According to People, the sweet sample came about after Taylor played her then-unreleased track to her friends, and after the personal performance, James became so obsessed with the word “gorgeous” that Taylor ended up recording her saying it to introduce the song.
And when Blake and Ryan first watched Taylor perform "Gorgeous" live on her Reputation tour, they couldn’t hide their excitement and were filmed literally jumping up and down as their little girl’s voice played out to a stadium of 60,000 people.
Blake later admitted during an appearance on Good Morning America: “We were very embarrassing. That was the true, unfiltered version of our terrible stage parent pride.”
In the song “Betty,” Taylor name-checks three characters involved in a high school romance gone wrong: James, Inez, and Betty.
Attentive listeners quickly realized that James and Inez are the names of Blake and Ryan’s oldest two children. As a result, it didn’t take long for fans to speculate that their third child, who was born nine months earlier, must be called Betty.
Shortly after Folklore’s release, Taylor confirmed the theory during an appearance on a country radio station, where she said that all three of the characters were named after “her friends’ kids.”
Ryan later told SiriusXM: “I mean, what an honor. We thought it was pretty damn amazing. We still do. You know, I still walk down the street and shake my head, thinking, I can’t believe that happened.”
Addressing any concern about how Taylor name-dropping his children may impact their privacy, Ryan added at the time: “The names are the names of our kids, but we trust her implicitly. She’s very sensitive to any of that stuff. And obviously, the song has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names.”
He also revealed that he and Blake “surprised” their daughters with the shoutout and didn’t tell them that Taylor had used their names before they listened to the song for the first time.
This was made all the more plausible by the fact that Taylor mentions no less than 35 potential names throughout the album — with four included in the song title “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” alone.
“So, Taylor, let’s maybe start,” he then teased. “She’s a prolific writer; I mean, what are we doing here? And ‘lazy’ is not a word I’d attach to Taylor!
If you’re wondering, Ryan’s revelation officially rules out the following names: Dylan, Thomas, Patti, Chelsea, Charlie, Lucy, Jack, Ken, London, Heath, West, Sarah, Hannah, Summer, Winter, Destin, Blue, Clara, Stevie, Taylor, Aston, Martin, Chloe, Sam, Sophia, Marcus, Scarlet, Aristotle, Aimee, Eve, Wolf, Faith, Cassandra, Peter, and Robin.
“I think what’s most exciting for them is that for the longest time they just thought Taylor’s just a, you know, like an aunt, like a friend of mommy and daddy that’s very, very close, almost family,” he explained in an interview with SiriusXM.
“And then they went to a concert one day and were like, ‘Oh, oh, this isn’t a hobby,” Ryan added.
At the time, he also revealed that his daughters were obsessed with Taylor’s album Midnights, which he said was “like a religion” in their house.
Ryan admitted: “In fact, I’m not making this up. We are having a Taylor Swift Midnights dance party in, uh, right after this. It’s Sunday. We’re headed straight to the porch where we’re doing a full dance number set to Midnights…swear words included.”
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