Taylor Swift on fans decoding her songs: 'It's sort of like a paternity test'

Many fans of Taylor Swift enjoy taking apart her songs to find easter eggs, decipher what they mean, or figure out who they could be about.

In an exclusive video interview with The New York Times, the American pop star got candid about her huge fan base and how they choose to engage with her songs.

"There are certain things that we have as a tradition between me and my fans. They love for an emotional song to be track five. There's, like, special things like that," she said. "But there's corners of my fan base who are gonna take things to a really extreme place."

"There's people who are gonna try to, like, do detective work, figure out the details. Who is that about? What is this? When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it's sort of like a paternity test. Like, this song's about that person, because I'm like... That dude didn't write the song, I did."

Taylor has accepted that there is nothing she can do about it and that it comes with the territory.

"You have to hold tight to your perception of your art and your relationship with it, and then you just kind of have to, like... There it goes. Hope you like it," she said. "If you don't now, hope you do in five years, and it, like, and if you never do, then I was doing it for me anyway."

The singer-songwriter is also aware of the criticism she has been receiving, but she said she uses them as fuel for her art.

"It's been a huge jumping off point, like a creative writing prompt or something," she said. "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 slide show of all her boyfriends.'" 

"'Anti-hero' is a song that I'm so proud of still. Like, that song doesn't exist if I don't get criticized for every aspect of my personality that people, you know, have a problem with or whatever," she added.

Taylor said criticism is a part of the artist life, but they should not get in the way of the craft.

"Like, don't make this make you stop writing or make you edit yourself or whatever. If it's an interesting point to you to kind of respond to, then that's a gift for you to be able to write something," she said.

"But don't, like, God, don't go to the, like, notes app and post it. Like, write about it. Make art about this. Don't respond to, like, trolls in your comments. That's not, that's not what we want from you. We want your art." —MGP, GMA News