Even as Taylor Swift counts down the days to her July wedding to Travis Kelce, the artist keeps feeding the Swifties. After a couple of new music videos from The Life of a Showgirl, she’s now spilling the tea about her writing process. In addition to answering a question that has plagued us for literally two decades, she also appeared to throw some shade, and fans were quick to start pointing fingers at Ellen DeGeneres over one viral interview.
The New York Times has named Taylor Swift one of the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, and the artist opened up about how the haters have inspired her music. In a viral clip circulating from the interview, she calls out the people (or perhaps a specific person) for mocking her dating life, saying:
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.’
It’s the voice Taylor Swift uses to portray this unnamed bully that really exemplifies how she feels about the sentiment, and Swifties were quick to recall all the times former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres joked about this on her show. One viral tweet shared just that portion of the quote and tagged The Ellen DeGeneres Show (which aired its final episode in 2022):
.@TheEllenShow https://t.co/XcWOT7AWv6April 28, 2026
Fans loved how Taylor Swift appeared to be calling out people who often spoke about her dating life out of turn, and the comments were absolutely vicious when it came to their thoughts on Ellen:
- She is Clocking Ellen...And I am here for it… – priyanka6290123
- Oh youre messyyyyy – Fipanmu
- No, because when she sent this, the first thing I thought of was the Ellen Show incident – ghostlylutz
- End that hag – thiskelpo
- Am I the only one who thought of Ellen? The “ring a bell if you dated him” thing? – sgtschenford
Taylor Swift appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show quite a bit during the talk show’s run to promote her music, but the boyfriend slideshow in question seems to be from a 2012 episode. Ellen tried to get the singer to divulge which ex-boyfriends certain songs were written about by ringing a bell when she showed a photo of someone she'd dated.
Photos of Taylor Swift and different men started to carousel across Ellen DeGeneres’ big screen — some of them did feature her ex-boyfriends, but others were just pics Swift had taken with other celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Zac Efron. Taylor Swift stated that she wasn’t going to reveal anything and didn’t want to play the bell game. She seemed to be tearing up when she said:
I don’t want to, ‘cause they’ll send me angry emails, and I don’t want to get them.
Ellen DeGeneres proceeded to grab the bell and start ringing it as Taylor Swift buried her head in her hands, ultimately crying:
Stop it! Stop it! Stop! This makes me feel so bad about myself. Every time I come up here, you put, like, a different dude up there on the screen, and it just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being.
The Red artist appeared to be really upset by Ellen’s actions, and it’s honestly not a fun clip to watch. I guess Taylor Swift ultimately got her revenge, laughing all the way to the bank with the money she earned from “Blank Space.” She didn’t even need to drop any names for Swifties to make assumptions about whose to write in it.
