Taylor Swift having to rerecord her old music in order to own it isn’t an ideal scenario, but the Grammy-winning singer has managed to turn the unpleasant situation into a nostalgia-filled party for her and her fans. Every time a new Taylor’s Version album drops, Swift sprinkles them with fun bonuses, from new songs to new collaborations, and new music videos, which she lovingly labels “From The Vault.” These are songs the singer wrote at the time she was writing the songs we all know and love but ended up scrapping for one reason or another.
One of the most talked-about “Vault” tracks from her latest rerelease, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), is the song “When Emma Falls in Love (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault).” Fans have theorized Swift is talking about longtime friend Emma Stone in the song.
The two were inseparable during the years leading up to the release of the original Speak Now album in 2010. Stone took Swift as her date to the premiere of one of the films that launched her career into the stratosphere, Easy A, and the actress confessed to getting early access to the album at the time. It’s entirely possible she got to listen to “When Emma Falls in Love” then, too.
“I was lucky enough to hear it pretty early on, so it’s so exciting for it to be out and own the songs instead of just be singing them [in my head],”
The song is essentially an ode to a girl named Emma and how she navigates love. Fans are convinced it has to be the Oscar-winning actress. It includes lyrics like “‘Cause she’s the kind of book that you can’t put down, like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town, and all the bad boys would be good boys if they only had a chance to love her.” Swift then finishes the chorus by singing “And to tell you the truth, sometimes I wish I was her.”
What is “When Emma Falls in Love” about?
While it’s safe to assume “When Emma Falls in Love” is about Emma Stone (neither the singer nor the actress has confirmed it at the time of writing), the song might not be about Stone’s most famous relationship.
Stone only started to date Andrew Garfield after meeting him on the set of The Amazing Spider-Man in 2011. By that time, Swift had moved on to making her next album, which would mean “When Emma Falls in Love” would likely be a “Vault” track on Red (Taylor’s Version) instead of Speak Now. Garfield and Stone did attend Swift’s Speak Now tour in 2011, though, so there’s a chance that connection could have led the singer to include the song in this re-recording.
When Swift was working on Speak Now in 2009 and 2010, Stone was actually dating would-be Succession actor Kieran Culkin. The two met while filming Paper Man and went on to date for a couple of years before breaking up in 2011.
This timeline aligns much better with Swift’s writing process for Speak Now, even though the only direct reference to the beau in Emma’s life in the song is the lyric “Emma met a boy with eyes like a man.”