Father Figure

Taylor’s inspiration for the character came partly from Succession, specifically the scene in which Logan Roy tells his children, “I love you but you are not serious people.” She explained that she wanted the song to have the energy of Logan dismissing someone who has “bit the hand that fed you”—a powerful figure who believes that everything the protégé has achieved is ultimately because of him. This helps explain the song’s deliberately arrogant and sometimes darkly comic voice: the mentor sees himself as both benefactor and authority, while the language of family (“father figure,” “family” and protection) becomes intertwined with business, profit and control. Yet Taylor also emphasized that she does not simply identify with the character she is portraying. “I also have completely related to the protégé perspective in so many of these situations,” she explained, adding that she relates to “the younger one” even while listening to a song written from the father figure’s perspective. That dual identification gives the song more complexity: the mentor may believe he is the one who holds the power, but Taylor understands the experience of being the younger person in that hierarchy and the moment when that hierarchy begins to break down.

Taylor’s enthusiasm for the song also reveals how much of its appeal lies in character writing rather than autobiography alone. She has called the “Father Figure” lyrics her favourite, recalling that she sat laughing to herself while writing them because they contained “the stuff that I’ve always wanted to say.” She particularly singled out the opening line of the second verse for its visual quality and praised the lyrics of the key-change chorus, describing the whole process as “a blast to write” because she loves “stepping into a character like that.” That framing is important when considering the many theories about who the mentor or protégé might represent: listeners have connected the song to people and events from Taylor’s career, including Scott Borchetta, but Taylor has not confirmed a specific real-life subject. The song instead works as a deliberately constructed power struggle, allowing her to inhabit the voice of someone possessive, calculating and convinced of his own authority while simultaneously understanding the perspective of the person trying to escape that authority.