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Taylor Swift is proof that emo is not just a phase, it's a source of inspiration.
In a conversation with The New York Times Magazine for its profile on the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, the Life of a Showgirl musician, 36, explained how she was in her feelings listening to "emo music" in the early 2000s and found inspiration in the genre's lyricism for her own songwriting, per People.
"I was most intensely impacted by emo music, right? Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba, Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz's lyrics — how they take a common phrase and then they just twist the knife of it, right? Like 'I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song.' 'Drop a heart, break a name.' It's 'drop a name, break a heart,' but they switched it."
Swift admitted that she would pour over the lyrics to emo songs and be blown away.
"Or the specificity of 'Hands Down' by Dashboard Confessional, where I'd be reading those lyrics and I'd just finish reading a line, and just go, 'Oh my God,'" she said.
Dashboard Confessional caught wind of Swift's shoutout and shared their own grateful comments on social media to share the love right back.
"@taylorswift has been so kind to me over the years. To hear her express how my songs affected her was a lovely surprise," the post read. "Everything is connected. I feel fortunate to be a link in the chain."
Elsewhere in the chat with NYT Magazine, Swift recounted the surprising origin story for one of her biggest hits and explained how she really feels about some of her fans' "detective work."