She's been tipped as a potential kingmaker in the 2024 US presidential election, but how much do you really know about diminutive warbler and eminent trouser snake charmer Taylor Swift? Is she really part of a deep-state psy-op to keep the Democrats in power, or just another multi-platinum-selling pop artist from the same battery farm as all the other bland, uninspiring acts clogging up the Billboard Hot 100 these days? Well, WordJam's been doing some digging and we've discovered some truly unbelievable facts about everyone's favourite stockbroker's daughter and Dolly Parton wannabe. So sit back, untense those jaw muscles and prepare yourselves for a deep dive into one of modern culture's most enigmatic figures. Who knows, perhaps the next time you're on WhatsApp, Snapchat, or whatever the fuck it is you young people insist on using as a substitute for face-to-face conversation nowadays, you could try dropping some of these truth bombs in a desperate attempt to impress your electronic non-friends? Or not. It's your choice: I'm only doing this for the clicks, frankly.
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1. She owns a Doberman Pinscher called Kissinger
Everyone knows Taylor Swift loves cats, but did you know her most faithful companion is a snarling, snaggle-toothed mutt named after the late US National Security Advisor, Secretary of State and unconvicted war criminal Henry Kissinger? Residents near Swift's $18 million Rhode Island home claim the pint-sized poppet uses the word "Cambodia" as an instruction for the crazed canine to attack unwanted visitors, and there are even reports that human bones have been found littered around the 12,000 square foot estate. However, sources close to the singer maintain the psychotic pooch is a real sweetheart when you get to know him. "If you rub his belly just right you've got a friend for life," one told WordJam, "although you still have to count your fingers afterwards".
2. She can hold nine billiard balls in her mouth
From eating and breathing to performing desperate sex acts as a rent substitute, our mouths perform many mundane but essential functions - but did you know that Taylor Swift can hold up to nine regular-sized pool balls in her ruby-lipped cakehole? It's not known for certain how the singer discovered she had this ability, but it's believed she may have acquired it by chance during an early gig at the Bluebird Café in Nashville, when an angry punter upset the pool table in protest at the blonde songbird performing a countryfied version of Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'". "Everyone froze when them balls went flyin'," recalls Blind Willie McTadger, a regular at the Bluebird, "but then she opened her mouth and, dang boy, she welcomed 'em in like a Vietnamese hooker in the blowbang season!"
3. Her favourite movie is Russ Meyer's Supervixens
Given her squeaky clean, girl next door image, it's hard to believe that Taylor Swift's cinema tastes extend to anything beyond PG-13 rated rom-coms and family-friendly Pixar movies, so it may come as a surprise that her favourite flicks come from the rib-tickling, bra-busting, crotch-popping mind of self-styled "rural Fellini" Russ Meyer. According to Dr. Sheldon Shillberger, psychologist to the stars, Swift's fascination with the director could be rooted in Meyer's world-view. "His films revolve around prefab-dwelling, blue-collar Joes whose lives play out against a backdrop of scrapyards, economy supermarkets and comically buxom women. Now, on the surface, this may have nothing in common with the Weltanschauung depicted in Taylor Swift's work, but give me some more green and I'll make it fit any way you want..."
4. She drives a 1982 model Volvo 240 Turbo Wagon
We all know celebrities ride around in chauffeur-driven stretch limos with tinted windows and a hospitality section in the passenger compartment, right? Well, there's at least one short-arsed starlet who prefers a more low-rent alternative to the neo-pimpmobiles of the jet set - Taylor Swift! It's said the singer fell in love with the 1982 model Volvo 240 when, as a child in Pennsylvania, she saw one being towed away to the local dump. "It was a real Damascene moment," her elementary teacher Judith Etchasketch tells WordJam. "She didn't know how or why, but she just knew she wanted one. There was something about that Bosch LH-Jetronic fuel injection system with 127hp that really captured her imagination. When I heard the song "Highway Don't Care" for the first time I thought, 'Oh Lord, she's still thinking about that fucking car.'"
5. She once beat cosmic horror Cthulhu in an arm wrestling contest
Evil from the dawn of time poses no threat to Taylor Swift, as the Dark Lord of Chaos Cthulhu discovered when the petite but perfectly formed pop star challenged him to an arm wrestle. "We were getting pissed one night in this little place in Tribeca when Swift walks in with her entourage," Cthulhu's brother Hastur the Unspeakable explains. "Well, this gets right up Thuly's nose as he doesn't go in for any of that hoity-toity celeb bollocks. Anyway, he starts mouthing off at her - 'Light though thou be thou leapest out of darkness, but I am the darkness, bi-atch'; you know the sort of thing - when she holds out her arm and says, 'Flipper me, bro.' So he looks at me and winks, and the next thing I know he's flying through the window with an almighty scream that pierces all creation like a very loud thing. He felt a right twat, I can tell you."
6. She carries a framed photograph of former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson with her when on tour
Despite international stardom, overwhelming critical acclaim and a personal fortune that would put the Romanovs to shame, Taylor Swift still looks to her childhood hero Harold Wilson for inspiration. Sources close to the singer told WordJam that before she goes on stage she likes to sit in her dressing room wearing a Gannex raincoat and smoking a pipe, repeating the ancient mantra "Ee, by gum!" into the mirror in her best Yorkshire accent. "It's, like, really unnerving," says make-up artist Irwin Irkstrom, "but it's also kinda cute in a way. I had a similar thing for Gerald Ford when I was a kid, so I get it. He was, like, just a total hottie with those wiry eyebrows, plump jowls and thinning, uncombed hair - and Wilson had all those things too. I guess when it comes to personal style some things never go out of fashion."
7. Her singing voice is controlled by a complex system of pulleys and levers
You'd be forgiven for thinking it takes years of training to develop a distinctive vocal style like Taylor Swift's, but what you may not know is that her voice is actually assisted by a vast network of pulleys, levers, hinges and fulcra to generate the shrill, caterwauling sound we all enjoy on record and at her live concerts. Despite this being an open secret in the music industry, the pouty poplette is understandably cagey about letting this information into the public domain - hence the cunning deployment of designer dresses and legions of backing dancers at her shows, all working in perfect harmony to help distract from the hideous mass of weathered metal and frayed ropes jutting out through her mouth and burrowing deep into her lungs. If you look closely, though, you just might be able to spot them in publicity stills.
8. Her biggest hit "Shake It Off" was inspired by Monty Python's "Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink" sketch
"Shake It Off" may have heralded a new pop-orientated direction for Swift away from her earlier country-style, but did you know that its ballsy message dismissing her nay-sayers and critics was inspired by Eric Idle's pub bore making sleazy insinuations about city gent Terry Jones' wife in Monty Python's Flying Circus? "It's there in every 'mm-mm', every 'Yeah oh-oh, oh,'" explains Sir Siegfried Götterdämmerung, Regius Professor in Lyricology at the University of Wisbech. "These interjections may sound like doggerel designed to accentuate the scansion of the verse, but they serve the same post-semantic function as Mr. Idle's repetition of 'eh?', ''like it' and 'very good' in breaking down Aristotelian-Euclidean-Newtonian structures of language to arrive at a startling new form of communication existing purely in the libidinous abstract. It's just a pity Ms. Swift couldn't work in a reference to her knickers somewhere."
9. She's not related to Mr. T
Ever since Taylor Swift first arrived on the music scene, there's been considerable media speculation that she and legendary A-Team star Mr. T are somehow related: an entirely understandable assumption given their startling physical resemblance. After exhaustive research, however, WordJam can now exclusively reveal that the two megastars have no familial connection whatsoever. Despite this, if the Creed franchise continues into a fourth instalment and rumours about bringing back Mr. T as Clubber Lang prove accurate, we hope the filmmakers will exploit their extraordinary similarity by signing up Swift as Lang's daughter to face-off against Adonis Viktor Drago-style. After all, if radical gender theory has taught us anything it's that there are absolutely no physiological differences between the sexes, making the prospect of Michael B. Jordan going toe-to-toe with the princess of pop an enticingly real possibility.
10. She discovered a lost prehistoric world in South America
From King Kong to the Barbie movie, our culture is awash with tales of lost worlds populated by unreasoning monsters from the distant past - but did you know Taylor Swift has actually visited such a place? "It was on her last tour of South America," explains Swift's personal bodyguard and gun-enthusiast John Roxton. "Her private jet went down off the mouth of the Amazon, carrying me, Eddie [Malone - Swift's publicist], George [Challenger - her personal trainer] and Taylor to a mysterious, undiscovered island with its own ecosphere. While there we observed the prehistoric wildlife, catalogued all sorts of hitherto unknown botanical and entomological species, and got caught up in a war with the indigenous people from one side of the island and these hideous, cannibalistic ape-men from the other. It was real shit your pants stuff and no mistake, but Taylor's calm head and cool demeanour carried us through. When we got back to civilisation, Taylor brought a pterodactyl with her to prove our amazing adventure to the world's press, but there was no mention of it in the papers or on TV. Ah well: haters gonna hate, I suppose..."
