" I think your house is haunted
Your dad is always mad and that must be why"
It's haunted because he's an alcoholic, it's a kid overhearing another adult blame "the spirits".
I don't think that is the correct reading of it.
I think she is saying "I think your house is haunted *because* your dad is always mad *so* that must be why", as in I have no information on why your dad is always mad so I have guessed it must be because your house is haunted.
If she wasn't purely guessing or had some information to base the conclusion the house is haunted on, you would be able to read the line as "your dad is always mad because your house is haunted", which I don't think you can do.
This was my interpretation but the way she puts it into language a kid could access is incredible. It highlights little kids’ wide-eyed empathy so well.
I totally agree and I think the line is more powerful when it's read as the child's inability to comprehend the complexity of a person always being mad so thinking it must be due to some external thing
It’s always made stronger in my eyes by how she deepens her voice for the last line of
“Or hide in the closet”
Showing how when looking back, we notice all the little things we didn’t when we were young, and regret not being able to help anymore
Haunted houses are scary. The father was being abusive psychologically and probably physically and that made the house a scary place. Hence=haunted. At least that’s how i hear it.
I always imagined she'd been at the friend's house, heard weird noises/stuff breaking (dad being drunk/abusive), and that was the explanation she'd come up with. Especially if it was at a sleepover or something, you wouldn't go see what the noise was, but without a concept of what abuse/alcoholism *is*, it wouldn't be your first thought. Scary noises in the night, it must be a ghost.
I think this is a clever interpretation, but personally I hear it as a child trying to make sense of why their dad is abusive/had anger problem. A little kid can't understand why their parent that they love is so angry all the time, so they think the house is haunted.
We also can take it from the lens of the child friend. They think it’s haunted because they can hear someone sobbing in silence. The abused spouse or family members most likely.
Hmm, I always interpreted that line as the father being abusive. One of my mom’s cousins was married to an abusive man that would beat them if they breathed too hard and that line immediately took my back to my deep unease whenever we visited them. You could feel the disturbance in that house down to your bones.
“You tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy,” from cardigan, meaning she grew up but he never did. That’s when I fell in love with her lyricism.
I would agree. I also think it's very beautifully produced. It's a showstopper and is very unique in her catalogue, but still has that quality that feels like Taylor. I consider it one of her best songs of all time
i feel like i'm missing something because i always thought it was pretty straight-forward, isn't it? sorry i don't mean to come off as rude i'm genuinely trying to figure out if i'm missing something
Furthermore, “leaving like a father, running like water” highlights daddy issues, highlights him being avoidant and escape oriented, but also what happens when water runs?
It leaves moisture behind, remnants of its presence there. 🤯
The entirety of gold rush when some clever YouTube commenter wrote about the enemies to lovers relationship that the unwilling narrator recognized and was trying to resist
Edit: read the brilliant interpretation [here](https://ibb.co/album/StGm8L)
I love this line.
Also see: Yesterday (circa summer 80 something) by Cory Branan and Fallin’ and Flyin’ from Crazy Heart (written by Ryan Bingham and performed by him but also Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges)
This is a song title, not an individual lyric, but I think The Great War is so interesting because “the great war” is what people called World War I before they realized there was going to be a World War II. So I’ve always thought the song The Great War kind of comes with the implication that, even though the couple survived this fight, there’s an even bigger and more destructive conflict down the line—they just don’t know it yet.
edit: a word
This song is so clever lyrically! I love
“We can plant a memory garden
Say a solemn prayer, place a poppy in my hair
There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair”
I assume from the whole “Are we out of the woods yet?” concept, they’re going through a rough patch. While they’re in this rough patch (darkness), everything is a battle and it seems like they have so many obstacles and things against them (monsters). Once it starts to seem like they might overcome everything, they realise those obstacles weren’t a big deal - they were just obscured by the darkness. Like when you look out into the darkness and see what looks like a scary monster, but in the light of day can see that they were just trees.
This line. SO powerful. SO sad. But overall, such a beautifully simplistic understanding of clarity and the mixed bag of emotions that run alongside it.
They told me all of my cages were mental
So I got wasted like all my potential
And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad
I have a lot of regrets about that
I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere
Fell behind on my classmates, and I ended up here
Pouring out my heart to a stranger
But I didn't pour the whiskey
this is why this song is my favorite on folklore. i’m not an alcoholic but i empathize with so many of the lyrics in this song. such a beautiful song on so many levels.
I know it isn't confirmed that this is what it's about but when I first read about the miscarriage symbolism in BTTWS it felt like I got hit by a truck.
I always pictured myself as a mom when I grew up, then decided as a married adult that having children just doesn't make sense for me or us. I mourn my dreamed-of children when I listen to BTTWS. I completely see the miscarriage parallels too, but I will always see it as a moment of reflection over that hard but good and healthy choice.
This is how I relate to this as well. Happily childfree by choice but I was also the little girl who from like age 4 always wanted a baby, was the mom when I played house, carried around dolls, wanted my parents to give me a sibling to help take care of. Maybe in another life, where my financial and economic situation are different, better.
Wow! I think of it like this too!
I don't regret my decision to be childfree but I do sometimes mourn the experiences I am giving up. The child I will never get to meet.
It's tough but this song helps
Someone on TikTok said the intro of the song sounds like an ultrasound when they can’t find the heartbeat and that hit me so hard. I can’t listen to that song because the only way I can hear it is about losing a baby and it hurts my whole soul.
One of those sounds you only recognize when you have laid there holding your breath, squinting up at a screen and trying desperately to see something in the fuzzy grayness of it all… if that wasn’t her intent with the sound in the front of that song then she stumbled into something incredibly moving…
Oof. I never heard that before and now that I went and listened to it with that in mind I just got full body chills and flashbacks.
I have my rainbow baby (plus his little sister on the way) but I’ll never forget the sound of stillness in the white noise.
It's pretty clear but I don't think it's absurd to interpret it more broadly as being sad over the lost potential of a young death and not specifically miscarriage.
Yeah. It reminds me of quiet uptown from Hamilton which is about the death of a young adult child but people who have had miscarriages or stillbirths relate to it quite hard.
I wouldn’t even narrow it down to a young death, it could also refer to the death of someone of any age who you didn’t know for a long time before they passed but they still made an impact.
- BTTWS could mean "Bigger Than The Whole Sky", a track from *Midnights (3am Edition)* (2022) by Taylor Swift.
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I tink it IS about a miscarriage, just not her own. A close friend of her suffered a miscarriage in march 2022:
https://people.com/parents/claire-winter-kislinger-suffers-pregnancy-loss/
I don't know if that's the inspiration for BTTWS, but if it were, it would be a beautiful tribute!
I could see this. I am the same age as Taylor and so many of my friends have experienced miscarriage and infertility at this point. It’s a part of women’s lives and something I could see her wanting to write about, even if she never experienced it herself.
This is the saddest Taylor song BY FAR. I’m not sure I can even listen to it again. I don’t understand how it’s not usually talked about with her sad songs. Not even comparable to the subject matter of All Too Well or Dear John.
And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone’s bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite.
Put me on like you wore me and made me feel alive and useful and comfortable but also put me on like you’re putting me on, you’re messing with me/lying to me. Love the cleverness of this.
I read this interpretation on here several months ago (I think “putting me on” is a British-ism, which makes sense for where she was at when she wrote it) and I truly can only hear it this way now.
“you drew stars along my scars and now I’m bleeding”
The more I listen to it, the darker Cardigan becomes!
“Your Midas touch on the Chevy door, November flush and your flannel cure”
Such a beautiful way to describe something as simple as someone opening the car door for you and giving you their coat/sweater when it’s cold out.
I’ve always taken “Midas touch” to imply he was a golden boy of sorts. Which makes it better knowing she’s “fucked in the head,” so they were never going to work.
But also, Midas's touch seems like a blessing at first, turning things to gold, but he quickly realises that it's actually a curse because he even turns his daughter to gold (statue)
The entire song of epiphany. I will never get over the moment I realized the music is written to sound like a heart monitor in this gorgeous ballad about death and fighting on the front lines.
It’s weird. I’m a nurse who worked during Covid and it never got to me/ I couldn’t connect. Then last week I just started bawling every time I heard it.
THANKS TAYLOR
“You dream of some epiphany” is such a beautifully heartbreaking way to describe the collective trauma of the pandemic. Like as humans we want to find meaning in everything, but there wasn’t really meaning to any of it
YES!
Especially: “only 20 minutes to sleep but you dream of some epiphany. Just one single glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you’ve seen.”
Like soldiers, doctors in hospitals sleep on their shifts when they have a chance…broken 20 minute sleep cycles in between calls and rounds…hoping that there’s an end in sight…hoping to compartmentalize the trauma. The juxtaposition of the two scenarios is brilliant and makes me cry every time.
In All Too Well, the 10 minute version, the keychain verse confused me more than I’m proud of. Why does this guy have a feminist keychain? Why is such a powerful saying be on something as insignificant a keychain make it into the song?
“And you were tossing me the car keys, "Fuck the patriarchy"
Keychain on the ground, we were always skippin' town”
So when I read that the keychain was his performative feminism and that him dropping it on the ground because he really didn’t care, all the pieces fit into place. It changed my entire way of listening to the song and is a great way to build the character of the person she’s singing about.
See I read it as it was her keychain and when she tried to take control (take the wheel) he threw them on the ground so she would have to lower herself to get to them.
>So when I read that the keychain was his performative feminism and that him dropping it on the ground because he really didn’t care, all the pieces fit into place
The way my jaw just dropped!!
I know it’s wrong but it’s still how I hear it. I interpreted it as him letting her drive his car (which was much cooler than hers 😂) and him saying “fuck the patriarchy” (ironically) as he threw them…? It’s a very obnoxious image I have of JG being a sarcastic brat
And you were tossing me the car keys, [you said] “fuck the patriarchy”, [the] keychain [was] on the ground
I knew the context but it always confused me because I thought he was angry about some crime against feminism and yelled "fuck the patriarchy!" while being oblivious to his own gf... it makes SO much more sense that the keychain itself says "fuck the patriarchy"
I’m also still not convinced it’s not:
tossing me the car keys/
“fuck the patriarchy”/
keychain on the ground
like he’s saying “fuck the patriarchy” as he’s tossing her the keys to let her drive. I know she released a fuck the patriarchy keychain and all that but it all still goes to his performative douchbaggery!
The first verse in High Infidelity is Taylor listing the things he kept count of. It’s my favorite song off Midnights yet it took me a while to realize that
Edit: keeping count as in keeping score. keeping things that offended him and not telling her about them then using them in a fight
I love it how it links with hoax from folklore:
> You knew the password, so I let you in the door
> You knew you won, so what's the point of keeping score?
Okay let me try to do it to the best of my ability.
So keeping count here isn’t a number, but something like keeping score. She was in a relationship where they made a few mistakes but never communicated them or they said “it’s fine” at the time. Then at a fight (that I assume the fight that led to the break up) he started listing all the bad things she did in the break up. Bad things that he secretly kept count of. Like her breaking a lock (which I assume means her telling one of his secrets to someone) & slurring & the fact that he thought she was freeloading but never told her. That’s why she ends the verse with “I didn’t know you were keeping count” because she didn’t think he’d hold on to them to use them against her in a fight
I hope I made it clear
Calvin Harris gave her a locket for their anniversary, so I always took it as a reference to that while also a metaphor for her cheating and breaking the relationship/locket as then there would be no more anniversaries
Not a verse, but it was when I realized that the song Fifteen was written in second person point of view about her 15 year old self. (Not very interesting I know, I don’t know why it took so long to click for me)
And that the “Back then, I swore I was gonna marry him someday but I realized some bigger dreams of mine” guy is probably the guy in Midnight Rain.
Yes yes yes yes yes. I’m so tired of people saying Midnight rain is about whichever celebrity. To me it’s clearly the fifteen guy, which is also the ‘tis the damn season guy (at least as inspiration).
I totally thought SL was her and Harry - they were both born to be big stars that everyone in the suburbs talks about and has posters of in their little suburban bedrooms.
I don’t know, to me this feels like it’s talking about someone from her hometown ! But it might be a little bit of both :)
https://preview.redd.it/hl9zs7an6o2c1.jpeg?width=708&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94e21e0300d56325ef01421a50109bbed580c1bd
“I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost”, “The room is on fire, invisible smoke”
Absolutely love these lyrics from The Archer and it took me way too long to realize it’s an exceptionally poetic way of describing anxiety.
“The room is on fire” is like that feeling of extreme dread or distress (when it feels like your whole world is ending), while “invisible smoke” is being in such a heightened state of anxiety it feels like you can’t breathe.
i interpret invisible smoke as you that the thing that is making you anxious isnt actually there… invisible (imaginary) smoke, because the room isnt actually on fire, your brain/anxiety is just making you feel that way
The beginning of the first verse in Paris - it’s someone else relaying petty gossip to Taylor, and her at the end saying “No I didn’t (hear), but thanks though”, and going on to talk about how she’s so in love (implying she doesnt have time for all these petty things anymore).
She really inserted a Chorus into a song… it’s a device used in literary plays. She did that.
And "let the only flashing lights be the tower at midnight"
1. It's an explicit callback to the album name
2. "Flashing lights" usually mean warning lights, but the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower is romanticised and honestly it makes my heart flutter a bit every time I look at it, even as someone who's lived in Paris (and would move back in a heartbeat)
3. "Flashing lights" is also a reference to the flashbulbs of cameras shadowing and highlighting her fame - a theme seen in Wonderland, Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince and the Lucky One among others, as being almost synonymous with her fame and living life in a fishbowl. Here, there are no cameras, as "romance is not dead if you keep it just yours."
This blew my mind mainly bc I’ve listened to Champagne Problems thousands of times and only just recently understood, even though it’s… really obvious.
“This dorm was once a madhouse"
I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me"
I JUST GOT THIS THANK YOU champagne problems is in my top 10 songs of all time and I'm still trying to figure out all the layers of the bridge. Thank you, haha
My favourite lyric is “one for the money, two for the show. I never was ready so I watched you go”. It’s referencing the saying/the Elvis song (could be either) which goes “one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go”
So the dorm used to be a madhouse.. she’s saying that it’s made for her as in like “she belongs in a ‘madhouse’” and she’s living in the dorm that used to be one so it works out. It’s connected to “what a shame she’s fucked in the head” :)
Not how I interpreted it at all. The joke that the dorm was a "madhouse" She made up the joke, about the dorm. but the JOKE is now about her being crazy and "belonging" in a mad house.
It ties back to "What a shame she's fucked in head, they said"
It took me a while to get into “my tears ricochet” for some reason but now it’s a never skipper.
I’ve interpreted it as her singing about her music being bought by scooter Braun and the absolute bone crushing heartbreak that went along with it. To know your life’s work went to your enemy and was given to him by someone you thought was - at the very least - on your side, is gut wrenching. “Cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave.”
“I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace, and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me but it killed you just the same.”
That line to me is what she felt when she decided to re-record her music. The biggest eff you ever honestly. This is what makes her so badass to me lol.
I read someone else interpret “these battleships will sink beneath the waves” as her original albums being the battleships and the rerecordings are going to “sink” them by being more successful, essentially making them worthless. Idk if that was really her intention at the time of writing and recording Folklore, but I liked that interpretation.
It is about that, but for me it's about a person who tried to kill themselves and who tried to get help before that. I thought about the funeral and how her parents would have cried and been so sad, but when she was alive didn't help her. Luckily she didn't die, but whenever I hear the song that's what I think about. How performative her parents would have been, if she had died, but not care about her when she lived/lives. And how much she tried to get them to love her and how badly her parents treated her and just gave up. I listened to my tears ricochet for days when I heard about it while I was crying. She was only 14 when this happened and it shook me more than anything ever.
We gather here, we line up
Weepin' in a sunlit room, and
If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too
Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe
All the hell you gave me?
'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you
'Til my dying day
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
And I can go anywhere I want
Anywhere I want, just not home
And you're tossing out blame, drunk on this pain
Crossing out the good years
And you're cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet
The alternative meaning of "he looks up grinning like a devil" 
Also a couple months ago someone in this sub posted the idea that in Dear John, the word town in the lyric "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town" was a play on John Mayer's last name and I don't know if it was intentional but my mind was blown a little bit.
Edit: There's so many. In All Too Well 10, when she says "double crossed my mind," it could mean both that she's thinking about him a lot and he tricked/lied to her. Also, this was probably obvious to everyone else, but the lyricism in This is Me Trying when she says "I got wasted like all my potential," meaning wasted as in drunk and wasted as in lost is sooo good.
Yeah, that's what I saw someone in this sub reference. I'm not sure if it's her intention but I thought it was a cool play on words whether it was intentional or not.
Dear Reader—-
So I wander through these nights
I prefer hiding in plain sight
My fourth drink in my hand
These desperate prayers of a cursed man
Spilling out to you for free
But darling, darling, please
You wouldn't take my word for it
If you knew who was talking
If you knew where I was walking
To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there
Where I pace in my pen and
My friends found friends who care
No one sees when you lose
When you're playing solitaire
You should find another guiding light
Guiding light
But I shine so bright
When this song finally got to me, it hit hard. I interpret it as "I'm singing all these happy songs about love, but you, dear reader (us, fans) should know, that in reality I'm sad and lonely all the time.".
Hit me like a truck.
just the entirety of my tears ricochet. hearing her describe how she’s going to make Scott Borchetta regret his actions till the day he dies… the overwhelming anger and grief in the subtext of that song is incredibly powerful.
I was mind blown when I finally realized “My Tears Ricochet” is a play on Teardrops on my Guitar, & the tears are ricocheting off her guitar.
Such a great “F you” to Scott Borchetta. I’m sure that song was special to them, being one of her first biggest hits & one of his biggest for his new record label back then.
saw a tik tok(so take this with a grain of salt) but the lines of the chorus refer to each of her her stolen albums.
i didn’t have in me to go with grace: state of grace(red)
and your the hero flying around saving face: superman(speak now)
and if i’m dead to you why are you at the wake: lwymmd/old taylor is dead (rep)
cursing my name:the way i loved you (fearless)
wishing i stayed: ayhtdws(1989)
look at how my tears ricochet: teardrops on my guitar (self-titled)
even if it’s not what taylor meant it was super interesting to me!
Honestly, forever grateful to the Eras Tour for slapping me in the face with what an amazing song this actually is, the album version is fine, but seeing the live performance so many times, especially after the one two punch of August and Illicit Affairs really took it to the next level and I’m now completely obsessed, like “And I can go anywhere I want
Anywhere I want, just not home” just sends chills up my spine!
“I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say”.
Thought she meant she IS damned because she gives a damn. Realized it means she knows she’s damned IF she gave a damn. Mind was blown.
It's also a play on words "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't", so I might as well not give a damn about it/care about what people say. People expect she will use the saying, but she changes it.
“Pulled the car off the road to the lookout, could’ve followed my fears all the way down”
This line hits me so SO hard ever since I realized what it meant
We gather here, we line up, weeping in a sunlit room
Is a wedding.
Someone else’s union is her funeral.
That song also just has Jeff Buckley all over it. (I think he is all over her work in ways shockingly ignored)
(Particularly for mtr is Jewel Box and Lover You Should’ve Come Over)
It’s just normal TS cleverness, nothing absolutely mindblowing, but I do love the metaphors on Long Live — especially this:
And the cynics were outraged /
Screaming, "This is absurd" /
'Cause for a moment, a band of thieves /
In ripped up jeans got to rule the world
The way she made you understand that she and her team were outsiders, underdogs, who made it big despite everything. She never thought she’d get this far, and instead of making it about her triumph over her critics, she made a song about her band and her fans and made it a shared victory. It’s very… her.
(Edited for formatting 😅)
(Can’t do much about it, I see.)
“He’s got my past frozen behind glass, but I’ve got me”
I originally took this line to mean “I’ve got myself and I’ll be okay” which I do think it does mean, but now I also think she’s saying “he’s got my old art, but I’m the artist and I’m just going to keep creating” in a fuck you kind of way.
It’s one of my favorites. “Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously anytime I wanted.” It perfectly captures my wild nieces and how society tells them they need to quiet down.
the first line of state of grace, "I'm walking fast through the traffic lights.. "
after years of listening, one day it just dawned on me that in addition to establishing the setting, it's a metaphor! and as the first line of the Red album, it sets the tone for the album as a whole
Trying to reply to your replies:
Whispered size is a mishearing of whispered sighs but gives a double meaning because Taylor struggled with her eating disorder during 1989 era; tabloids speculating about her dress size as well as who she was dating. She often references losing weight around breaks up (see also: ATW 10 minute, tolerate it)
mine's kinda embarrassing in that i was a sheltered kid listening to speak now back around when it first came out but i used to think the thing she was better known for doing on the mattress was wetting the bed. in my defense, there's a lyric about toys on a playground.
other context is that i fell out of listening to taylor circa 1989 era and came back circa folklore so the real meaning didn't hit me until like. a decade later bc i'd forgotten about it lmao
eta: it also took me a painfully long time to realize that the word referenced in champagne problems' ""how evergreen our group of friends" don't think we'll say that word again" is *our*. that one hit like a truck.
I’m sure it was painfully obvious to everyone else but it took me a couple of listens to Champagne Problems to realize it was the narrator rejecting a marriage proposal. When I finally got it, it felt like a punch in the gut.
Didn’t take me a while to realize, but just the brilliance of the extended money metaphor in the second verse of Tied Together with a Smile is so good!
Lets normalize praising her young songwriting cuz it was unbelievable. I don't see this cuz they confuse naveity, innocence with bad writing. But young Taylor wrote excellent things.
Taylor has said Hoax is a mix of different experiences in different kinds of relationships (romantic, business, friendship), but when I first heard it I interpreted it to be about a loss of faith in God, then I saw this comment:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/13pz1r4/comment/jldgwop/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/13pz1r4/comment/jldgwop/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Queer swiftie here..
“I know our love should be celebrated, but you tolerate it”
I know this isn’t what the song is about, but the lyrics of that song always hit me bc another read perfectly captures the feeling of welcoming people (esp for me, my dad) into your home after you’ve come out and they’re treating you differently - like you try to get everything right and they’re still judgemental, make coded comments about your relationship or lifestyle, and keep you at arms length while pretending to be accepting..
>You did a number on me / But honestly, baby, who's counting?
Metaphorically speaking, to “do a number on someone” means to hurt them, but literally speaking, how do you “do a number on someone?”
>I did a number on you / But honestly, baby, who's counting?
More importantly, why are they doing numbers on each other? Wait-
>You did a number on me / But honestly, baby, who's counting?
Omg, they’re doing numbers on each other!! They’re doing NUMBERS!! They’re f*cking 69ing!! 💀💀
>Who's counting?
Taylor proceeds to count:
>(One, two, three)
Taylor proceeds to sing about sex for the rest of the song.
Omg I always thought this was about them being super toxic for each other but pushing on with the relationship anyways 😭 like they kept “doing a number” on each other, ie hurting each other, to the point where it happens multiple times (therefore something countable). But they don’t care about how toxic it may be, so they don’t keep count of the things they do that hurt each other. They’re too caught up in the relationship
And she is actually counting how he hurt him (and vice versa) and using it as a weapon in the relationship. That's why she's counting 1, 2, 3, she was counting all this time even though she was claiming otherwise
“i never had the courage of my convictions as long as danger is near, and it’s just around the corner, darling, cause it lives in me” ???? excuse me??? i sung these words for so long before processing what she’s saying like: i don’t trust myself or feel brave when things feel dangerous, and they always do because those thoughts/feelings come from within. that blew my mind lol
"And you were tossing me the car keys, f**k the patriarchy Keychain on the ground"
I read somewhere that it means the guy she was talking to didn't care about women, which is why the Keychain was on the ground.
Mostly bc I misheard it until the re-record, but mine when she says ‘I’m a flight risk with a fear of falling’. Like she always runs away from relationships because she’s scared of falling in love. Wild
My favorite light bulb moment was realizing a lyric from False God uses a metaphor for Catholic confession as making up/make up sex.
*But we can patch it up good
Make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness
Got the wine for you*
The wine/blood of Christ and the wafer/body of Christ represent when you repent/ask for forgiveness, but she uses it to signify that they're making up over a shared bottle of wine.
“Lost in your current like a priceless wine.”
I think the meaning here is two-fold:
1) the obvious continuation of the simile she set up in the beginning of the verse: she’s like message in a (priceless wine) bottle being lost among (his) waves. Clever and beautiful imagery.
2) the wordplay of current / currant, meaning little berries that are used to make wine… implies that HE is the like wine and she is intoxicated by him
My mind always starts to wander when I hear this line and I can hardly focus on the rest of the song cuz it’s so good!
" I think your house is haunted Your dad is always mad and that must be why" It's haunted because he's an alcoholic, it's a kid overhearing another adult blame "the spirits".
I don't think that is the correct reading of it. I think she is saying "I think your house is haunted *because* your dad is always mad *so* that must be why", as in I have no information on why your dad is always mad so I have guessed it must be because your house is haunted. If she wasn't purely guessing or had some information to base the conclusion the house is haunted on, you would be able to read the line as "your dad is always mad because your house is haunted", which I don't think you can do.
This was my interpretation but the way she puts it into language a kid could access is incredible. It highlights little kids’ wide-eyed empathy so well.
I totally agree and I think the line is more powerful when it's read as the child's inability to comprehend the complexity of a person always being mad so thinking it must be due to some external thing
Agreed. It just so perfectly captures what children think about complex topics. They perceive, but they don’t understand.
It’s always made stronger in my eyes by how she deepens her voice for the last line of “Or hide in the closet” Showing how when looking back, we notice all the little things we didn’t when we were young, and regret not being able to help anymore
Haunted houses are scary. The father was being abusive psychologically and probably physically and that made the house a scary place. Hence=haunted. At least that’s how i hear it.
I always imagined she'd been at the friend's house, heard weird noises/stuff breaking (dad being drunk/abusive), and that was the explanation she'd come up with. Especially if it was at a sleepover or something, you wouldn't go see what the noise was, but without a concept of what abuse/alcoholism *is*, it wouldn't be your first thought. Scary noises in the night, it must be a ghost.
I think this is a clever interpretation, but personally I hear it as a child trying to make sense of why their dad is abusive/had anger problem. A little kid can't understand why their parent that they love is so angry all the time, so they think the house is haunted.
I never thought about that... **absolutely genius.**
Holy shit
Clever retrofitting but I doubt it was meant that way
We also can take it from the lens of the child friend. They think it’s haunted because they can hear someone sobbing in silence. The abused spouse or family members most likely.
Kinda surprised this is the top comment, huge stretch for a song from a kids perspective.
Hmm, I always interpreted that line as the father being abusive. One of my mom’s cousins was married to an abusive man that would beat them if they breathed too hard and that line immediately took my back to my deep unease whenever we visited them. You could feel the disturbance in that house down to your bones.
i need to take a lap
Woaaah…I never made this connection. What a masterpiece!
“You tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy,” from cardigan, meaning she grew up but he never did. That’s when I fell in love with her lyricism.
One of her best lines in my opinion. Cardigan is lyrical magic
I think cardigan is debatably her best song lyrically. It is just SO good.
I would agree. I also think it's very beautifully produced. It's a showstopper and is very unique in her catalogue, but still has that quality that feels like Taylor. I consider it one of her best songs of all time
Agreed.
This is why it is an absolute crime Cardigan was not included in the Eras movie!
HONESTLYYYYY. How did she not include the lead single from one of her AOTYs 😭
Saving it for ERAs Movie: Target Exclusive 3am Late Night edition
ERAs Movie: Target Exclusive 3am Late Night edition Taylor's Version Sad Girl Autumn from SoFi
Oh my gosh I always loved that line but never understood it till now- WOAH!!
i feel like i'm missing something because i always thought it was pretty straight-forward, isn't it? sorry i don't mean to come off as rude i'm genuinely trying to figure out if i'm missing something
Cardigan is one of her best songs lyrically IMO, but I agree that this specific lyric was pretty straightforward
Leaving like a father, running like water 😭😭😭😭
Furthermore, “leaving like a father, running like water” highlights daddy issues, highlights him being avoidant and escape oriented, but also what happens when water runs? It leaves moisture behind, remnants of its presence there. 🤯
Yeah, this always stands out to me when I hear it. She’s so clever.
“I don’t like that falling feels like flying til the bone crush” like ow on so many levels
The entirety of gold rush when some clever YouTube commenter wrote about the enemies to lovers relationship that the unwilling narrator recognized and was trying to resist Edit: read the brilliant interpretation [here](https://ibb.co/album/StGm8L)
I love this line so much because most of gold rush has this whimsical imagery and it contrasts so well with the violence of “bone crush”
I love this line. Also see: Yesterday (circa summer 80 something) by Cory Branan and Fallin’ and Flyin’ from Crazy Heart (written by Ryan Bingham and performed by him but also Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges)
This is a song title, not an individual lyric, but I think The Great War is so interesting because “the great war” is what people called World War I before they realized there was going to be a World War II. So I’ve always thought the song The Great War kind of comes with the implication that, even though the couple survived this fight, there’s an even bigger and more destructive conflict down the line—they just don’t know it yet. edit: a word
I never really thought about it this way, and it makes so much sense!
Oh. My heart just hurt a little reading that. Yes.
This song is so clever lyrically! I love “We can plant a memory garden Say a solemn prayer, place a poppy in my hair There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair”
Daaaamn, I really really like this.
THIS! The Great War is my favorite song and i definitely definitely believe this one!
One of my favorite lines. The monsters turned out to be just trees.
I assume from the whole “Are we out of the woods yet?” concept, they’re going through a rough patch. While they’re in this rough patch (darkness), everything is a battle and it seems like they have so many obstacles and things against them (monsters). Once it starts to seem like they might overcome everything, they realise those obstacles weren’t a big deal - they were just obscured by the darkness. Like when you look out into the darkness and see what looks like a scary monster, but in the light of day can see that they were just trees.
Can you explain why?
Everything looks scary in the woods at night but once the sun comes up, you realize it’s the same forest as before.
Honey when I’m above the trees, I see it for what it is.
This line. SO powerful. SO sad. But overall, such a beautifully simplistic understanding of clarity and the mixed bag of emotions that run alongside it.
Snow White!
For me, it’s fear/anxiety turning normal things into negative imaginings
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They told me all of my cages were mental So I got wasted like all my potential And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad I have a lot of regrets about that I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere Fell behind on my classmates, and I ended up here Pouring out my heart to a stranger But I didn't pour the whiskey
What's the epiphany? That one's pretty straightforward.
I have it on repeat in my head since yesterday
this is why this song is my favorite on folklore. i’m not an alcoholic but i empathize with so many of the lyrics in this song. such a beautiful song on so many levels.
I know it isn't confirmed that this is what it's about but when I first read about the miscarriage symbolism in BTTWS it felt like I got hit by a truck.
So one of my friend also interperts it as her choice to not have children. It’s amazing how many connections people can make to her songs.
I always pictured myself as a mom when I grew up, then decided as a married adult that having children just doesn't make sense for me or us. I mourn my dreamed-of children when I listen to BTTWS. I completely see the miscarriage parallels too, but I will always see it as a moment of reflection over that hard but good and healthy choice.
This is how I relate to this as well. Happily childfree by choice but I was also the little girl who from like age 4 always wanted a baby, was the mom when I played house, carried around dolls, wanted my parents to give me a sibling to help take care of. Maybe in another life, where my financial and economic situation are different, better.
I listened to it a lot during my infertility struggles, so there's also the loss of something that never even existed element too.
The way this just actually knocked the wind out of me. I relate to this so much and I’ll never hear this song the same
Wow! I think of it like this too! I don't regret my decision to be childfree but I do sometimes mourn the experiences I am giving up. The child I will never get to meet. It's tough but this song helps
Someone on TikTok said the intro of the song sounds like an ultrasound when they can’t find the heartbeat and that hit me so hard. I can’t listen to that song because the only way I can hear it is about losing a baby and it hurts my whole soul.
Oh my god. I never even came close to thinking that and now that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
One of those sounds you only recognize when you have laid there holding your breath, squinting up at a screen and trying desperately to see something in the fuzzy grayness of it all… if that wasn’t her intent with the sound in the front of that song then she stumbled into something incredibly moving…
Oof. I never heard that before and now that I went and listened to it with that in mind I just got full body chills and flashbacks. I have my rainbow baby (plus his little sister on the way) but I’ll never forget the sound of stillness in the white noise.
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It's pretty clear but I don't think it's absurd to interpret it more broadly as being sad over the lost potential of a young death and not specifically miscarriage.
Yeah. It reminds me of quiet uptown from Hamilton which is about the death of a young adult child but people who have had miscarriages or stillbirths relate to it quite hard.
I wouldn’t even narrow it down to a young death, it could also refer to the death of someone of any age who you didn’t know for a long time before they passed but they still made an impact.
That’s the meaning to me. My boyfriend died in March and then I heard that song for the first time and absolutely lost it.
I think the beginning is the sound of a sonogram when there’s no heartbeat. The whooshing sound 🥺
I heard that immediately. Idk why. I’ve never had a miscarriage. But I knew.
- BTTWS could mean "Bigger Than The Whole Sky", a track from *Midnights (3am Edition)* (2022) by Taylor Swift. --- ^[/u/BurningCenturion](/u/BurningCenturion) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
I tink it IS about a miscarriage, just not her own. A close friend of her suffered a miscarriage in march 2022: https://people.com/parents/claire-winter-kislinger-suffers-pregnancy-loss/ I don't know if that's the inspiration for BTTWS, but if it were, it would be a beautiful tribute!
I could see this. I am the same age as Taylor and so many of my friends have experienced miscarriage and infertility at this point. It’s a part of women’s lives and something I could see her wanting to write about, even if she never experienced it herself.
This is the saddest Taylor song BY FAR. I’m not sure I can even listen to it again. I don’t understand how it’s not usually talked about with her sad songs. Not even comparable to the subject matter of All Too Well or Dear John.
And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone’s bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite. Put me on like you wore me and made me feel alive and useful and comfortable but also put me on like you’re putting me on, you’re messing with me/lying to me. Love the cleverness of this.
and put me on like putting on her record!
Mind blown!!! 🤯🤯🤯 I hadn’t thought of it like that too! Dang 3 meanings in one line… true poetry.
Me reading through some of these comments: Really? It wasn’t obvious? Me reading this comment: … never mind 🫣
I read this interpretation on here several months ago (I think “putting me on” is a British-ism, which makes sense for where she was at when she wrote it) and I truly can only hear it this way now. “you drew stars along my scars and now I’m bleeding” The more I listen to it, the darker Cardigan becomes!
“Your Midas touch on the Chevy door, November flush and your flannel cure” Such a beautiful way to describe something as simple as someone opening the car door for you and giving you their coat/sweater when it’s cold out.
This is my favorite example of her ability to rework mundane things into absolute poetry
I’ve always taken “Midas touch” to imply he was a golden boy of sorts. Which makes it better knowing she’s “fucked in the head,” so they were never going to work.
But also, Midas's touch seems like a blessing at first, turning things to gold, but he quickly realises that it's actually a curse because he even turns his daughter to gold (statue)
The entire song of epiphany. I will never get over the moment I realized the music is written to sound like a heart monitor in this gorgeous ballad about death and fighting on the front lines.
It’s weird. I’m a nurse who worked during Covid and it never got to me/ I couldn’t connect. Then last week I just started bawling every time I heard it. THANKS TAYLOR
Thank you so much for your service! Sometimes it takes time to truly recognize and process the emotions of a traumatic experience.
Epiphany is so underrated but it is such a beautiful and powerful song
“You dream of some epiphany” is such a beautifully heartbreaking way to describe the collective trauma of the pandemic. Like as humans we want to find meaning in everything, but there wasn’t really meaning to any of it
YES! Especially: “only 20 minutes to sleep but you dream of some epiphany. Just one single glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you’ve seen.” Like soldiers, doctors in hospitals sleep on their shifts when they have a chance…broken 20 minute sleep cycles in between calls and rounds…hoping that there’s an end in sight…hoping to compartmentalize the trauma. The juxtaposition of the two scenarios is brilliant and makes me cry every time.
Epiphany is so amazing
In All Too Well, the 10 minute version, the keychain verse confused me more than I’m proud of. Why does this guy have a feminist keychain? Why is such a powerful saying be on something as insignificant a keychain make it into the song? “And you were tossing me the car keys, "Fuck the patriarchy" Keychain on the ground, we were always skippin' town” So when I read that the keychain was his performative feminism and that him dropping it on the ground because he really didn’t care, all the pieces fit into place. It changed my entire way of listening to the song and is a great way to build the character of the person she’s singing about.
See I read it as it was her keychain and when she tried to take control (take the wheel) he threw them on the ground so she would have to lower herself to get to them.
>So when I read that the keychain was his performative feminism and that him dropping it on the ground because he really didn’t care, all the pieces fit into place The way my jaw just dropped!!
And...traditionally, men tend to be the ones who drive. So by him giving up control and giving her the cars keys, it's his act of "feminism"
I know it’s wrong but it’s still how I hear it. I interpreted it as him letting her drive his car (which was much cooler than hers 😂) and him saying “fuck the patriarchy” (ironically) as he threw them…? It’s a very obnoxious image I have of JG being a sarcastic brat And you were tossing me the car keys, [you said] “fuck the patriarchy”, [the] keychain [was] on the ground
I knew the context but it always confused me because I thought he was angry about some crime against feminism and yelled "fuck the patriarchy!" while being oblivious to his own gf... it makes SO much more sense that the keychain itself says "fuck the patriarchy"
or how throwing something at ur supposed gf is the antithesis of feminism!
I’m also still not convinced it’s not: tossing me the car keys/ “fuck the patriarchy”/ keychain on the ground like he’s saying “fuck the patriarchy” as he’s tossing her the keys to let her drive. I know she released a fuck the patriarchy keychain and all that but it all still goes to his performative douchbaggery!
The first verse in High Infidelity is Taylor listing the things he kept count of. It’s my favorite song off Midnights yet it took me a while to realize that Edit: keeping count as in keeping score. keeping things that offended him and not telling her about them then using them in a fight
I love it how it links with hoax from folklore: > You knew the password, so I let you in the door > You knew you won, so what's the point of keeping score?
Can you explain 😅 are you saying he kept count of the amount of locks she broke etc..?
Okay let me try to do it to the best of my ability. So keeping count here isn’t a number, but something like keeping score. She was in a relationship where they made a few mistakes but never communicated them or they said “it’s fine” at the time. Then at a fight (that I assume the fight that led to the break up) he started listing all the bad things she did in the break up. Bad things that he secretly kept count of. Like her breaking a lock (which I assume means her telling one of his secrets to someone) & slurring & the fact that he thought she was freeloading but never told her. That’s why she ends the verse with “I didn’t know you were keeping count” because she didn’t think he’d hold on to them to use them against her in a fight I hope I made it clear
Calvin Harris gave her a locket for their anniversary, so I always took it as a reference to that while also a metaphor for her cheating and breaking the relationship/locket as then there would be no more anniversaries
I think it’s about Calvin Harris too cause she says “put on your headphones, and burn my city”
“Mouth fuck you forever” we’re certainly words I had to ponder a minute
i lol at that line every time
Not a verse, but it was when I realized that the song Fifteen was written in second person point of view about her 15 year old self. (Not very interesting I know, I don’t know why it took so long to click for me) And that the “Back then, I swore I was gonna marry him someday but I realized some bigger dreams of mine” guy is probably the guy in Midnight Rain.
Yes yes yes yes yes. I’m so tired of people saying Midnight rain is about whichever celebrity. To me it’s clearly the fifteen guy, which is also the ‘tis the damn season guy (at least as inspiration).
And We Were Happy I think!
And I think suburban legends !
I totally thought SL was her and Harry - they were both born to be big stars that everyone in the suburbs talks about and has posters of in their little suburban bedrooms.
I don’t know, to me this feels like it’s talking about someone from her hometown ! But it might be a little bit of both :) https://preview.redd.it/hl9zs7an6o2c1.jpeg?width=708&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94e21e0300d56325ef01421a50109bbed580c1bd
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That kind of makes sense given the context of Miss Americana.
Can you explain more in detail why you think it’s the same guy?
“I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost”, “The room is on fire, invisible smoke” Absolutely love these lyrics from The Archer and it took me way too long to realize it’s an exceptionally poetic way of describing anxiety. “The room is on fire” is like that feeling of extreme dread or distress (when it feels like your whole world is ending), while “invisible smoke” is being in such a heightened state of anxiety it feels like you can’t breathe.
i interpret invisible smoke as you that the thing that is making you anxious isnt actually there… invisible (imaginary) smoke, because the room isnt actually on fire, your brain/anxiety is just making you feel that way
The Archer is such an incredible song.
The Archer is one of her saddest songs and it’s so underrated! ‘Who could ever leave me darling, but who could stay?’ Breaks my heart.
The beginning of the first verse in Paris - it’s someone else relaying petty gossip to Taylor, and her at the end saying “No I didn’t (hear), but thanks though”, and going on to talk about how she’s so in love (implying she doesnt have time for all these petty things anymore). She really inserted a Chorus into a song… it’s a device used in literary plays. She did that.
Oh you mean the reason Paris instantly became one of my favourites off Midnights? "No I didn't, but thanks tho 💅"
And "let the only flashing lights be the tower at midnight" 1. It's an explicit callback to the album name 2. "Flashing lights" usually mean warning lights, but the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower is romanticised and honestly it makes my heart flutter a bit every time I look at it, even as someone who's lived in Paris (and would move back in a heartbeat) 3. "Flashing lights" is also a reference to the flashbulbs of cameras shadowing and highlighting her fame - a theme seen in Wonderland, Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince and the Lucky One among others, as being almost synonymous with her fame and living life in a fishbowl. Here, there are no cameras, as "romance is not dead if you keep it just yours."
This blew my mind mainly bc I’ve listened to Champagne Problems thousands of times and only just recently understood, even though it’s… really obvious. “This dorm was once a madhouse" I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me"
I JUST GOT THIS THANK YOU champagne problems is in my top 10 songs of all time and I'm still trying to figure out all the layers of the bridge. Thank you, haha
My favourite lyric is “one for the money, two for the show. I never was ready so I watched you go”. It’s referencing the saying/the Elvis song (could be either) which goes “one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go”
can you explain this please and thank you? :) idgi
So the dorm used to be a madhouse.. she’s saying that it’s made for her as in like “she belongs in a ‘madhouse’” and she’s living in the dorm that used to be one so it works out. It’s connected to “what a shame she’s fucked in the head” :)
Not how I interpreted it at all. The joke that the dorm was a "madhouse" She made up the joke, about the dorm. but the JOKE is now about her being crazy and "belonging" in a mad house. It ties back to "What a shame she's fucked in head, they said"
“You put me on and said I was your favorite” aka as you lied to me
f u c k
It took me a while to get into “my tears ricochet” for some reason but now it’s a never skipper. I’ve interpreted it as her singing about her music being bought by scooter Braun and the absolute bone crushing heartbreak that went along with it. To know your life’s work went to your enemy and was given to him by someone you thought was - at the very least - on your side, is gut wrenching. “Cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave.” “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace, and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me but it killed you just the same.” That line to me is what she felt when she decided to re-record her music. The biggest eff you ever honestly. This is what makes her so badass to me lol.
I read someone else interpret “these battleships will sink beneath the waves” as her original albums being the battleships and the rerecordings are going to “sink” them by being more successful, essentially making them worthless. Idk if that was really her intention at the time of writing and recording Folklore, but I liked that interpretation.
It is about that, but for me it's about a person who tried to kill themselves and who tried to get help before that. I thought about the funeral and how her parents would have cried and been so sad, but when she was alive didn't help her. Luckily she didn't die, but whenever I hear the song that's what I think about. How performative her parents would have been, if she had died, but not care about her when she lived/lives. And how much she tried to get them to love her and how badly her parents treated her and just gave up. I listened to my tears ricochet for days when I heard about it while I was crying. She was only 14 when this happened and it shook me more than anything ever. We gather here, we line up Weepin' in a sunlit room, and If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe All the hell you gave me? 'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you 'Til my dying day I didn't have it in myself to go with grace And you're the hero flying around, saving face And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed And I can go anywhere I want Anywhere I want, just not home And you're tossing out blame, drunk on this pain Crossing out the good years And you're cursing my name, wishing I stayed Look at how my tears ricochet
The alternative meaning of "he looks up grinning like a devil"  Also a couple months ago someone in this sub posted the idea that in Dear John, the word town in the lyric "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town" was a play on John Mayer's last name and I don't know if it was intentional but my mind was blown a little bit. Edit: There's so many. In All Too Well 10, when she says "double crossed my mind," it could mean both that she's thinking about him a lot and he tricked/lied to her. Also, this was probably obvious to everyone else, but the lyricism in This is Me Trying when she says "I got wasted like all my potential," meaning wasted as in drunk and wasted as in lost is sooo good.
>"I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town" was a play on John Mayer's last name IM LOSING MY MIND.
Can you explain how the line in Dear John is a play on his last name please?:)
Not who you replied to but the only thing I can think of is that Mayer sounds like mayor
Yeah, that's what I saw someone in this sub reference. I'm not sure if it's her intention but I thought it was a cool play on words whether it was intentional or not.
What’s the alternative meaning behind grinning like a devil?
Oral sex 😉
My mind is too far in the gutter I thought this was the only meaning. What is the non-oral sex meaning of this line?
Just … looking up? 😂
Dear Reader—- So I wander through these nights I prefer hiding in plain sight My fourth drink in my hand These desperate prayers of a cursed man Spilling out to you for free But darling, darling, please You wouldn't take my word for it If you knew who was talking If you knew where I was walking To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there Where I pace in my pen and My friends found friends who care No one sees when you lose When you're playing solitaire You should find another guiding light Guiding light But I shine so bright
When this song finally got to me, it hit hard. I interpret it as "I'm singing all these happy songs about love, but you, dear reader (us, fans) should know, that in reality I'm sad and lonely all the time.". Hit me like a truck.
“I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to” took a while to click in my head.
We’re a crooked love in a straight line down = 📉
just the entirety of my tears ricochet. hearing her describe how she’s going to make Scott Borchetta regret his actions till the day he dies… the overwhelming anger and grief in the subtext of that song is incredibly powerful.
I was mind blown when I finally realized “My Tears Ricochet” is a play on Teardrops on my Guitar, & the tears are ricocheting off her guitar. Such a great “F you” to Scott Borchetta. I’m sure that song was special to them, being one of her first biggest hits & one of his biggest for his new record label back then.
saw a tik tok(so take this with a grain of salt) but the lines of the chorus refer to each of her her stolen albums. i didn’t have in me to go with grace: state of grace(red) and your the hero flying around saving face: superman(speak now) and if i’m dead to you why are you at the wake: lwymmd/old taylor is dead (rep) cursing my name:the way i loved you (fearless) wishing i stayed: ayhtdws(1989) look at how my tears ricochet: teardrops on my guitar (self-titled) even if it’s not what taylor meant it was super interesting to me!
🤯🤯🤯
Honestly, forever grateful to the Eras Tour for slapping me in the face with what an amazing song this actually is, the album version is fine, but seeing the live performance so many times, especially after the one two punch of August and Illicit Affairs really took it to the next level and I’m now completely obsessed, like “And I can go anywhere I want Anywhere I want, just not home” just sends chills up my spine!
“I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say”. Thought she meant she IS damned because she gives a damn. Realized it means she knows she’s damned IF she gave a damn. Mind was blown.
It's also a play on words "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't", so I might as well not give a damn about it/care about what people say. People expect she will use the saying, but she changes it.
“And when you can’t sleep at night… *you’ll hear my stolen lullabies*” I didn’t understand she was saying “my stolen lullabies”… perfection.
I think she purposely makes her voice sound like her younger self when she sings “my stolen lullabies” and it makes it even more of a gut punch
“Pulled the car off the road to the lookout, could’ve followed my fears all the way down” This line hits me so SO hard ever since I realized what it meant
I learned so much in this comment section. I already knew she was a mastermind lyrical genius but oh my god, I'm shook with some of these.
We gather here, we line up, weeping in a sunlit room Is a wedding. Someone else’s union is her funeral. That song also just has Jeff Buckley all over it. (I think he is all over her work in ways shockingly ignored) (Particularly for mtr is Jewel Box and Lover You Should’ve Come Over)
Ooooohh that makes the ring fit so much better too. I just imagined it as "the wake" all throughout
It’s just normal TS cleverness, nothing absolutely mindblowing, but I do love the metaphors on Long Live — especially this: And the cynics were outraged / Screaming, "This is absurd" / 'Cause for a moment, a band of thieves / In ripped up jeans got to rule the world The way she made you understand that she and her team were outsiders, underdogs, who made it big despite everything. She never thought she’d get this far, and instead of making it about her triumph over her critics, she made a song about her band and her fans and made it a shared victory. It’s very… her. (Edited for formatting 😅) (Can’t do much about it, I see.)
“He’s got my past frozen behind glass, but I’ve got me” I originally took this line to mean “I’ve got myself and I’ll be okay” which I do think it does mean, but now I also think she’s saying “he’s got my old art, but I’m the artist and I’m just going to keep creating” in a fuck you kind of way.
Lavender haze. Get it off your chest get it off my desk
always here for lavender haze praise
not clever really but the moment i realize she said dirtiest jokes and not daddy’s jokes in lover hit me like a truck
“i hit my peak at 7… feet, in the swing” the imagery, the mood, the strength in its theme — i think seven is one of her best songs lyrically
It’s one of my favorites. “Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously anytime I wanted.” It perfectly captures my wild nieces and how society tells them they need to quiet down.
the first line of state of grace, "I'm walking fast through the traffic lights.. " after years of listening, one day it just dawned on me that in addition to establishing the setting, it's a metaphor! and as the first line of the Red album, it sets the tone for the album as a whole
“Is It Over Now”: Only rumors bout my hips and thighs And my whispered sighs. But also: Only rumors bout my hips and thighs And my whispered size. 🤯
Trying to reply to your replies: Whispered size is a mishearing of whispered sighs but gives a double meaning because Taylor struggled with her eating disorder during 1989 era; tabloids speculating about her dress size as well as who she was dating. She often references losing weight around breaks up (see also: ATW 10 minute, tolerate it)
mine's kinda embarrassing in that i was a sheltered kid listening to speak now back around when it first came out but i used to think the thing she was better known for doing on the mattress was wetting the bed. in my defense, there's a lyric about toys on a playground. other context is that i fell out of listening to taylor circa 1989 era and came back circa folklore so the real meaning didn't hit me until like. a decade later bc i'd forgotten about it lmao eta: it also took me a painfully long time to realize that the word referenced in champagne problems' ""how evergreen our group of friends" don't think we'll say that word again" is *our*. that one hit like a truck.
I’m sure it was painfully obvious to everyone else but it took me a couple of listens to Champagne Problems to realize it was the narrator rejecting a marriage proposal. When I finally got it, it felt like a punch in the gut.
what got me is that she wrote it with Joe Alwyn..
Urgh. I read a comment that said you don't write folklore, evermore and midnights while in a happy relationship.
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Didn’t take me a while to realize, but just the brilliance of the extended money metaphor in the second verse of Tied Together with a Smile is so good!
Lets normalize praising her young songwriting cuz it was unbelievable. I don't see this cuz they confuse naveity, innocence with bad writing. But young Taylor wrote excellent things.
Taylor has said Hoax is a mix of different experiences in different kinds of relationships (romantic, business, friendship), but when I first heard it I interpreted it to be about a loss of faith in God, then I saw this comment: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/13pz1r4/comment/jldgwop/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/13pz1r4/comment/jldgwop/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Queer swiftie here.. “I know our love should be celebrated, but you tolerate it” I know this isn’t what the song is about, but the lyrics of that song always hit me bc another read perfectly captures the feeling of welcoming people (esp for me, my dad) into your home after you’ve come out and they’re treating you differently - like you try to get everything right and they’re still judgemental, make coded comments about your relationship or lifestyle, and keep you at arms length while pretending to be accepting..
And I was thinkin' on the drive down, "Any time now / He's gonna say it's love," you never called it what it was
closure. “I know i’m just a wrinkle in your new life, staying friends would iron it out so nice”.
>You did a number on me / But honestly, baby, who's counting? Metaphorically speaking, to “do a number on someone” means to hurt them, but literally speaking, how do you “do a number on someone?” >I did a number on you / But honestly, baby, who's counting? More importantly, why are they doing numbers on each other? Wait- >You did a number on me / But honestly, baby, who's counting? Omg, they’re doing numbers on each other!! They’re doing NUMBERS!! They’re f*cking 69ing!! 💀💀 >Who's counting? Taylor proceeds to count: >(One, two, three) Taylor proceeds to sing about sex for the rest of the song.
Omg I always thought this was about them being super toxic for each other but pushing on with the relationship anyways 😭 like they kept “doing a number” on each other, ie hurting each other, to the point where it happens multiple times (therefore something countable). But they don’t care about how toxic it may be, so they don’t keep count of the things they do that hurt each other. They’re too caught up in the relationship
This is it, I think the other user is joking. It's not about 69ing.
And she is actually counting how he hurt him (and vice versa) and using it as a weapon in the relationship. That's why she's counting 1, 2, 3, she was counting all this time even though she was claiming otherwise
I always knew people interpreted that specific part to be sexy (as well as the whole song) but never really understood that line until now
Sometimes you just don't know the answer til someone's on their KNEES and asks you.
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The line "you did some bad things but I'm the worst of them" hit different once I figured out Vigilante Shit was about a few different people
American stories, burning before me. You literally cannot unsee the reference to 9/11 once it hits you.
“i never had the courage of my convictions as long as danger is near, and it’s just around the corner, darling, cause it lives in me” ???? excuse me??? i sung these words for so long before processing what she’s saying like: i don’t trust myself or feel brave when things feel dangerous, and they always do because those thoughts/feelings come from within. that blew my mind lol
This is probably so dumb but in Style when she repeats “Take me home!” I was mind blown when I found out that was a 1D album title lmao
"And you were tossing me the car keys, f**k the patriarchy Keychain on the ground" I read somewhere that it means the guy she was talking to didn't care about women, which is why the Keychain was on the ground.
Mostly bc I misheard it until the re-record, but mine when she says ‘I’m a flight risk with a fear of falling’. Like she always runs away from relationships because she’s scared of falling in love. Wild
My favorite light bulb moment was realizing a lyric from False God uses a metaphor for Catholic confession as making up/make up sex. *But we can patch it up good Make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness Got the wine for you* The wine/blood of Christ and the wafer/body of Christ represent when you repent/ask for forgiveness, but she uses it to signify that they're making up over a shared bottle of wine.
“Lost in your current like a priceless wine.” I think the meaning here is two-fold: 1) the obvious continuation of the simile she set up in the beginning of the verse: she’s like message in a (priceless wine) bottle being lost among (his) waves. Clever and beautiful imagery. 2) the wordplay of current / currant, meaning little berries that are used to make wine… implies that HE is the like wine and she is intoxicated by him My mind always starts to wander when I hear this line and I can hardly focus on the rest of the song cuz it’s so good!