Unpacking Taylor Swift’s New Song About Her Rhode Island Mansion
Taylor Swift has found inspiration at home once again. On the 2019 album Lover, she sang about her former New York City carriage house in the song “Cornelia Street,” and on the brand-new surprise album she released on July 24, Folklore, there’s another tune about once of her residences. “The Last Great American Dynasty” tells the story of a woman named Rebekah, who, the lyrics explain, married the heir to the Standard Oil fortune and purchased a home called Holiday House. After his death, she was disliked by “the Rhode Island set” for her raucous parties.
“Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names / And blew through the money on the boys and the ballet / And losing on card game bets with Dalí,” sings Swift. Eventually, she sings of how the house eventually became “Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me.”
So, is any of this real? Apparently, yes. Many fans and news outlets have inferred that the woman in question is Rebekah Harkness, a socialite, philanthropist, and patron of the ballet, who Vogue reports once owned Holiday House, the same Watch Hill, Rhode Island, mansion Swift purchased in 2013 for $17.75 million. (Her husband, William Hale Harkness, purchased it, and she inherited it upon his death in 1954.) A 1988 New York Times article highlights some of Harkness’s controversial antics (e.g., filling her pool with Dom Perignon, as Swift mentions), and says that she renovated Holiday House to include eight kitchens and 21 bathrooms.
Though it is unclear if the mansion still has an excessive number of kitchens under Swift’s ownership, it is still large and stately, with white siding and black shutters. And it is easy to see why Swift felt a kinship with Harkness. In the years after the Grammy winner purchased the beachfront house, headlines suggested that locals in the area were unhappy with her living there, and she also received a ton of press for her over-the-top Fourth of July parties at the property. However, the last lyrics of the song seem to sum up her feelings about the whole situation: “Who knows, if I never showed up, what could’ve been / There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
