6 times Taylor Swift was the cutest “bad girl” ever
If you’ve turned on a radio any time in the last few months, you know that Taylor Swift boasts that she can “make the bad guys good for a weekend.” In a surprise for fans who have watched her 100%-parent-approved rise to fame, it turns out this is an adorable two-way street, because notorious good girl Taylor has adopted a bit of a rebel streak of her own. Of course, we all know about her ill-fated relationship with known “bad boy” Harry Styles (if you missed it, you can get the play-by-play by listening to 1989), but there have been other moments when Taylor danced with the dark side — the infamous black hot pants of the “Red” tour, the killer pink streaks in the “I Knew You Trouble” video, and the way she pulls off a bold red lip everywhere she goes, to name just a few.
Yes, the warning signs have been there for awhile, but the good news is that even Taylor’s “bad girl” phase is as precious as they come. It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that she can reconcile the devil and the angel on her shoulders so flawlessly because Taylor owns pretty much everything she does. These Taylor tales of her cutest “bad girl” moments are all the evidence you need:
She and boy BFF Ed Sheeran recently made a break for it when a Grammys party got busted by the cops
Taylor may have graduated high school early and skipped the college life thing altogether, but that doesn’t mean that even she isn’t victim to this cliché rite of passage. Don’t worry though: Tay wasn’t embarrassed or upset about attending a noise-violating party. In fact, she kind of loved it. “That made us feel so cool,” she confessed in an interview with Radio 1. The two of them may have made a clean getaway, but if there isn’t a song about this as a bonus track on the next album, then I don’t know what the world is coming to.
She mouths along to rap songs in the car like a straight up boss.
None of this would mean anything, of course, without her prized awkward Swift dance moves, which she showcases liberally (she is such a giver). When “1989” blew all the predictions out of the water by selling millions of copies, she took to Instagram to celebrate with this video rapping along to her stereo, proving she’s into more than just sugary-sweet pop songs.
She also cross-stitches rap lyrics for her friends.
Taylor has been known for dabbling in the arts outside of music, and even makes a supreme effort to hand paint guitars to send to sick children in her free time. However, I sincerely doubt that any of the paintings she put on those guitars were quite as bad gal legendary as the cross-stitch she made for Ed Sheeran, featuring the two of them climbing up a set of stairs captioned with Drake’s lyrics, “Started from the bottom, now we here.”
She knows her way around a gun.
You don’t want to run into Taylor Swift in a dark alley, guys. If you’re messing with one of the ladies in her fierce pack of BFFs, she will take you out, and she will do it in the way that you least suspect: With a dual pair of bubble blasting guns that she can wield with pal Brit Maack like a total pro. Look at the way she handles those locked and loaded puppies. You’ll flinch whenever you see an innocent child blowing a bubble for the rest of your life.
She (kinda, sorta, almost) had a tattoo.
While she recently gave an interview saying that she didn’t think she’d be able to “commit to something that permanent,” once upon a time a 2008 countrified Taylor had some different opinions about tattoos. She is well-known for writing a “13” on her hand and occasionally using a Sharpie to write her own lyrics on herself in the early days, but only super fans remember when she spent an entire tour re-inking a tiny heart on her ankle, promising to get a permanent one if she reached two million album sales, a feat she didn’t think she would ever reach at the time. Surprise, surprise! She has far exceeded that goal, but the heart never manifested. Kudos to teeny Taylor for staying true to herself even on her brief brush with her inner bad girl.
Even Taylor knows just how adorable she is when she breaks the rules.
Nothing screams “cutest bad girl” quite like this picture she posted of herself next to a sign clearly labeled “No Photos.” Can someone please just give this girl an award for this already?
True, her rebellions may be small, and they may be adorable, but it’s all for good reason: “I put every one of my actions through a filter before I do them because that’s the way my life is,” said Taylor in her interview with Barbara Walters this past December. “If I do something reckless or thoughtless or careless, or I treat someone badly, that doesn’t just affect me; it affects that person. Then, if that story gets out, or some 10-year-old sees that I did that in a news article… my actions do have ripples.”
But for those of us who are looking to channel our inner rebels every now and then, Taylor’s shenanigans at least go to show that there are plenty of good ways to be bad.