Taylor Swift’s double entendre-laced ode to superstition and sex, “Wood,” made listeners extra excitable this week as the pop superstar continued making her press rounds for “The Life of a Showgirl” — but not everyone gets the fan frenzy.
Pressed in a recent interview for her mother Andrea Swift’s thoughts on “Wood” and its risqué lyrics like, “His love was the key that opened my thighs,” the singer teasingly said that the beauty of wordplay is that her mom probably doesn’t realize the song is in part about getting down and dirty.
“Are you ever nervous playing any songs or any of the album for your parents?” Sirius XM’s “The Morning Mash” co-host Nicole Ryan asked Swift on Monday. “Like, I mean, what does your mom’s face do when you play ‘Wood’ for her for the first time?”
“I think that she thinks that that song is about superstitions, popular superstitions — which it absolutely is,” Swift responded, cheekily.
“That’s the joy of the double entendre,” she continued. “That song, you could read that song for people and it just goes right over their head. You see in that song what you wanna see in that song.”
While “Wood” does indeed twist its funky pop hooks around popular superstitions like knocking on wood, stepping on cracks and wishing on flowers, fans were also quick to note that its lyrics can just as easily be interpreted to be about sexual satisfaction with her NFL star fiancé Travis Kelce.
“Forgive me, it sounds cocky / He (ah!)matized me and opened my eyes / Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see / His love was the key that opened my thighs,” Swift sings in the number’s repeated refrain.
The singer broke down the lyrics further with Jimmy Fallon on Monday, insisting that “it really started out in a very innocent place.”
“I brought this into the studio and I was like, I want to do a throwback, timeless-sounding song and I have this idea about ‘I ain’t gotta knock on wood’ and it would be all these superstitions,” she began. Then, through the audience’s knowing laughter and Fallon’s prodding, Swift addressed the elephant in the room, so to speak.
“I don’t know what happened, man,” she said. “I got in there, we started vibing and I don’t know how we got here, but I love the song so much.”
