Taylor Swift: Game of Thrones inspired my Reputation album
The 29-year-old pop star says the fantasy epic drama heavily influenced her music in 2017.
Friday 10 May 2019 10:51, UK
Singer Taylor Swift has revealed her 2017 album Reputation was inspired by Game of Thrones.
The 29-year-old pop star told Entertainment Weekly she started binge watching the HBO show in 2016.
Though she had heard rumblings about the Red Wedding, she managed to avoid any major spoilers from the show's first five years on air.
Swift said the fantasy epic - adapted from George RR Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series - heavily influenced her music.
"So much of my imagination was spent on Game of Thrones," she said.
"At the time, I was making Reputation and I didn't talk about it in interviews, so I didn't reveal that a lot of the songs were influenced by the show."
Swift said half the album ended up featuring songs about vengeance and the other exploring love.
"These songs were half based on what I was going through, but seeing them through a Game of Thrones filter," Swift said.
The lead single from the album, Look What You Made Me Do, was inspired by the kill list drawn up by Maisie Williams' character, Arya Stark.
The track King of My Heart was influenced by Khal Drogo and Game of Thrones' Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen.
"It's even got this post-hook of drums - I wanted them to sound like Dothraki drums," Swift said.
She also penned lines based on Season 7 of the series which aired during the summer of 2017 - months before her album was released in November the same year.
"I Did Something Bad I wrote after Arya and Sansa conspire to kill Littlefinger," she said.
"That and Look What You Made Me Do," she added, "are very Cersei vibes, too. Daenerys as well."
Swift has been busy dropping clues about her upcoming seventh album and said her strategy for teasing her new music had also been influenced by the show.
"My entire outlook on storytelling has been shaped by it - the ability to foreshadow stories, to meticulously craft cryptic story lines," she said.
"So, I found ways to get more cryptic with information and still be able to share messages with the fans. I aspire to be one one-millionth of the kind of hint dropper the makers of Game of Thrones have been."
Asked who she thinks will end up on the Iron Throne, Swift said: "Daenerys, Arya, or Sansa," she said.