In an emotional new interview in Variety, Taylor Swift, 30, reveals that her mother Andrea, 62, has been recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. This news comes four years after Swift first shared that Andrea had been diagnosed with cancer. In that statement, posted to Swift's Tumblr page, Swift wrote, "I'd like to keep the details of her condition and treatment plans private, but she wanted you to know."
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Now, Swift is sharing a little more about her mother's journey. Her mother's health will be included in the upcoming documentary Taylor Swift: Miss Americana, in a reportedly light-hearted scene featuring mama Swift's "cancer dog".
"Everyone loves their mom; everyone’s got an important mom," Swift told Variety. "But for me, she’s really the guiding force. Almost every decision I make, I talk to her about it first. So obviously it was a really big deal to ever speak about her illness."
"While she was going through treatment [for her previously diagnosed cancer], they found a brain tumor," she explained. "And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family."
On Swift's most recent album, Lover, there's an entire song dedicated to Andrea titled "Soon You'll Get Better," that lets us into the singer's private family life more than ever before.
"We as a family decided to put this on the album," Swift said during a live stream in August 2019. "It’s something I’m so proud of. I can’t sing it, it’s hard, emotionally, to deal with that song."
The lyrics are intimate and revealing. "In doctor's office lighting, I didn't tell you I was scared," sings Swift in the song. "That was the first time we were there / Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you / Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus, too."
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The song's chorus features the exact title, "Soon you'll get better," which is a message to her mom.
Normally, Swift says that she'd be on the road performing for almost nine months at a time to promote her new album. Due to her mother's health, however, she decided to abbreviate her Lover tour to just five stadium dates in the U.S and a month-long stint in Europe this summer.
"I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen," the singer revealed. "We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on."
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