Picture this: You’ve just received a text from Taylor Swift.
It’s easy to imagine her missives resembling her famously personal song lyrics. Something honest and vulnerable, like, “I just wanted you to know that this is me trying,” or tender, like, “I don’t wanna miss you like this. Come back, be here,” or even sassy, like, “Good thing I like my friends canceled.”
Well, thanks to a slew of newly unsealed court documents, we now have evidence that’s not far from the truth.
“I think I’m just exhausted in every avenue of my life,” Swift seemingly wrote to her friend Blake Lively in December 2024. “You don’t need to apologize. Just come back please.” Earlier that year, Swift apparently praised her longtime friend’s tenacity: “No one. Should ever. Get into a war of wills with you.”
Several text messages between Swift and Lively were recently made public amid Lively’s legal battle with Justin Baldoni, her director and costar on the hit 2024 movie “It Ends with Us.” These particular texts presumably became relevant to the lawsuit because Baldoni’s name was mentioned (or alluded to, as when Lively wrote to Swift about “this doofus director of my movie”). In some cases, they speak to Lively’s state of mind while the two actors were filming “It Ends With Us,” and amid the breakdown of Lively and Baldoni’s working relationship.
Despite these nuggets of insight, however, some of the most interesting details of Lively’s conversations with Swift are the ones that offer a unique glimpse into Swift’s writerly craft.
Swift is already renowned for her lyricism. The same week these texts were unsealed, she became the youngest woman ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame — in her very first year of eligibility, no less. But these texts reveal a less polished, less reputation-conscious version of Swift’s communication style.
According to these court documents, Lively texted Swift on December 4, 2024, shortly before the end of the Eras Tour, to temperature-check their friendship. Lively and Swift have been close friends for years (Swift is the godmother to Lively’s children), but the actor felt that something in their dynamic had shifted.
“Hey, just checking in,” Lively wrote to Swift. “I have no reason to ask, but I donno, l’ve been feeling like I should… is everything OK?”
Lively went on to say she felt like a “bad friend lately,” that she didn’t want to come across as “needy and awkward,” but her gut (and her husband, Ryan Reynolds) told her to reach out anyway. “I always want the opportunity to be a better friend if there’s something I unintentionally did,” she wrote.
If you’ve ever gone through a rough patch with a loved one, then this brand of ambient, unsettled anxiety will surely feel familiar. It’s really hard to communicate complex emotions, especially when an important relationship is at stake, and the conversation isn’t face-to-face.
Luckily, written communication of complex emotions is exactly Swift’s forte.
“I feel really bad saying anything about this because your texts have been so nice in their intent but your last few… it’s felt like I was reading a mass corporate email sent to 200 employees,” Swift replied in part. “You said the word ‘we’ like 18 times. And it feels awful to be in any way critical of any way you process what you’ve been going through but I just kinda miss my funny, dark, normal-speaking friend who talks to me as herself, not like. A plural unit.”
She added: “I know you feel attacked from all sides for ridiculous reasons so you’re feeling like you have to overly explain things or be overly nice or whatever but. It’s me! That’s just caused a little distance.”
Swift’s response is exactly what I’d hope to receive from a friend in that position: open-hearted and generous, yet firm and forthright. She doesn’t treat Lively with kid gloves, nor does she pile on. Instead, she validates her friend’s anxiety, clarifies her own perspective, and reinforces their bond.
Over the past two decades, Swift has built an empire by making fans feel like her friends, writing songs that sound like heart-to-hearts. It’s oddly comforting to know that Swift writes to her actual friends with the same attention to detail.
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