Pop superstar Taylor Swift has referenced Glasgow art rock group The Blue Nile on her new album The Tortured Poets Department.
The singer-songwriter released her 11th album on Friday, the follow-up to 2022's Midnights.
The track 'Guilty As Sin?' opens with a reference to the Glasgow group: "Drowning in the Blue Nile/He sent me 'Downtown Lights'/I hadn't heard it in a while".
The song mentioned was included on the Scottish trio's second album Hats, and its inclusion by Swift is believed to be a reference to Matty Healy, frontman of The 1975.
The singer has named Hats as his favourite album of the 1980s and cited it as an influence for the band's track 'Love It If We Made It'.
He told Pitchfork: "That definitely started out as us just killing Hats every night before we went onstage, listening to that record until it broke. It’s slightly different; it’s like Blue Nile on steroids."
Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile was informed of the namecheck by a fan on Instagram, responding with a simple "thank you".
The Glasgow group can expect a boost in interest in their back catalogue, with a huge spike in Google searches for The Blue Nile since Swift's album was released.
In January the singer was photographed wearing a dress designed by Perth boutique Little Lies, with the store hitting their monthly sales target in a day and almost instantly selling out of the item in question.
Some social media users have even joked that Glasgow's West End could see an increase in tourism thanks to interested Swifties.
While that may be a little unlikely, earlier this year a company began offering walking tours of London locations namechecked by the singer in her 2019 song London Boy as well as the kebab shop where the music video for 2017 single 'End Game' was filmed.
Cornelia Street in New York has similarly become a place of pilgrimage for Swift's devoted fans after her song on 2019 album Lover, as have places such as The Bluebird Cafe and Centennial Park in her native Nashville.
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The singer will visit Scotland later this year on her ongoing Eras Tour, playing three nights at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.
Swift has performed in the country only once before, selling out the Hydro in Glasgow on the back of her album 1989.
On stage she made reference to her family's Scottish roots, telling the crowd her dad had sent her an email: “In the subject line it said ‘tell Scotland this’, and in the email he said ‘our whole family is from Scotland and you have to tell them that’.”
Her great-great grandfather was a George Finlay who, according to his son’s marriage record, was born somewhere in Scotland in around 1850.
That son, Lancelot George Finlay, was born in Southampton but later moved to America where he married Eleanor Mayer on 27 Nov 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Their son, Robert Bruce, married Marjorie Moehlenkamp, Swift’s maternal grandmother for whom she wrote a song, ‘Marjorie’, on her 2020 album Folklore.
On her father's side, it appears the 34-year-old can trace her roots back to Scottish King William the Lion, while Douglas - a Scottish name - also appears in her family tree.
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