Taylor Swift Admits ‘Corners’ of Her Fanbase ‘Take Things to a Really Extreme Place:’ ‘Little Bit Weird’

Taylor Swift is opening up about her special relationship with her fans — and how some of them can take things too far.

In a video interview with The New York Times as part of the outlet’s 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters profile, shared Tuesday, April 28, the singer-songwriter, 36, talked about how her fanbase — known as Swifties — has evolved over the years.

“There’s certain things that we have as a tradition between me and my fans. They love for an emotional song to be track 5,” the 14-time Grammy Award winner explained. “There’s like special things like that, but at the same time, there’s sort of so many of them [fans] now, which is great, but there’s corners of my fanbase who are gonna take things to a really extreme place. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“There’s people who are gonna try to, like, do detective work, figure out the details — who is that about? What is this?” she continued. “When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s a paternity test. Like, ‘This song’s about that person.’ Because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song, I did.’ But that’s part of it.”

The “Elizabeth Taylor” hitmaker noted that when she puts her music into the world, “You have to hold tight to your perception of your art and your relationship with it,” and whether or not people like it, remember, “I was doing it for me anyway.”

Swift, of course, is no stranger to criticism and shared that it “has been a huge fuel” for her music, inspiring songs like “Blank Space,” from her 1989 album, and “Anti-Hero,” off of Midnights.

“There are so many songs in my career that would not exist, like ‘Blank Space’ would not exist, if I hadn’t had people being like, ‘Here’s a slideshow of all her boyfriends,’” she remarked. “And then ‘Anti-Hero’ is a song that I’m so proud of, still, that song doesn’t exist if I don’t get criticized for every aspect of my personality that people have a problem with.”