{"id":48349,"date":"2025-10-04T16:59:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T16:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/04\/taylor-swifts-father-figure-explained\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T16:59:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T16:59:28","slug":"taylor-swifts-father-figure-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/04\/taylor-swifts-father-figure-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift’s ‘Father Figure’ Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tTaylor Swift<\/a> came out literally swinging on \u201cFather Figure.\u201d The George Michael-inspired track on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl<\/em><\/a>, finds her stepping into the role of a man who was once a literal father figure to her and singing double-take lines like, \u201cI can make deals with the devil because my dick\u2019s bigger.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo who exactly is she singing about? Well, all signs point to Scott Borchetta, the record label executive who signed Swift to Big Machine Records when she was just 15 years old after watching her dazzle a crowd at the legendary Bluebird Cafe. But the hurt at the heart of \u201cFather Figure\u201d seems to stem from the bad blood that developed after Borchetta sold her music catalog to controversial music manager Scooter Braun, kicking off a six-year-long battle over the ownership of her music (and Swift\u2019s \u201cTaylor\u2019s Version\u201d re-recording process).<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2019, Swift posted a lengthy explanation on Tumblr<\/a> about the situation with her masters. She had several gripes, from feeling exploited by a bad record deal: \u201cI was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and \u2018earn\u2019 one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in,\u201d she wrote. Her main issue was the deep sense of betrayal that Borchetta sold Big Machine Records, and all her music, to Braun, with whom she\u2019d had past tension. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNever in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words \u2018Scooter Braun\u2019 escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to,\u201d she added in the same post. \u201cThis is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term \u2018loyalty\u2019 is clearly just a contractual concept,\u201d Swift added. In \u201cFather Figure,\u201d the singer delivers a direct parallel to this sentence when she sings, \u201cThey don\u2019t make loyalty like they used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not the first time Swift has addressed the deep sense of betrayal she felt by Borchetta. Throughout her discography following the 2019 sale of her music, the musician has written about the ordeal. Most notably, on 2020\u2019s\u00a0folklore<\/em> and evermore<\/em>. The former\u2019s \u201cMy Tears Ricochet\u201d paints the scene of\u00a0her own funeral as a metaphor for the loss of her life\u2019s work. In the bridge, she\u2019s more direct when she sings, \u201cAnd I still talk to you (When I\u2019m screaming at the sky)\/And when you can\u2019t sleep at night (You hear my stolen lullabies).\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, on evermore<\/em>, the imagery captures the situation with Borchetta more explicitly. On \u201cRight Where You Left Me,\u201d Swift sings about being frozen in time; on the bridge of \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Go,\u201d she details why. \u201cHe\u2019s got my past frozen behind glass \/ But I\u2019ve got me,\u201d she says, referring to her first six albums. At the time, Swift was still in the middle of re-recording her music as a loophole to own it once more.<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\t\u201cFather Figure\u201d finds Swift on the other side of the debacle. In May, the musician bought back her masters<\/a>. By the end of the song, Swift flips the script when she switches from writing in Borchetta\u2019s perspective and turns it back into her own narrative. Notably, she sings the Mob-esque line \u201cI protect the family\u201d six times, which could be a reference to those first six albums she recorded with Big Machine.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Swift owns her own music and is focused on making her own decisions. As for Borchetta, he is currently the CEO of what is now known as Big Machine Label Group.\u00a0He hasn\u2019t commented publicly on Swift since 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Taylor Swift came out literally swinging on \u201cFather Figure.\u201d The George Michael-inspired track on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, finds her…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":48350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}