Stevie Nicks penned prologue poem for Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’
While all eyes (and ears) are on Taylor Swift’s latest album, Stevie Nicks actually put pen to paper for “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The former Fleetwood Mac singer’s “For T and Me” poem is featured as the written prologue on the physical copies of the album that dropped Friday.
“He was in love with her / Or at least she thought so / She was brokenhearted / Maybe he was too,” Nicks, 75, begins the poem, about a relationship between an ill-fated couple in which the woman “was way too hot to handle” and the man “was way too high to try.”
Elsewhere in the poem, the “Edge of Seventeen” singer writes: “He really can’t answer her / He’s afraid of her / He’s hiding from her / And he knows that he’s hurting her / She tells the truth / She writes about it / She’s an informer / He’s an ex-lover.”
One good turn deserves another. Later on the album, Swift, 34, compares herself to Nicks in the song “Clara Bow,” named for the 1920s silent film star known as Hollywood’s first It girl.
“You look like Stevie Nicks in ‘75, the hair and lips / Crowd goes wild at her fingertips, half moon shine a full eclipse,” Swift sings.
The record-setting four-time Album of the Year Grammy Award winner has a musical kinship with the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. Their public relationship dates to 2010, when the pair shared the Grammy stage and performed Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” and Swift’s “You Belong with Me.”
Following the critically panned performance, Nicks praised Swift in an essay for Time magazine.
“Taylor reminds me of myself in her determination and her childlike nature. It’s an innocence that’s so special and so rare,” Nicks wrote. “This girl writes the songs that make the whole world sing, like Neil Diamond or Elton John.”
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