Taylor Swift revealed her Lover track “Death by a Thousand Cuts” was inspired not by one of her own public breakups, but by a Netflix romantic comedy called Someone Great.
And, it turns out, the film’s director and writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson said it never would have existed without Swift’s album 1989, which she wrote on Instagram “was there like a best friend with a bottle of tequila and a bear hug” while she was healing from a breakup.
Swift said on Elvis Duran’s morning radio show Friday morning (Aug. 23): “I just wrote a song based on something she made, which she made while listening to something I made, which is the most meta thing that’s ever happened to me.”
The Grammy winner’s seventh studio album, Lover, features 18 songs, including a collaboration with Brendon Urie and the Dixie Chicks.
The movie Someone Great tells the story of a couple who ends their relationship after nine years. “It’s a movie about how she has to end this relationship that she didn’t want to end because she’s still in love with the person but they just grew apart and he’s not a jerk,” Swift explained. “It’s just sad because it’s just realistic, time passed and now we’re different people and that is the most devastating thing.”
Hear Swift talk about Someone Great around the 12-minute mark in the interview below, and listen to “Death by a Thousand Cuts”: