Celebrity

Taylor Swift’s Landlord Opens Up About What It Was Like With Her Living In His Apartment

He had no idea who she was
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Taylor Swift may be one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, but it turns out even she can get away with being unrecognised. The 29-year-old’s new song ‘Cornelia Street’ is about a New York street where she lived in an apartment a few years ago, around the time she first started dating her boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn. The man who rented his house to Taylor at the time just revealed in an interview that he didn’t realise he was dealing with a celebrity when she first showed interest in the house.

“I’m afraid to tell you this, but I will tell you this: I really didn’t know her,” David Aldea told Vulture of his first interactions with Taylor. “I’m just not a pop culture guy, and I even said to someone, ‘I’m meeting a person named Taylor Swift who wants to rent my home.’ Now, mind you, I knew her songs because I had them on my running playlist. I just didn’t match the name to the song. I know, it’s silly.”

He went on to say that Taylor immediately knew she wanted the place when he showed it to her and that she asked for him to leave it fully furnished. 

“She walked in, and I’ll never forget this – she said, ‘Oooh, it’s so crafty,'” he said. “And in Taylor-speak, that means ‘I like everything.’ She asked if she could rent not just the house but my style as well. So, towels and dishes and glassware and furniture and just kind of ‘Take your clothes and go.’ So I did. She was an absolute delight to deal with.”

Speaking of the song written about the street his apartment is on, Aldea said that he picked up on a few references, including when Taylor speaks about the roof. 

“She was probably talking about the outdoor space off her master bedroom, because I had that set up as sort of an outdoor living room,” he says. “And there’s artificial turf on the ground and stuff, so it felt like you were outdoors but indoors, and there was a fireplace outside. It was very, very private.”

He went on to say that when the public found out she was living in the area, it was madness outside the building. It was a zoo on the street for probably the first two months” he said.

This article originally appeared on InStyle Australia

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