Before she fully dedicated herself to supporting Swift as an emerging pop star, Andrea Swift was a marketing manager at an advertising agency, and her experience in marketing turned out to be a huge help during Swift’s early days as an aspiring singer. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Swift’s then-manager, Rick Barker, said, “The parents already had her MySpace and her website up and running…The mom and dad both have great marketing minds. I don’t want to say fake it until you make it, but when you looked at her stuff, it was very professional even before she got her deal. And we put her music up there on MySpace before it was out.”
While Andrea has been by Swift throughout her music career, she has also had her fair share of health scares. In 2015, the “Cruel Summer” singer shared a heartfelt post on Tumblr that revealed her mom’s recent cancer diagnosis. “For Christmas this year, I asked my mom that one of her gifts to me be her going to the doctor to get screened for any health issues, just to ease some worries of mine,” she wrote (via People). “She agreed, and went in to get checked. There were no red flags and she felt perfectly fine, but she did it just to get me and my brother off her case about it. The results came in, and I’m saddened to tell you that my mom has been diagnosed with cancer. I’d like to keep the details of her condition and treatment plans private, but she wanted you to know.”
In 2019, Andrea’s cancer returned, and Swift shared the news in an Elle personal essay. “My mom is now fighting her battle with [cancer] again. It’s taught me that there are real problems and then there’s everything else. My mom’s cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now,” she wrote.
Then, while Andrea was getting chemotherapy treatment, she encountered another health problem in 2020. “While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor,” Swift told Variety in a January 2020 interview. “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.”
Swift wrote the song, “Soon You’ll Get Better” about her mom’s journey with cancer. The song’s lyrics read in part, “And I hate to make this all about me / But who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do? If there’s no you.”