In Taylor Swift's newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, she has an oft-debated new song, "CANCELLED!" The biggest argument about the song is who it's about (Blake Lively? Brittany Mahomes? Sophie Turner?). But one specific lyric has some wondering whether a viral TikTok meme apparently referenced in the song could earn a payout for the creator who coined it.
In the pre-chorus, Swift sings, "Did you girlboss too close to the sun? / Did they catch you having far too much fun?"
If that first line feels a bit familiar to you, it might be because of a viral 2021 TikTok in which influencer and comedian Caroline Timoney said: "Listen, I can’t give any more information, but I fear I may have girlbossed a bit too close to the sun." It currently has 7.5 million views, and Timoney told Mashable she "couldn't be more excited."
Timoney is "total Swiftie," so when her friends started texting her ahead of Swift's album release, saying her iconic turn of phrase was in one of the songs, she didn't really believe it.
"The next morning I woke up first to like 100 text messages on my phone," she said. "I'm from the East Coast, so most of my friends were already up. It was a really insane day... [She's] been my Spotify number one for the past five or so years. I went to the Eras Tour. I'm a huge Swiftie, so I was just so excited by it more than anything. Just truly so, so excited and really shocked."
Later that day, she posted a video to TikTok saying she "woke up this morning to discover that my TikTok audio that I made as a sophomore in college — 'I girlbossed too close to the sun' — was in a Taylor Swift song. Am I her Shakespeare? Yes. Do I see us as co-writers? As fellow songwriters? Yeah, all of it, all of the above. But I haven't changed. I've forgotten a few names of friends and family because I'm blowing up. These kinds of things happen. But I am genuinely so shocked."
While Timoney is not interested in taking legal action ("It's so public. I'm so proud of my little phrase that I wrote. And I do think I have some ownership over the fact that I came up with that. And I think it's cool, but I don't think I trademarked it or should or could trademark it."), many of the comments encourage her to "lawyer up" and "get that money."
However, one commenter pointed out that the line "girlboss too close to the sun" is a reference to Candace Owens, who said as much in a YouTube video from earlier this year about Swift's alleged involvement in Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni. "But I came up with the phrase," Timoney wrote in a comment in response.
One copyright lawyer on TikTok, Rocky Retrograde, drew parallels between this and the situation between Lizzo and Mina Lioness, who tweeted "I did a DNA test and found out I'm 100% that bitch" before Lizzo released her album Truth Hurts. Lizzo ended up giving Lioness a writing credit on the song. Retrograde — along with many of Timoney's fans and commenters — recommended that Timoney reach out and try to do the same with Swift.
Timoney, for her part, just isn't interested in that.
"I feel like the phrase 'I girlbossed too close to the sun' became such a public phrase. I've had friends say it to me, who maybe first heard it from my TikTok audio or from a friend repeating the phrase to them, and they don't necessarily know that it's me," she said of its evolution. "It's cool to have contributed to the public lexicon."