The title track of Taylor Swift’s 2010 album, Speak Now, is a fictional tale in which the narrator crashes her ex’s wedding and throws the whole thing into chaos. Now, the arrival of Swift’s rerecorded “Taylor’s Version†of that album threatens to upend plenty of real-world weddings. At issue is one of the six new tracks plucked “from the vault,†a romantic ballad called “When Emma Falls in Love,†that is exactly what it sounds like: Swift describing a friend named Emma encountering real love for the first time. “Emma met a boy with eyes like a man,†she sings. “Turns out her heart fits right in the palm of his hand.†(Fans speculate the song is about Emma Stone, but besides the fact that Swift and Stone became friends in the years leading up to Speak Now, there’s no hard proof.)
Here’s the problem: Do you know how just many people out there are named Emma? Emma began shooting up the baby-name lists in the late ’90s, and per the Social Security Administration, it has been a top-five baby name for female births every year since 2002. It topped the chart in 2008, then again from 2014 to 2018. (In Swiftian terms, the Fearless, 1989, and Reputation eras.) The oldest girls in the Emma wave are currently in their mid-20s, making them both the prime age to be Taylor Swift superfans and only a few short years away from the median age of first marriage in the U.S. Furthermore, the baby Emmas currently entering the world are likely being born to millennial parents, many of whom you can bet will introduce their daughters to a singer they loved when they were young. These girls will grow up being sung “When Emma Falls in Love†in their cribs, and when it comes time for them to be married many years from now, which song do you think they’ll want to be played at their own weddings?
In other words, enjoy this summer’s weddings, because they are probably the last weddings for the rest of your life where you will not hear “When Emma Falls in Love.â€