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ATLANTA — Turns out Taylor Swift was spot on naming her forthcoming album, "The Tortured Poets Department."
The company Ancestry, which helps people trace their genealogy, has found evidence that Swift is distantly related to the famed poet Emily Dickinson.
"We need to calm down … but how can we when we have BIG news!?" a post on the Ancestry Instagram account reads. "Renowned American poets Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are 6th cousins, three times removed."
CNN has reached out to Swift's representative for comment. The news was first announced on NBC's "Today."
Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886, is known for her poems such as "Because I could not stop for Death" and "'Hope' is the thing with feathers."
The writer was a celebrity in her time — and like her distant cousin — even wrote about fame. "Success is counted sweetest/By those who ne'er succeed/ To comprehend a nectar/ Requires sorest need," Dickinson wrote in her poem, "Success is counted sweetest."
"Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th century English immigrant (Swift's ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson's sixth great-grandfather, who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut)," according to Ancestry,
Swifties have long made the connection between the two women.
Her album "Evermore" was announced in 2020 on Dec. 10, which happens to be Dickinson's birthday. The title has similarities to Dickinson's poem "One Sister Have I in Our House," which includes the word "forevermore."
Two years after that announcement, Swift referenced the legendary writer in her acceptance speech for the songwriter-artist of the decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Swift explained that the lyrics she writes fall under three genre categories: quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics and glitter gel pen lyrics, which reference the writing instrument she imagines she would have been holding while penning the lyrics.
"If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that's me writing in the quill genre," Swift said, noting that her single "Ivy" from "Evermore" would fall under that category.
Welcome to Swift's historical era.
