vault track entitled "When Emma Falls In Love." The sweet song describes how Swift watched one of her closest friends fall in love and admired how she stood her ground in relationships. Swifties soon followed the clues and realized that the song might be about Emma Stone's romance with a Culkin brother. To start, the Instagram announcement for the re-recording confirmed that she wrote most of the original tracks between 2007 and 2009. Swift and the "La La Land" star's friendship was thriving in 2009 as the singer-songwriter often tweeted at her friend. So, it's not that far-fetched to assume that the "Shake It Off" songstress could've used the Oscar winner as an inspiration for the track.
Additionally, Stone was reportedly living in Los Angeles at the time, so the lyric "She's so New York even when she's in L.A." could easily allude to her. The pop star also apparently described her friend as "little miss sunshine" in the lyrics. Notably, her character's introduction in the 2010 flick "Easy A" featured Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full Of Sunshine." The Grammy winner also may have referenced Stone's close relationship with her mom, Krista, with the lyric, "When Emma falls in love, she calls up her mom, jokes about the ways that this one could go wrong." In fact, the theory seemed even more plausible after Swift divulged that she wrote the song about one of her dearest friends before performing it live at the Eras Tour stop in Kansas City.
Taylor Swift's friendship with Emma Stone started because of music
Taylor Swift and Emma Stone's friendship began back in 2008 when they both attended Hollywood Life's Young Hollywood Awards. When the "Cruella" star spoke to MTV News in 2010, Stone recalled how she went home after that first meet and caught up on Swift's music. Like most of us, she was blown away and reached out to the singer-songwriter to make her admiration known, and they became friends shortly after. Swift publicly cemented their friendship by showing up to the "Easy A" premiere in 2010. Then, in a 2011 MTV News interview, Stone revealed that she got to hear "Speak Now" before the rest of the world. It's not too wild to think that the "August" singer-songwriter may have played "When Emma Falls In Love" to her in the process. While speaking to Access Hollywood in 2012, the "Cruel Summer" hitmaker noted that she stays in touch with her besties Selena Gomez and Stone through a group chat.
The A-list trio often updates each other on the more mundane aspects of their lives while they're in different corners of the world. Swift further asserted, "It's just so important to have people that you trust and Emma and Selena and I, we've had so many things in our lives that have changed over the last couple years, but our friendship has stayed the same. So that's really good." Their bond has remained consistently strong over the years, with Stone even cheering her bestie on during the opening night of her Eras Tour in 2023.