Taylore #2 : Emily Poe (Patreon)

Emily Poe is truly an enigmatic figure of the early years of Taylor Swift, if only because of the amount of speculation around why she left The Agency in the first place. Emily was Taylor's fiddle player from 2006-2008 right before the Fearless era began, and toured with her during her debut era. She actually lived with Taylor and her mom on their tour bus and spent what I'm sure was an astronomical amount of time with her, so they became very close friends - incidentally, Emily Poe is the original Gaylor conspiracy theory, and it actually isn't just because they were close.

After nearly two years of touring with Taylor and spending what I would assume to be near every waking second with Taylor living on a fucking tour bus with Andrea and Taylor (why does that honestly sound like a nightmare to me...), Emily quit the band. She had secretly taken the LSAT exam and the official story was that she had always wanted to be a lawyer, so when she passed, she quit to go to law school. This is all well and good, especially considering the fact that it was still very early in Taylor's career and it was not yet clear that Emily was walking away from the job of a lifetime, but some of the mysteries of Emily's leaving the band came to the surface when the Fearless album came out, featuring the song Breathe.

Nobody has ever confirmed that Breathe was written about Emily, but it's one of those pieces of lore that is so old and tried and true that I don't even question it anymore. Breathe just IS about Emily Poe. I can't fathom it being about anybody else. Taylor also made a dopey video on her youtube channel, back when she was vlogging all the fucking time like a huge nerd, which you can watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvgO3Uc3Zk4 . Kind of the most insane thing I've ever seen. Now why is it set to a deeply dramatic Dashboard Confessional song............like that is a valid question. IT'S VALID

A couple of things Taylor said about the song -

"It was total therapy because I came in and I was like look you know one of my best friends, I'm going to not have to see anymore and is not going to be a part of what I do, and it's like the hardest thing to go through. It's crazy listening to it because you'd think it'd be about a relationship, but it's really about losing a friend and the fallout, just the loss...It's never specific as to why, that's my favorite thing about it, it doesn't talk about why or whose fault it was because sometimes the hardest time of when you say goodbye is when it's nobody's fault. It just has to stop."

Additionally, in the Fearless liner notes, she says, "Fearless is having the courage to say goodbye to someone who only hurts you, even if you can't breathe without them."

In the song she repeats "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" in the ending, and the hidden message for the song is also "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Now.........HOW DOES A GIRLIE LEAVING FOR LAW SCHOOL ELICIT THIS KIND OF WHACKADOODLE RESEPONSE???????????? LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!! You can see CLLEEARRRLYYY why people would start speculating that there was more to the story than simply a young woman going to fucking law school and changing her career based on her childhood dreams of being a prosecutor.

One of the most popular theories about why Breathe as a song exists and why the ending of this particular friendship caused Taylor so much pain, to the point where she felt for some reason she had to apologize to her, is that Emily was indeed FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by the label, and that Taylor tried to stop it from happening, but couldn't, and it was all over before she could do anything about it. Do you guys remember those Pop Up Videos they used to do on vh1, where they'd play a music video and then little bubbles would come up with random facts about the artist? Well, in one of those Pop Up Videos for Our Song (see above pics), the little pop up bubbles say that while the official story was the Emily left to go to law school, she WAS truly fired, and beyond that, Emily has NEVER heard the song Breathe, and Taylor has never spoken to her again.

Now how the hell would vh1's Pop Up Videos know all that? LMFAO!!! I can't find any source on Emily "never hearing" Breathe, but Taylor never speaking to Emily again is just common sense, because the song does not just suggest a clean break where someone just had to move on with their life. And the things that Taylor said about the song and what inspired it also do not suggest a clean break. She says it's no one's fault, and then also says that she had to say "goodbye to someone who only hurts you." Now..................what the hell does that mean............

Frankly this is the some of the most compelling "secret lesbian relationship" lore I have ever heard in my life. There are also all kinds of tiny little tid bits from their friendship that throw kindling on that line of thinking, like for example the two of them posing and pointing next to the word GAY (see above), and a hand written letter that Taylor wrote to Emily that you can see in the vlog I shared, and etc etc. Though that said, I've also heard that it wasn't necessarily a romantic relationship, but was instead a distracting friendship, perhaps to the point of co-dependency, that was hindering Taylor's career in some way shape or form, that management saw as a problem, and fired her for it. For Christ's sake, the girl lived on Taylor's tour bus with herself and Andrea like she was Taylor's long lost sister or something....weirdo behavior. But, truthfully, when female friendships are that strong, and your connection with another girl is so intense EVEN in only a platonic sense, the fall outs of them can be truly devastating. Just look at what happened between Taylor and Karlie Kloss.

To me, Emily Poe was Karlie Kloss 1.0. The Karlie before Karlie was Karlie. Another twin from Taylor's dreams who was indeed not what she seemed but was, perhaps only in the eyes of some, a crook who was caught.

It's also worth it to note that Emily has actually done a couple silly little interviews about being Taylor's fiddle player way back when - now she's a married prosecutor with kids who charges child molesters and abusers and she is really showing up just looking back fondly on her time spent being a fiddle player in Taylor's band. That's why the "secret forbidden relationship" theory doesn't really carry any weight anymore, because clearly, that's not what happened.

As for what ACTUALLY DID happen..........well.............we don't know...........we will never know.........it's a tale that's been dead and buried for some time and Taylor likely never even thinks of her anymore. And she never thinks of her...except when she's on TV...etc etc etc 

xoxo