Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, the series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. It has been a hot minute, since August of last year in fact, since I have updated this series. These Analysis of a Song pieces usually take a long time to write, but I have had this one sitting there already half-written for a while because I kept shelving it to focus on other posts. But the two big pieces I’m currently working on are long and thorough and won’t be finished for quite some time, so I thought I better give you guys something to munch on in the meantime, even though I’m sure no one was thinking, “golly gee, it sure has been a while since Lilly posted anything.”

I don’t know if this goes without saying, but I feel the need to clarify just because it has been a while since I’ve done one of these. When I do these lyrical breakdowns, I’m not trying to speculate on what actually happened. I don’t know Taylor. I don’t know for sure who this song is about. I’m not trying to act like I do. I’m merely analysing the lyrics to deepen my own understanding, and this is all just my interpretation. That’s why whenever I do one of these, I always try to avoid saying the name of the person the song is rumoured to be about, because I don’t want to take away from what I’m actually doing, which is an analysis, not speculation.

Anyway, today we are once again returning to my favourite artist to analyse the lyrics of: Taylor Swift. Heard of her? Last time, I did back to back lyric breakdowns of two “sister songs” on Taylor’s discography, namely, Dear John and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve. This time, I wanted to look at another sister song of a track I’ve already covered. The very first Analysis of a Song I ever did back in August of 2024 was of So Long, London (you can read it here, if you like). Today I wanted to cover the song I consider to be the sister of So Long, London: You’re Losing Me.

I call them sister songs because they’re about the same situation, except So Long, London was written after the fact, and You’re Losing Me was written while she was still in the relationship, so naturally there are quite a few parallels in the lyrics. I am absolutely obsessed with this song. I think it is one of the saddest songs on Taylor’s discography; it gets me every time. Without further ado, let’s get into the lyrics.

When looking at all the songs Taylor wrote about this person and their relationship, it seems apparent they were fundamentally different people. It’s very obvious the person in question is an introvert who shies away from the spotlight; someone who is quiet and reserved, and wants to be an actor without being a celebrity. Taylor, on the other hand, is very clearly an extrovert. She’s a social butterfly. She’s a people person. The only time Taylor Swift has ever been known to shy away from the spotlight was during the six years she was with this person. The Midnights era was around the time Taylor really started to step back into the spotlight, which was a contrast especially to the eras that were folklore and evermore, but I can imagine this person probably had a hard time understanding why Taylor would want to do that.

We must acknowledge the evolution of “not because he owns me, but ‘cause he really knows me,” on Call it What You Want, to “give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other,” on peace, to “you say, ‘I don’t understand,’ and I say, ‘I know you don’t,’” on this song, to her simply stating, “he don’t understand me,” on Fresh Out the Slammer. In the beginning, she felt like no one understood her better than this person. But as time went on, she realised he didn’t really know her at all. And when it comes to Taylor’s career, and why it’s so important to her, she knows no matter how much she tries to explain, he’ll just never get it.

They’ve been holding onto their relationship even though things haven’t been working because they both thought something would swoop in at the last second and save them. Specifically, Taylor says she thought a “cure” for their problems would magically appear. This is the beginning of a motif of illness and death that is present throughout the entire song. Their relationship is sick and dying, and they’re looking for a cure. But now, the fear and doubt is starting to creep in for Taylor. She’s starting to think that perhaps there’s no salvaging this.

Taylor then reminisces on a happier time when she and this person were house hunting together. As she’s sitting in this room, ruminating, she’s remembering that when they looked at it for the first time, they loved it because it was so bright and full of light. Now she’s sitting in that same room, alone in the dark, wondering if it may be time to pull the plug on their relationship. These back-to-back lines create two contrasting images in the mind of the listener; first, an image of two lovers in a sunlit room full of joy and warmth, then, that same room bearing one solitary person in the moonlight, weighed down by anticipatory grief. Not only do these lines create a juxtaposition of light and dark, they convey to the listener that the relationship being discussed isn’t some fling, it’s serious enough that they’re living together. It ups the stakes.

We then get to hear the question that is keeping Taylor up at night and causing her so much agony: Do I give up on this and throw away a six year relationship… or do I keep trying simply because of how much we’ve been through together? I love her specific word choice of referring to their relationship as something they’ve “built” together. It’s a fair analogy; relationships are things that require consistent effort and energy and nuturing. And the more time you spend in a relationship with someone, the more your lives start to interconnect and weave together, be it in the form of mutual friends, co-owned pets, a shared living space, or even just shared life experiences. If Taylor were to leave this person and find someone new, then she’d be starting again from scratch, and relinquishing not just them, but the entire life they’ve built together. That’s why it’s such a painstaking decision.

She then refers to herself as a phoenix, a mythical creature derived from Egyptian mythology known for its powers of regeneration and healing. Their most striking feature is their ability to be born again from their own ashes after death, but there are also many stories that depict phoenix tears or feathers as containing the power to heal all wounds. It’s such a brilliant analogy for Taylor, an artist known for reinventing herself and starting again every time she sheds one era and steps into a new one. She mentions her tendency to “rise up from the ashes,” which parallels a lyric in Look What You Made Me Do: “Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time.” But she also mentions her habit of “mending all her gashes,” which is potentially a reference to the way she has always used songwriting as a means of giving herself emotional closure when something in her personal life has wounded her, which in turn grants her the power to bounce back and move on.

But she notes that even though she’s a phoenix, she’s tired and worn down. She is so used to being able to easily bounce back after a setback and begin again, but the more this person hurts her in little ways throughout the duration of their relationship, the more she lacks the energy to keep getting back up. We all go through moments in life where it feels like no matter how many times you get back up, something just keeps pushing you back down, and every time you fall, another little bit of your strength is taken from you. Taylor knows it’s only a matter of time before the final blow is dealt, and she finds herself unable to become reborn from the ashses.

The repetition of “you’re losing me” over and over again in the chorus makes it all the more powerful. It’s as if she’s pleading with this person to just stop. Again, we see the motif of illness and a gradual death. It’s such a great metaphor comparing a weakening pulse to the slow realisation that you’re falling out of love with someone. The longer she stays with this person, she more she feels herself slip away as she checks out emotionally. I also think there’s something to be said for her using present tense instead of past tense. She doesn’t say “you’ve lost me,” she says, “you’re losing me.” Clearly, a part of her is still holding out hope they can come back from this.

But I love that after she says, “my heart won’t start anymore,” there’s a pause, before she clarifies, “for you.” The full sentence is, “my heart won’t start anymore for you.” Yes, this person is slowly sucking the life out of her, but she’s not losing the ability to ever love again, she’s losing the ability to love this person. She hasn’t completely lost her spark, she’s lost her spark for this specific person. The entire line of, “I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore,” is called upon later in So Long, London, in which she sings: “I stopped CPR, after all, it’s no use. The spirit was gone, we would never come to.”

In the second verse, Taylor describes the resentment she started to build towards this person over time. Every morning, she’d wake up and shoot daggers at them, saying everything she wanted to say through only her eyes, mad at them for a comment they made, or a chore they forgot to do; furious with them for not putting in the effort to fix what was so clearly broken in their relationship. She very easily could’ve told them something was wrong, but she wanted them to notice something was wrong. After being with this person for so long, she wanted them to know her well enough that they could recognise when something wasn’t right. She can’t believe the audacity of this person to look her in the eye and say they love her when they can’t even tell she’s experiencing so much inner turmoil.

I think this is a relatable sentiment, not just in relationships, but with family and friends as well. We know the emotionally mature thing to do is just be upfront and not expect the people around us to be mind readers, but sometimes it’s nice for someone to notice something is wrong without us telling them because it makes us feel seen. Although when you’ve been in a relationship with someone for six years, I think it’s reasonable to expect them to notice when you’re not acting like your usual self. Which is why Taylor is questioning if this person truly loves her, because how can they love her when they can’t even see that she’s suffocating?

She goes on to say: “I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick.” This line draws parallels to 2020’s exile, in which Justin Vernon’s character sings, “you never gave a warning sign,” to which Taylor’s character responds quite plainly: “I gave so many signs.” Oftentimes when you hear someone say their partner left them “out of nowhere,” once you hear said partner’s side of things, you come to realise it wasn’t out of nowhere for them, but instead a long time coming. In So Long, London, Taylor sings: “You say I abandonded the ship, but I was going down with it.” From his perspective, Taylor leaving was completely out of left field; she abandoned their relationship with little to no warning. From Taylor’s perspective, she spent years warning this person if something didn’t change, she’d have no choice but to leave. Biting one’s nails is a sign of anxiety, so Taylor saying she was biting her nails down to the quick shows just how much excessive anxiety she was feeling during this time. The parallel to exile is even more interesting given she co-wrote that song with William Bowery… food for thought.

She ends the verse with, “my face was grey but you wouldn’t admit that we were sick.” Yet again we see the motif of illness. It seems apparent Taylor’s avoidant partner is in denial that anything is wrong, ignorantly hoping if they bury their head in the sand long enough, their problems will magically go away. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. Taylor is saying her face is grey as a way to show the life is slowly being drained from her, but thankfully, she informs us in So Long, London that, “I’m just getting colour back into my face.” Additionally, even though she’s expressing resentment towards her partner in this song, in So Long, London, she sings, “holding tight to your quiet resentment,” so the resentment goes both ways. Resentment is the slowest way to kill a relationship; it seeps into the cracks of every aspect like a poison until the connection eventually withers away entirely.

Taylor has been agonising and ruminating over whether to stay or go for so long that it’s almost as if you can feel her indecision in the air and could cut it with a knife. I’ve always found the line, “I know my pain is such an imposition,” particularly heart-wrenching. This person is frustrated with her for being moody and indecisive all the time, but Taylor is fully aware it would be so much easier if she could just be content in their relationship. At the end of the day, she can’t choose how she feels. She can’t help that she’s unhappy, and yet this person is acting as if her unhappiness is what’s wrong in their relationship, not the foundational issues that are causing her unhappiness.

That next line, “now you’re running down the hallway, but you know what they all say, you don’t know what you got until it’s gone,” reminds me of a particular line from Renegade: “Then you squeeze my hand as I’m about to leave.” This person is always doing the bare minimum and putting in as little effort as possible, but as soon as they sense that Taylor might actually leave them, that’s when they finally step up — temporarily, of course. They always give just enough to keep her from leaving. Not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone is a tale as old as time. We don’t appreciate the things we have when we have them, and it’s not until we’ve lost them that we realise not only how important it was, but how much we took it for granted. Taylor knows full well it won’t be until she actually leaves this person that they’ll finally realise how badly they screwed up and how much they took for granted.

That first line, “how long could we be a sad song?” echoes a sentiment expressed in So Long, London: “How much sad did you think I had?” Both convey the same frustration of, “how long did you possibly think we could live like this?” There’s irony in Taylor comparing the two of them to a ‘sad song,’ given some of the sad songs they wrote together, like champagne problems, exile, coney island, and evermore. In the next line, she refers to their relationship as being too far gone to ever revive, once again bringing back the motif of death, and once again drawing parallels to the “I stopped CPR, after all, it’s no use” line from So Long, London.

She reminds this person she gave them all the best versions of herself. She was supportive when they needed her to be supportive. She was patient when they needed her to be patient. Taylor Swift, the shapeshifter and the phoenix, dimmed her sparkle and tried her hardest to be someone who didn’t need the spotlight just to appease this person. She gave this relationship her all just to be met with the bare minimum time and time again. Not only did she give the best versions of herself, she gave her endless empathy. From the songs we have about them, it’s apparent this person struggled with some mental health issues. On peace, she sings: “I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm if your cascade ocean wave blues come.” On hoax, she sings: “Don’t want no other shade of blue but you, no other sadness in the world would do.” On Renegade, she sings: “Are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these? And let all your damage damage me? And carry your baggage up my street? (…) is it insensitive for me to say, ‘get your shit together,’ so I can love you?” On So Long, London, she sings: “You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days.”

There’s only so much empathy and grace you can give someone before you have to call them out on their self-sabotaging tendencies. There’s only so much empathy you can give someone before that empathy eventually runs dry. You can self-sabotage as much as you like when it’s just you, but when you’re in a committed relationship, you have to think of your other half. As Taylor sings in Renegade, “you fire off missiles ‘cause you hate yourself, but do you know you’re demolishing me?” You could also take this line to mean Taylor is no longer giving in to this person’s excuses. Every time she confronted them about not trying, not putting in any effort, not appreciating her enough, they’d feed her some feeble excuse. In response to these excuses, Taylor would be endlessly empathetic and understanding. People pleasers tend to be overly empathetic and understanding, and as a result, others tend to take advantage of their empathy and walk all over them.

Throughout those six years, she gave this person absolutely everything she had, just for her to always end up with the short end of the stick because of it. She would have done anything and everything for them, and yet they were perfectly content watching her slowly bleed out. I’m reminded of a lyric from 2020’s cardigan, “you drew stars around my scars but now I’m bleeding.” Taylor refers to herself as the “bravest soldier,” calling back to a fellow Midnights bonus track, The Great War. The entire premise of this song revolves around comparing an almost relationship ending fight to a war on the battlefield. In it, she sings: “I vowed I would always be yours, ‘cause we survived the great war.” Now it seems she’s second-guessing if it’s a good thing they survived the war. I really like the use of the word ‘brave’ in this line. Every day, she tried so hard to put on a brave face, but it ultimately wasn’t enough.

She continues the parallels to The Great War, singing, “fighting in only your army, frontlines, don’t you ignore me.” This line reminds me of two prior songs. Firstly, New Year’s Day, in which Taylor sings: “I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe. Or if you strike out and you’re crawling home.” Secondly, in peace, she sings: “You know that I’d swing with you for the fences, sit with you in the trenches.” Both of these lines convey the same message, which is: If you’re in a really good place in life and everything is going well for you, I’ll be there as your #1 cheerleader. And if nothing’s going your way and it feels like everything’s falling apart, guess what? I’ll still be by your side through it all. She was willing to be by this person’s side through sunshine and rain, in sickness and in health, there for the good and the bad. She was always in his corner, but he was never willing to show her that same support and dedication in return.

The way she describes it as “fighting in his army,” also makes me think she was always the first to defend him. In So Long, London, she says, “my friends said it isn’t right to be scared every day of a love affair.” It reminds me of a line from Olivia Rodrigo’s favourite crime; “I crossed my heart as you crossed the line, and I defended you to all my friends.” Which also reminds me of a lyric from Lorde’s Hard Feelings/Loveless; “When you’ve outgrown a lover, the whole world knows but you.” It sounds like Taylor’s friends were trying to have the hard conversation with her, but she was always the first to jump to her partner’s defence, fighting on the frontlines against his doubters.

“Don’t you ignore me,” leads into the next line, “I’m the best thing at this party.” That lyric always devastates me. I can almost see it in my mind; the two of them at a party, Taylor is dressed to the nines, and yet her partner will proceed to spend the entire night talking to everyone but her, paying her no mind whatsoever. I’m not the first to link this line back to Bejeweled, on which she sings, “best believe I’m still bejeweled. When I walk in the room, I can still make the whole place shimmer. And when I meet the band, they ask, ‘do you have a man?’ I can still say, ‘I don’t remember.’” I’m also reminded of a lyric from So Long, London: “I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out, I founded the club she’s heard great things about.” I love when Taylor Swift remembers she’s Taylor Swift.

Her partner had gotten a little too comfortable and seemingly forgotten he bagged Taylor Freakin’ Swift, one of the most famous people to have ever lived, someone who could quite literally have her pick of any guy to be with. She’s reminding him that no matter what party they go to, no matter who they meet, she will always be the best thing at the function because she’s Taylor Freaking Swift. I’m obsessed with the way she sings, “don’t you ignore me,” almost as if she can’t believe his audacity to ignore her at a party when the only reason why they’re at said party is because she can skip to the front of the line and get instant access wherever she goes because she’s. Taylor. Freaking. Swift!!

But Taylor’s confidence quickly deflates in the next line. “I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.” The money I would pay to relive hearing that line for the first time again. Towards the end of this relationship, there was a lot of public confusion as to why the pair of them still hadn’t tied the knot even though they’d been together for years and Taylor had expressed a desire to marry them countless times in song. She’d written numerous songs about wanting to marry them, songs like Lover and Paper Rings, and that was when they’d only been together for two and a half years. Every few months, there was a fresh rumour they’d gotten married in secret. Taylor tried to diffuse these rumours throughout Midnights by making it sound like she’d changed her mind on the marriage front. On Lavender Haze, she sings, “no deal, that 1950s shit they want from me (…) all they keep asking me is if I’m gonna be your bride. The only kinda girl they see is a one-night or a wife.” On Midnight Rain, she sings, “he wanted a bride, I was making my own name.”

But we know now Taylor never changed her mind on the marriage front. The only reason why they were yet to wed was because of him and his commitment issues, not Taylor. As she sings on So Long, London, “you swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof.” In the self-deprecating state she’s in, Taylor can’t help but wonder if this person refuses to marry her because of her pathological need for other people to like her. I’ve spoken before about Taylor’s “good girl complex.” She talks about it extensively in her Miss Americana documentary, and how she was a chronic people pleaser particularly when she was a teenager. Especially in the early days of her career, she had this need for people to think highly of her. But old habits die hard.

It was because of her people-pleasing that she stayed for so long. It was because of her people-pleasing this person got away with treating her badly for so long. Because even though she’s a pathological people pleaser, she cared about his opinion of her more than anyone else’s. All she ever wanted was for him to truly see her for all that she is; not just the warm and homely version of her he’d come to know, but all aspects of her, including the version of her that’s the world’s biggest popstar.

As I said at the very top of this, this person clearly struggled to accept the sheer magnitude of Taylor’s career as part of their lives. But that is part of her just as much as anything. She is, as she says in Anti-Hero, the monster on the hill, and nothing she does will ever change that. Again, I must reiterate how poignant it is to go from songs like Call it What You Want and peace where Taylor is talking as if nobody understands her better than this person does, to songs like this, where she expresses her longing for this person to just see her for who she is. She felt invisible in her own relationship.

This part of the song always kills me, because you can hear the pain in her voice as she desperately pleads with this person to do something, anything, to save their relationship. This is a random comparison, I know, but I’m reminded of Lady Gaga’s Million Reasons, in which she sings: “I’ve got a hundred million reasons to walk away, but baby, I just need one good one to stay.” This section of the song gives off the same vibe, as if she’s saying, “I’ve got a voice in my head telling me to leave you, and a long list of reasons why leaving you is a good idea, but there’s still a part of me that loves you, so please, for the love of god, fight for me.”

I think that’s a huge aspect in why this relationship was destined to fail: He wasn’t willing to fight for her. He didn’t love her enough to put in the effort to save their relationship, but he was also too much of a coward to be the one to break things off, so instead he was content sitting in limbo, even though they were making each other miserable. I also think this section provides insight into this person’s character. Based on my knowledge and observations, they really do seem the type to always play it safe. It sounds like Taylor is begging them to just take a risk for once; take a risk and marry her, take a risk and be more public about their relationship. Be impulsive for once. Be reckless for once.

It is an aspect of the Reputation storyline that this person was the light at the end of the tunnel during a dark time in Taylor’s life. Even though she clarifies on Call it What You Want that he didn’t “save her,” certain lyrics still suggest she did view him as some kind of saviour. On Dress, she says, “even in my worst times, you could see the best in me,” before going on to say, “my one and only, my lifeline.” On King of My Heart, she says, “is this the end of all the endings? My broken bones are mending.” On Call it What You Want, she says, “windows boarded up after the storm, he built a fire just to keep me warm.” As Taylor pleads, “do something, babe, say something,” she’s begging him to do anything, anything, to save them. After all, he saved her once before, so why won’t he save her again?

That last line, “choose something, babe, I got nothing to believe unless you’re choosing me,” feels like her final ultimatum. This is his last chance to either choose her and fully commit to their relationship instead of half-arsing it the way he has been… or let her go. Either he finally fights for her or he watches her walk away. Taylor is still desperately holding out some hope that he’ll choose her. Multiple times on songs throughout the course of their relationship, she compares their love to a religion. On Don’t Blame Me, she sings: “Lord, save me, my drug is my baby. I’ll be using for the rest of my life.” On Cornelia Street, she sings: “Barefoot in the kitchen, sacred new beginnings that became my religion.” On False God, she sings: “Even if it’s a false god, we’d still worship this love.” Six years is a long time to devote to someone. Without praying to the false god that is their relationship, she doesn’t know what she’ll have left to believe in.

Again, we have the poignant repetition of the word ‘stop’ as the realisation hits Taylor that he’s not going to choose her, and he never will. No matter what she says or does, he’s never going to choose her. I love the stylistic choice of the heartbeat being front and centre in the instrumental, up until she says, “I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore,” upon which the heartbeat that has been a constant throughout the entire song finally stops, letting the audience know that while it was a slow death, the time of death on their relationship can officially be called.

He’s no longer losing her. He’s already lost her.

I really do think this is one of the most emotionally devestating songs on Taylor’s discography, but then again, I think I’ve said that about every Taylor analysis I’ve done so far. I know I said “sister songs,” but in a way, I like to think of Renegade, You’re Losing Me, and So Long, London as triplets. One more analysis and the trilogy will be complete. And I’d like to formally dedicate this post to Jack Antonoff for being our inner circle messy boots by revealing this song was written in December of 2021, well over a year before the break up was announced. What happened in that year? We may never know.

As always, if you have any differing interpretations of any particular lyrics or otherwise, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Until next analysis,

- Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, the series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. So far in this series, we have covered multiple artists, including Taylor Swift, Lorde, Olivia Rodrigo, and one song from the musical Hamilton. The artist we’re looking at today I am admittedly less well-versed in, and that is SZA. Of SZA’s three big projects, Ctrl, SOS, and LANA, I have only listened to the standard edition of SOS in full, but that is an album I enjoyed. The song we’re looking at today, however, is my favourite song I’ve heard from SZA, that being Saturn.

This is a song that grapples with some deep existential fears. SZA doesn’t want to believe that this is all life is. She doesn’t want to believe that we grow up, work, do mostly the same stuff every day, die, and then that’s it. There’s more to life, surely? There’s surely a reason why we’re here? She’s begging the universe to give her a sign that she’s wrong, that in actuality, life is so much more than she could ever imagine.

In the first few lines, she’s introducing the idea of something extraterrestrial coming to save her. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this idea expressed in a song. Phoebe Bridgers has a song called Chinese Satellite, in which she says, “I want to believe that if I go outside, I’ll see a tractor beam coming to take me to where I’m from. I want to go home.” Additionally, Taylor Swift expresses a similar sentiment on her song, I Hate it Here: “I hate it here so I will go to lunar valleys in my mind, when they found a better planet, only the gentle survived.” Speaking of Phoebe, she features on one of SZA’s own songs, Ghost in the Machine, that explores many similar existential themes, in which SZA declares, “y’all lack humanity, drowning in vanity. I crave humanity.”

It’s in the second half of the first verse that SZA begins to wonder if life is meaningless. We go through life constantly “losing love, repeating pain” as she says; we go through life just to get our hearts broken again and again in a hundred different ways. Even if there is a point, every emotion we feel is a recycling of emotions we’ve already felt. She’s overwhelmed by the repetition and mundanity of everyday life, hence the reason why she’s craving something more — something magical, something extraterrestrial, something incredible. But as much as her heart wishes for this to be true, her brain knows she’s waiting on something that will never happen.

She ends the first verse with, “I hate this place.” It’s such a simple and direct statement, but she says it with so much sadness in her voice. It again reminds me of Taylor’s song, in which she states quite simply, “I hate it here” (Saturn and I Hate it Here share so many similarities lyrcially and thematically, I love it).

She’s again reflecting on the repetitive mundanity of everyday life. She’s stuck in the paradigm; stuck in the patterns and routines of society. By mentioning paradise and then immediately mentioning hell in the next line, it creates a contrasting effect; a juxtaposition, if you will. This place isn’t paradise, it’s hell. Again, she has to believe there simply must be more to life than what meets the eye.

In the second half of the pre-chorus, SZA narrows down her perception. She goes from talking about society as a whole to focusing on her own experience. She’s sick of living in her own head, of putting up with her brain; she’s sick of the constant anxiety and overthinking and ruminating. Intrusive thoughts are scary and unwanted thoughts, hence the name “intrusive.” SZA describes her intrusive thoughts as paralysing. That’s such a powerful and weighted word. Her own thoughts have so much influence on her that they’re triggering a freeze response.

Nirvana (no, not the band) is a term used in Buddhism to describe a state of mind one can reach in which they become above feelings of pain, suffering, and self-awareness. There is just enlightenment. An individual who has reached nirvana has transcended to a higher plane of existence. In the western world, it can be used to describe a state of complete peace and happiness, or even be used as a synonym for paradise (another word SZA just used).

When we struggle with an unrelenting brain, as many of us do, we get told all of the things that will “cure” us. You’re told meditation will cure you. Mindfulness will cure you. Journalling will cure you. Practising gratitude will cure you. Drinking more water will cure you. There are thousands of videos on YouTube that tell you if you follow their 12 simple steps, your life will change overnight. Sure, for some it’s that simple. For most, it’s not. I love the line, “nirvana’s not as advertised.” Particularly the use of the word “advertised” stands out to me. It makes it feel as if nirvana, a deeply spiritual practice, is being advertised to us by a company trying to get us to buy their mood-boosting vitamins. Almost as if SZA herself has tried the meditation and the mindfulness and all the other stuff to ease her paralysing intrusive thoughts, only to find she’s fallen for false advertisement.1

In the last line of the pre-chorus, SZA says, “got to be more, been here before.” To me, that last line reminds me of groundhog day, which is the idea of every day feeling like the same day over and over again. Which ties in nicely to the theme of the repetitive nature of life.2

It’s in the chorus that we first see what is daresay the central theme of the song: Escapism. She introduced the extraterrestrial theme in the very first line of the song, and now it’s making a reappearance. SZA can’t help but imgine that life would be better on Saturn; on a planet that isn’t actively being destroyed, a planet that isn’t filled with the vain and apathetic humans she references on Ghost in the Machine. Pondering about space is something that often freaks people out. It can be daunting to think of how big the universe is and that, really, we’re just a small speck in the grand scheme of things. Which is why I find it so interesting that instead of being intimidated by this prospect, SZA is comforted by it. It gives her hope that there’s a better world out there. But does it give her hope, or does it fuel her need to believe that there’s more to life than this lest she be overcome by existential dread?

When she says she has to stop “floating away,” I think there’s a multitude of ways you can interpret that line. First of all, the idea of floating away conjures imagery of space and how astronauts float because of the lack of gravity. But in a metaphorical sense, I think she’s referring to escapism. But the means of escapism could be many things. She could be talking about escapism through art. On a daily basis, we escape into movies, into books, into music, into our comfort shows and favourite online creators. The great thing about art is that it allows us, for a brief period of time, to escape into someone else’s head; into a fictional world that doesn’t affect us. We’re not worrying about our own problems, we’re worrying about the problems of someone else.

Alternatively, she could be referring to escapism through daydreaming. Daydreaming is a tool that can be a source of great comfort. In moments when our minds wander, we can find ourselves fantasizing of a better version of ourselves living a better life in a better world (this is something I’m personally extremely guilty of). Daydreaming is something that can very easily feel like “floating away” from reality as you get lost in the make-believe.

Or, a third suggestion, she could be talking about dissociation. Dissociation is a process of the brain in which it detatches itself from reality, usually as a trauma response, although it’s more common than people realise. Some describe dissociating as feeling as if your brain has gone on autopilot. Some describe it as feeling as if you’re dreaming even though you’re awake. Some describe it as the world feeling 2D or flat. Some describe it as an “out-of-body” experience. Dissociation is literally an escape tactic the brain uses when it is feeling overwhelmed or unable to process something that has happened. Please don’t mistake this as me trying to “diagnose” SZA or psychoanalyse anything, I just know that for me personally, ‘floating away’ draws connections to dissociation. SZA may not be referring to anything I’ve said in that line, these are just the things it reminds me of.

In the next line, she says, “find something worth saving, it’s all for the taking.” That is quite possibly the most depressing line of the song. The idea that humanity is so far gone at this point that it would be hard to even find something worth saving is pretty dark. The environment is getting destroyed almost to a point of no repair, people’s rights are getting taken away, Palestinians are being slaughtered while politicians turn a blind eye, AI is actively erasing people’s critical thinking skills, all the while everything is only getting more expensive — I can understand the notion to look at all of that and think perhaps we’re reaching a point of no return.

Again, it draws connections to SZA’s Ghost in the Machine, in which she says: “I hate everybody, I hate everyone. Let’s talk about AI, robot got more heart than I. Robot got future I don’t (…) Can you distract me from all the disaster?” I find her use of the phrase “all for the taking” interesting; it could be a reference to greed and how easy it is now for the powerful to attain more power. Or, she could be talking to the aliens, telling them earth is all theirs for the taking because nothing is worth saving anyway. I mentioned in the first verse that SZA seemed to be pondering if life is meaningless, and she quite straightforwardly states in the chorus: “None of this matters.” That is Existential Crisis Final Boss. And so SZA will continue dreaming of Saturn, the so-called better place that exists only in her mind and will always be just out of reach.

Karma is a nice thing to believe in; the idea that good things will eventually come back around to good people and bad things will eventually come back around to bad people. It’s a comforting idea in theory, but falls apart the more you think about it. Bad things happen to good people every day. Good things happen to bad people every day too. It is, as SZA notes, unfair. But as the old adage goes, life isn’t fair. You can either believe in things like fate and karma and “everything happens for a reason,” or you can believe that life simply isn’t fair, and never will be. You deal with the cards you are dealt. It’s a glass half full VS glass half empty mentality. SZA says, “how am I still here?” Almost as if she’s still pondering why a spaceship hasn’t come to take her away to a better planet yet.

She then asks herself one of the questions of life everyone must confront at some point: Is there a point to being a good person? Obviously, there is a point to being a good person, but in the pessimistic state SZA is currently in, she can’t bring herself to see it. And while being a good person shouldn’t be about the reward (if there’s a reward at all), SZA is in such a state of disarray that she wants reassurance it wasn’t all for nothing. She reflects on how, “the good die young and poor.” If karma is real, then why do good people die young and poor? If karma is real, then why do the poor keep getting poorer, while the rich only get richer? SZA ends the second verse with, “I gave it all I could.” She says it with an air of resignation, as if she feels she has nothing left to give. She tried to be hopeful and optimistic, but hope and optimism can only get you so far, and will run dry eventually.

A terradome is a glass dome that covers plants and greenery, with terra being the Latin word for ‘earth.’ Upon finding this out, I immediately thought of The Simpsons Movie, in which Springfield gets trapped under a giant glass dome.3 Stephen King also has a 2009 book based on the same premise called Under the Dome, but the Simpsons movie actually came out in 2007, so I guess they did it first. And while it is slightly different, I’m also reminded of The Truman Show, in which Truman is placed in a fake world designed to stop him from escaping. Either way, what SZA is likely trying to say with this line is that she feels trapped.

Again, she’s reflecting on how whenever she looks around at the general state of the world, all she sees is awful, terrible things. Not only that, she’s seeing the effect it’s having on people. People are distressed. People are angry. People are scared.

I wish I could wrap this analysis up with a nice little bow and end it on a happy note, but I can’t. Because this song begins and ends pessimistically, and that’s okay. It’s normal to have a good ol’ existential crash out every now and again, encouraged even. And it’s understandable to dream of escaping to another planet given the current state of the world. Okay, because the optimist in me can’t help herself, I will end this on a semi-happy note. Even though SZA has songs like Saturn and Ghost in the Machine where all she can see is despair and the doom and gloom, there are also songs like Good Days, in which she declares: “I’ll await my armoured fate with a smile. Still wanna try, still believe in good days.”

On that note, I hope you enjoyed this lyrical break down. Writing this made me way more existential than I thought it was going to, which, in hindsight, I probably should have seen coming lol. I may not have heard every song of SZA’s, but I do think she’s such a fascinating artist and has such a unique writing style. If you have any different interpretations to certain lyrics in this song, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Until the next analysis,

- Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, the series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. Today we are looking at an artist who I have been wanting to break down a song by for quite some time. She is up there as one of my favourite artists alongside Taylor Swift and Lorde. I am talking about none other than the gorgeous and talented diva, Olivia Rodrigo. I thought a lot about which song from Olivia’s still small discography I wanted to analyse, but in the end, I decided on what is perhaps my favourite Olivia Rodrigo song. It is the opening track of her sophomore album GUTS: all-american bitch.

Without further ado, let’s get into the lyrics.

Right off the bat, I feel the need to clarify that this song is satire. She is not being serious, she is playing a character, and that character is “Society’s Perfect Woman.” This entire song is social commentary on the impossibly high standards the public, the media, and society in general holds women to, particularly women in the public eye.

The opening line is a reference to a popular party game often played by young girls at sleepovers. One person lies flat on their back and everyone else gathers around them with 2 fingers underneath them, chanting, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” then they lift the person up, creating a “levitating” effect. I remember being 11 and trying this, then being freaked out when it worked. Even though girls at sleepovers try to sell it as a demonic ritual, the real reason behind it is simply physics. In saying that, performing demonic rituals at sleepovers is a passage of girlhood, I think (I’m still scarred from my “Bloody Mary” sleepover experience).

By saying she is “light as a feather,” Olivia could be commenting on society’s expectations for women to always be thin, even to an unhealthy degree. This wouldn’t be the first time Olivia has spoken up about unrealistic beauty standards, she does so as well on jealousy, jealousy and pretty isn’t pretty. When she says she pays attention to things most people ignore, she’s pointing out how women are expected to be observant and attentive, whereas men get away with being neither of those things. I could tell you for free that all of the least obervant people I know are men.

And this “Perfect Woman” doesn’t care in the slightest about unnecessarily cruel jokes in movies, no way. She doesn’t care about politics. She doesn’t take offense when movies make sexist or misogynistic jokes. Instead, she does what society wants her to do: She shuts up and stays silent. She doesn’t have an opinion. She doesn’t talk about things she “doesn’t understand.”

I absolutely love the line, “I am built like a mother and a total machine,” because not only is it an absurd-sounding line on first listen, but it’s unfortunately true. Women are expected to prioritise motherhood above all else. And naturally, their bodies look a little different after giving birth. Going through nine months of pregnancy on top of pushing a human child out of you is bound to have a lingering effect. However, after a woman gives birth, there are societal pressures for them to immediately hit the gym, get on a diet, and do everything they can to get their body back to looking the way it was before. This, of course, is absolutely fucking ridiculous. But not for Society’s Perfect Woman. She’s a mother and a wife, but she’ still a total machine. She’s still got the perfect to-die-for bod. She’s still light as a feather.

“I feel for your every little issue, I know just what you mean,” is a reference to women being expected to be endlessly empathetic and understanding towards men. Even if a man does them wrong or is acting horribly or complaining about something insignificant, the Perfect Woman will always be forgiving and merciful. She will always be there as a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. Her empathy never runs out. What’s more, she’s got sun just spilling out of her pockets. She’s optimistic. She lights up a room. She’s always happy. Never sad, never angry, never resentful, never any kind of ugly emotion. Just happy.

In this one verse alone, Olivia conveys so many things women are expected to be — thin, beautiful, observant, attentive, apolitical, empathetic, happy — and she conveys all of it without ever actually saying any of those words.

It’s at this point in the song that the facade slips sonically and the beat kicks in. Although Olivia is letting her true aggression show through the production, she’s still playing into her character lyrically. Forgive and forget is a popular phrase, and by using it here, Olivia is again referring to how endlessly empathetic and understanding women are expected to be. Even if they are mistreated or betrayed, they’re expected to forgive, forget, and move on. Anger isn’t a cute look for the Perfect Woman. Neither is holding a grudge.

In the second line of the chorus, Olivia is letting her teenage angst slip through. One of the most infuriating things a teenager can hear is being told to act their age. But again, it still fits into the theme of Society’s Perfect Woman. She doesn’t act younger than she is, nor does she act older than she is. She acts exactly how is socially acceptable. When she says, “got what you can’t resist,” I can’t help but wonder if she’s talking about the sex appeal that women in the public eye, especially in the pop music industry (or just women in general), are expected to have. Or, she could be talking about it from a personality standpoint. She’s got the starpower and talent that people can’t resist. That’s why she’s in the position she’s in.

Olivia proceeds to say, “I’m a perfect all-American-” before cutting herself off as she remembers herself and snaps back into composure. She cuts herself off right before swearing, almost as if she’s censoring herself.

In this second verse, Olivia is starting to weave in Americana imagery. Not only is she Society’s Perfect Woman, she is specifically America’s Perfect Woman. There are hardly any other brands more Americana than Coca-Cola, which she says she’s using to curl her hair, which was a popular method women used to curl their hair back in the 1950s. And again, it also doesn’t get more Americana than the Kennedy family. The Kennedys are a prestigious American family heavily involved in politics, the most famous of the Kennedys being JFK, who infamously was the US President before getting assassinated in the 1960s.

Even just making references to things that link back to periods like the 50s and 60s add to the Americana of it all. For a lot of people, when they think Americana, they think 1950s patriotic white picket fence nuclear family celebrating the 4th of July (ok, maybe as a non-American, my perception is a little stereotypical lol). She specifically says she has the “class and integrity” of a Kennedy, which again adds to the list of attributes this Perfect Woman needs to possess. She has to be sexy, but she’s also expected to be classy about it. This is a very thin line to walk, and Sabrina Carpenter is the perfect example of a female popstar who has been burned at the stake again and again for simply not caring about playing into her sexuality the way the media wants her to. She is playing the game by her own rules, not the rules the media tries to demand she play by.

The final line, “with love to spare,” is saying that even though this Perfect Woman is attentive and empathetic and happy and light, she still has more to give. In real life, someone who tried to bear all those positive attributes all of the time would probably spread themselves too thin, but not her. Because she is exactly who society wants her to be.

This time, Olivia doesn’t cut herself off. She doesn’t censor herself. She names this character she’s been playing the entire song the all-American bitch. The word ‘bitch’ is a very heavy and loaded word, even though many will try to deny it. While it can be used humorously or between women in an affectionate way; bitch, at its core, is an insult men hurl at women to demean them. When a woman is labelled a bitch, they’re essentially the exact opposite of Society’s Perfect Woman. Instead of classy, they’re rude. Instead of happy, they’re prickly. Instead of easy-going, they’re difficult. Instead of shutting up and keeping quiet, they’re insistent of having an opinion.

This Perfect Woman ticks all the boxes. She’s danced their dance; she’s done all the things society wants her to do. And yet, she still gets labelled a bitch. She did everything right, and she still gets labelled a bitch. Because it’s inevitable. Even if women play the game and try to be perfect according to society’s standards, they will ultimately still fall victim to the patriarchy.

Olivia continues to talk about the sex appeal she’s expected to have as a popstar, saying, “with perfect all-American lips, and perfect all-American hips.” We know from Olivia that the original lyric was actually “perfect all-American tits” instead of hips, but she changed it to tone it down a bit. Frankly, I think the original line is hilarious, and I love that it’s the one she chooses to sing live most of the time. Olivia ends the new section by saying, “I know my place, and this is it.” Women will often get told to “know their place,” and Olivia, as this character, is staying in her lane of being the perfect saint who never rocks the boat.

In this section, Olivia is touching on how women are expected to bottle up their emotions for the comfort of others. They’re not allowed to get angry, otherwise they’ll simply be told they’re overreacting and being dramatic. Instead of letting their emotions out, they can only scream on the inside. It’s at this point in the song that Olivia’s character finally snaps. She’s no longer poised and composed, she completely loses her shit and begins screaming.

In an interview with The Guardian, Olivia talked about these kinds of repressed emotions, saying, “I’ve experienced a lot of emotional turmoil over having all these feelings of rage and dissatisfaction that I felt like I couldn’t express, especially in my job. I’ve always felt like: you can never admit it, be so grateful all the time, so many people want this position. And that causes a lot of repressed feelings. I’ve always struggled with wanting to be this perfect American girl and the reality of not feeling like that all the time.”

This screaming section of the song became a fun tradition of Olivia’s shows, where she would stop the song to tell the audience to think of something or someone that makes them angry. She’d then proceed to tell them to scream as loud as they can:

At 2:42 in the video.

After her little outburst, Olivia’s character composes herself once again to deliver the final lines of the song. Olivia sings about what she mentioned in her interview with The Guardian; this need she feels to express her gratitude all the time. As a figure in the public eye, Olivia knows how lucky she is to have such a fortunate, well-paying job that many would kill for, but there are downsides to being so famous, the constant intrusion of privacy perhaps being the biggest one. But if Olivia were to go on the record complaining about that, the media would label her “ungrateful.”

This isn’t just the case for women in the public eye, women in general are expected to be nothing but grateful for the things they have in life. When she says, “I’m sexy and I’m kind, I’m pretty when I cry,” it’s almost as if she’s repeating a mantra to herself. She’s again adding to this list of things women are expected to be; sexy, kind, grateful… even when we’re crying, we’re expected to still look pretty while doing it.

It’s a never-ending list of expectations we’ll never meet.

Again, I adore this song. I think it is one of the most angsty and angry tracks on Olivia’s discography. I really do think this song is the epitome of female rage. Please keep in mind that this analysis is purely my interpretation. If you have any different interpretations of any lyrics or otherwise, I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

See you in the next analysis,

- Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, the series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. Last time, I looked at the 2010 Speak Now song, Dear John. So this time, I thought it only right to look at Dear John’s sister song. The song in question, of course, is Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, from 2022’s Midnights. This song really feels like a sequal to Dear John; they’re about the same situation, except Dear John is Taylor reflecting on the situation right after it happened, and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve is Taylor reflecting on it 12 years later. She’s older, she’s wiser, she’s experienced a bit more life, and she’s finally processed how messed up it all was. This is, without a doubt, one of the most heartbreaking songs on Taylor’s entire discography. It never fails to give me chills.

Often when we look back on past events, we obsess over the what-ifs. We think to ourselves, ‘if this one tiny miniscule thing was different, then none of that would’ve happened.’ As she says in the 1: “If one thing had been different, would everything be different today?” If this person had so much as blinked at Taylor the wrong way, to let her know they were bad news, she would’ve ran for the hills. She would’ve look away, and those lingering stares would never escalate into anything more. But it’s not all on Taylor. If he had sensed something sour, if he had sensed Taylor would release a song about him that would paint him in a terrible light, he too could’ve ran for the hills. But he didn’t, and nor did Taylor. What happened, happened. She needs to accept the reality, but that’s exactly what she’s been struggling to do for the last 12 years.

In the next lines, Taylor references their age difference. As I said in the Dear John analysis, both songs are about a relationship Taylor was in with a man 12 years her senior; more specifically, she was 19, and he was 32. Taylor referring to him as a “promising grown man” is a play on the phrase “promising young man.” Often in society, young men tend to get shielded under the blanket of a hypothetical promising future, despite any wrongdoings they may have committed. This is especially seen when victim-blaming a woman. When Taylor released Dear John, the media did not take her side. Instead of scolding John for dating a teenager in his 30s, they accused Taylor of humiliating John (it was 2010, of course they were going to take the man’s side). It’s almost as if she’s mocking these people who acted like John was this bright young man whose reputation she tried to smear. He wasn’t a bright young man, he was 32. He was grown.

To contrast, in the next line, she refers to herself as a child. Calling him a grown man and then in the very next line calling herself a child really emphasises the age differences. As I said, she was 19 at the time. While 19 is legally an adult, many still consider people in that 18-22 age bracket to be kids. But that didn’t matter to him. At the end of the day, he didn’t care how young or old she was. All he cared about was having another person to play his mind games on and get a power trip out of messing with. This line is possibly a play on the idiom of “washing your hands of” something. To wash your hands of a situation means to essentially clean yourself of it; decide that you no longer want anything to do with it, no matter how big a role you may have played in it.

That’s what this person is trying to do. He’s trying to wash his hands of the whole ordeal, sweep it under the rug, pretend it never happened, and act like he doesn’t have to take accountability because of that. Her age isn’t relevant anymore because he’s washed his hands of the situation. Taylor, of course, is not going to let him do that quite so easily. The last song she wrote about him got her accused of humiliating him and trying to make him feel ashamed? Well, she’s going to write another song about him over a decade later to remind the world and him just how messed up what he did to her was.

One thing many people have picked up on about this song is that it is filled to the brim with religious references. Religion has always played an interesting role in Taylor’s career. She certainly framed herself as a Christian when she first debuted as a country artist; she referenced God in a song or two and would occasionally thank God in an acceptance speech. But in the early 2000s, being an American country artist was synonymous with Christianity, so it’s hard to know if she was just pandering to her audience. As she ventured into pop music, the acceptance speech shout-outs definitely faded away, but she did refer to herself as a Christian in her 2020 documentary, Miss Americana. However, in her later albums, especially The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor makes religious references constantly, but not always in a positive way; this song being one of the less than positive examples.

The first religious reference comes when Taylor says how often she used to pray. Again, we go back to the what-ifs. ‘If I had known this, then I would’ve… if this had happened instead, then I could’ve… I ought to have done this, I should’ve…’ It’s almost as if she’s bargaining with herself. She wishes he’d never even looked in her direction.

We have a a call back to the pre-chorus within the first line. She’s further building that religious imagery. Often when people pray, they kneel. It’s also common to be asked to kneel during a church service. Maybe Taylor didn’t pray enough. Maybe if she had stayed on her knees and kept praying, God never would’ve sent this person into her life. It’s the first we see of the religious guilt and questioning that is woven throughout the entire song. Dancing with the devil is a popular saying, often used to describe partaking in a potentially reckless activity. It’s safe to assume the ‘devil’ in question is the subject of the song. It’s not even the only time she references the devil on this album; on another Midnights 3AM track, Dear Reader, she says: “Dear reader, when you aim at the devil, make sure you don’t miss.”

Just as she did in Dear John with the line, “don’t you think 19’s too young to be played by your dark twisted games,” she’s specifically mentioning her age here. She was only 19. She was only a year into adulthood. I’m reminded of another sister song of Dear John and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve — The Manuscript. She heavily references age gap relationships on that track as well, stating, “in the age of him she wished she was 30, and made coffee every morning in a French press (…) she thought about how he said since she was so wise beyond her years, everything had been above board. She wasn’t sure.” He tried to convince her it was okay because of how mature she was for her age. But she sees that now for the excuse it was. It doesn’t change the facts: she was only 19.

In the next line, she references God yet again to tell us that even though the aftermath was catastrophic, while she was in it, it was Heaven. In the beginning, he likely showered her with love and affection and attention. But very quickly, that disappeared. As she says in Dear John, “maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love then take it away.”

In the second half of the chorus, she acknowledges that time has passed. She’s grown up now. She’s older. She’s wiser. But that doesn’t stop the past from haunting her. She says she’s scared of ghosts, which reminds me of a line from the Speak Now deluxe track Ours: “Ghosts from your past gonna jump out at me.” Now it’s ghosts from her own past jumping out at her. Never letting her rest; never letting her forget. “Memories feel like weapons.” The memories she has from this time in her life, they’re like weapons her own brain uses against her in moments of vulnerability. She still ruminates on the entire situation, even 12 years later.

It’s no secret the muse of this song is a well-known musician himself. Taylor has stated multiple times how big of a fan she was. That directly plays into the power imbalance between them; he was the idol, and she was the fan. It wasn’t just the age gap that shifted the power. She used to daydream about being with him, constantly wondering what it would be like, but thinking it would probably never happen. How could a rockstar like him ever like someone like her? Someone who had barely gotten started in the industry? But she did find out. And now she wishes she didn’t. She wishes she had forever been left wondering; she wishes he was forever an unanswered question, forever a what-if.

This second verse largely ties into the purity culture of Christianity. In most religions, the expectation is that you save yourself for marriage. Even thinking the wrong sort of way can lead to judgement. “Righteous” is such a strong and specific word, one that is used by many in the church. For individuals in the church, upholding the strict moral code is of most importance. The way she’s describing it, it’s as if this person tainted her. He led her into sin. It reminds me of those 19th century shows like Bridgerton where they talk about young women being “ruined” and “led astray.”

The “they” she lists as whispering about her is likely a reference to the media and general public, but it also reminds me of the way people in church react when scandle breaks out; they can’t outright talk about it, because doing so wouldn’t be righteous, so instead they whisper in secret and gossip over coffee meet-ups, while showing passive aggressive, hardly concealed judgement to your face. It reminds me of a lyric from But Daddy I Love Him, another Taylor song rife with religious imagery: “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best, clutching their pearls, sighing ‘what a mess,’ I just learned these people try and save you ‘cause they hate you.”

Taylor then talks of being “saved from boredom.” Even at 19, she was already bored. Bored with the boys her own age; the ones who make you think romance and chivalry must surely be dead. But then this older guy swooped in. He swooped in and showered her with affection and made her feel special. But then all that disappeared with no notice. All of a sudden, he retreated and acted like he’d never shown interest in Taylor at all; like nothing had ever happened between them. This hot and cold kind of behaviour is all over Dear John: “You paint me a blue sky, then go back and turn it to rain (…) maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love then take it away.” He made her feel like she was his entire world, and then erased it all over night, leaving Taylor to wonder why he didn’t just leave her alone to begin with. In hindsight, she would rather he’d left her to be consumed by boredom.

It’s worth noting that even in the verses, there’s a repetition of the words would’ve and could’ve. They appear on another song on the album as well, on the 3AM track, Bigger Than the Whole Sky: “I’m never gonna meet what could’ve been, would’ve been, what should’ve been you.” I’m not saying there’s necessarily a connection between those two songs, but it’s an interesting parallel.

This small lyric change in the second pre-chorus is, in some ways, the thesis statement of the entire song. “You’re a crisis of my faith.” What a heavy and loaded thing to say to a person. To say that one person rocked your world so deeply that they have caused you to question your religion; your belief in God; your fundamental understanding of how the world works. That is how much this person unmoored her. She wishes she had played it safe, but she didn’t. She took the risk, she danced with the devil, and now she’s facing the fallout.

Again, Taylor is using a popular religious phrase, except this time with a slight twist. Sometimes when a person has died, people will say, “God rest their soul,” as a way of hoping they’re in a better place now. But Taylor says, “God rest my soul.” She wishes her soul could finally experience some rest from reliving this experience. To me, one of the most powerful and heart-wrenching lines of the song is, “I miss who I used to be.” Even now, as a fully grown adult, she still mourns the innocent and optimistic version of herself that existed before he came into her life and ripped that, and her youth, away.

Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? We go through a traumatic experience and we come out the other end of it changed. And no matter how much we try, we can’t go back. We can’t ever get that happier, untouched, undisturbed version of ourselves back. That’s not how life works. But that doesn’t stop Taylor from longing. In the next line, Taylor references a tomb. This is yet another religious reference. The tomb is a crucial symbol in the story of Jesus’ resurrection. After he dies on the cross, his body gets sealed in a tomb. However, when they open up the tomb three days later, Jesus is gone. Just another one of the subtle ways Taylor has incorporated religion into the lyrics; in ways you might not notice at first.

At first, the lyric “stained-glass windows in my mind,” may seem like just another way of weaving in religious imagery, as churches are the most common places you’ll see such windows. However, I do think it’s worth mentioning that the person this song is supposedly about used to live in an old church turned house. While renovated, some of the original designs remain, including stained-glass windows in the kitchen. No wonder religion is so closely connected to this person in her mind.

Regret is a strong theme across both Dear John and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, and that’s stated quite plainly in the line, “I regret you all the time.” It’s clear this is something she still thinks about a lot. She wouldn’t be writing about it 12 years later if she didn’t still feel a strong sense of regret. She doesn’t know why, but she can’t seem to let go. She wishes she could move on, she wishes she could say she’s past it. But she just can’t seem to. Taylor saying this person fights with her in her sleep suggests he still visits her in dreams. When he appears, she tries to argue with him. She demands answers. She never finds them. Even in her sleep, she can’t escape. Even in her sleep, he still haunts her.

This situation is like an open wound that won’t heal over. No matter how much time passes, she can’t seem to heal. She can’t get closure. She says she’s waiting for a sign. A lot of the time when we go through shitty things, we hate it while we’re in it, but once we’re through it, we can usually acknowledge it happened for a reason. We grew as a person because of it; we came out stronger and wiser. Taylor doesn’t feel that way. She can’t find a reason. She doesn’t feel stronger. She’s looking to God for any kind of sign she didn’t suffer for no reason, that there was some kind of divine purpose behind it. But it’s been 12 years now, and she still hasn’t received a sign. Hence her crisis of faith.

Again, Taylor is wondering when the clarity will hit her. When she’ll finally unlock the puzzle and understand what it was all for. Their relationship and spark died long ago, so why is it still lingering so much? Why can’t her mind put it to bed? As she says in Death By a Thousand Cuts: “If the story’s over, why am I still writing pages?” She’s spent years doing everything in her power to remove him from her mind, to rip out those pages from that chapter of her life, to little success.

To me, when she says, “living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts,” she’s talking about songwriting. As I’ve already said, the person this song is about is not only a musician himself, but a songwriter. In fact, he’s known for being one of the most celebrated male songwriters in recent times. It is also well documented that he did not respond warmly to Dear John when it came out. Taylor has stated in interviews she received a very angry email after its release, and John has said in interviews afterwards it was a cheap, lousy, and humiliating thing for her to do (which is bullshit, btw).

Writing songs about him is the only means Taylor has of getting back at this person. It’s the only way she can get some form of revenge. She wants to make him feel even just a shred of the same amount of pain she felt, or maybe even some remorse for his actions. She’s doing that by using his own thing, his own talent, against him — writing songs. Usually he’s the one writing songs about other people, so to have someone write a song about him and paint him in a bad light? Taylor knows this very song is hitting him where it hurts. And you know what? I bet it drives John mad that of the two of them, he’s no longer the most revered songwriter.

Finally, we get the line of all lines. The biggest gut punch of the song, and the album, and maybe even Taylor’s entire discography. “Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.” We surely know at this point from the hundreds upon hundreds of Substack essays on it that girlhood — it’s sacred. Girlhood is such a formative time in a woman’s life. Girlhood contains the bliss and joys and naivety and innocence of youth; of childhood. She was only 19, so while legally an adult, she was still a teenager. As already said, she wasn’t the same young naive girl after this. He stole her youth from her. He stole her naivety. He stole her innocence. The way the line is phrased, “give it back, it was mine first,” it almost sounds like a child throwing a tantrum. Her inner child is lashing out, stomping her foot, demanding he give back what’s rightfully hers. There’s something childish about the way she phrases it, which makes it all the more hard-hitting.

As Taylor repeats the second chorus twice in a row, by the end, she’s practically screaming the words. The line she ends the song on is: “I regret you all the time.” There’s no ending to this song, let alone a happy one. It doesn’t get wrapped up in a nice little bow. She’ll continue to be haunted. She’ll continue to ponder the what-ifs. She’ll continue to regret.

If I can speak my truth, this is undoubtedly one of the most well-written songs on Taylor’s entire discography. Sometimes I don’t listen to it for a while, but when I finally do revisit it, it’s like I’m listening to it for the first time all over again. A gut punch every time. This song is tied with You’re Losing Me as my favourite song from Midnights. Both of those, might I add, aren’t on the standard edition of the album (she always does this. She always puts the best songs among the bonus tracks and thinks we won’t notice, but we do. I still think it’s a travesty right where you left me was shoved to the bonus edition of evermore…).

Hope you’ve enjoyed this, as rambly as it was. If you did enjoy it, feel free to check out my Dear John lyrical analysis. If you have any different interpretations to certain lyrics in this song, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Until next analysis,

- Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, the series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. I thought it high time we looked at another Taylor Swift song. Last time, I analysed what I think is one of her saddest songs — So Long, London. This time, we’re looking at another one of Taylor’s saddest songs. Dear John. This is one of my stan songs. It’s my favourite song from Speak Now and my second favourite Taylor song overall. I am of the unpopular belief that this song is better written and more devestating than All Too Well (the five minute version).

I have never in my life experienced anything even remotely similar to what Taylor is describing in this song. And yet, every time I listen to it, I feel it so deeply. I feel as though I have experienced what she is describing. And that, my friends, is the power of great songwriting. Without further ado, let’s get into the lyrics.

It’s no secret this song is about a relationship Taylor was in with a man who was significantly older than her. More specifically, she was 19, and he was 32, so there was a 12 year age gap. That is important context to know when understanding this song. She’s setting the scene in the opening lines. This person was everything to her. They were her world, to the point where her days revolved around them. I’m reminded of a line from august: “I cancelled my plans just in case you’d call. Back when I was living for the hope of it all.” I’m also reminded of a line from Superman, a song that is rumoured to be about the same guy Dear John is about: “Wishing the flowers were from you. Wishing the card was from you. Wishing the call was from you.”

Taylor is so infactuated with this person that she is willing to sit around all day, just in case they might happen to call or text or want to make plans. She carves out her day based around him. But then the night hits. Anyone who knows anything about Taylor’s discography knows nighttime is a huge motif in her works (she even has an entire album called Midnights). If someone is up by themselves late at night, chances are they’re pacing the room while ruminating in their thoughts and being consumed with anxiety and worry (something we know Taylor loves to do).

She would spend the day with this person, having them fill up her every thought, and then when her head hit the pillow that night, the anxiety would creep in. I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying: the body keeps the score. When we spend time with someone who is bad for us, even if we haven’t realised it yet, the body will reflect it. You know when you spend time with a toxic person, how afterwards you feel really low? Like they’ve brought down your energy and spirit?

A key theme of this song is manipulation. The person Taylor is describing in the lyrics is someone who is highly manipulative; someone who likes to play mind games. This includes gaslighting. Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to make someone question themselves and their own sanity, and that is definitely evidenced in the next line: “Counting my footsteps, praying the floor won’t fall through again.” You get this image of Taylor pacing her room late at night, counting her footsteps as she walks, feeling as if she’s going crazy and desperatley hoping this person won’t do anything else to completely derail her again.

The next line again adds to this idea. Her mother can tell something is wrong. She’s noticed the change in Taylor, so she’s concerned. But Taylor will just keep insisting everything is fine, even though her mother sees right through that lie. But she’s not only trying to convince her mother everything is fine, she’s trying to convince herself. She wants to be with this person, so she’s burying her head in the sand and ignoring all the obvious red flags. But deep down, she knows everything is not fine.

Again, she’s really emphasising how manipulative this person was. One moment, they’d be so warm and loving and caring; they’d paint her skies blue and woo her with romantics. And then the next moment, with no warning whatsoever, they’d be cold and distant and cruel; those same skies would now be pouring down with rain. I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be dealing with a person like that; how much it would wear you down mentally. They can’t be cold all the time, otherwise you’d run for the hills, so they show you just enough love to always keep you staying.

Manipulative people are often hard to decode. You never know when they’re being genuine; you never know if they’re being sincere or if they’re just messing with you. They’re like a riddle that is impossible to solve. To them, everything is a game, with winners and losers. When Taylor was with this person, she felt like she was living in their little game, except it was impossible for her to win, because they would change the rules of the game constantly. She couldn’t win. No matter what she did, she would always lose.

She reiterates again how hot and cold this person was. She would be apprehensive every night before he’d call because she’d never know which version of him she was going to face: was she going to get the version of him that was warm and caring, or the version of him that was cold and distant? Or would she get one of the other varying, confusing versions of him? Every time they’d talk, it would be like talking to a completely different person. She could never make sense of him. She could never decode him.

The last line of the verse is her letting both him and the audience know she’s finally had enough. She is not going to subject herself to these mental gymnastics any longer. She’s done with the manipulation, and the gaslighting, and the mind games. She’s reached her breaking point. She no longer has to worry about which version of him she’s going to get on the phone, because she’s not picking up the phone anymore. And if he wants to know why she stopped picking up… Well, the answer is in this song.

Hindsight is 20/20. Now that it’s all said and done, Taylor realises how much he played her for a fool. “Dear John” may sound really obvious and direct considering who the song is about, but it has a clever double meaning. A “Dear John” letter is a letter written by a woman to their lover letting them know their relationship is over. The term was popularised in WWII, when many soldiers off fighting would get letters from their partner back home letting them know they’d found someone else. This is what Taylor is doing. She is writing this person a letter in the form of a song to let them know their relationship is over, and this is why.

For the first time, she brings up her age. She scolds him for messing with her when she was so much younger than him. The next line, “the girl in the dress cried the whole way home,” really emphasises how young she was. She doesn’t refer to herself as a woman, she refers to herself as a girl. She was just a girl. He was a man, and she was the girl he sent home crying back to her parents. “Girl in the dress” symbolises her innocence.

Even after scolding him, the chorus still ends with, “I should’ve known.” She blames herself. All the signs were right there, and she ignored them. Everyone warned her he was bad news, and she didn’t listen. She was so willfully ignorant that she can’t help but partially blame herself. Throughout the entire song, you can feel how angry and disappointed Taylor is with herself. She thought she was smarter than that. He showed her she wasn’t as clever as she thought she was.

When listening to Taylor’s earlier music, it’s apparent that when she was younger, she tended to see the best in people. She was an optimist, even to her own detriment. When Taylor met John, even though everyone around her warned her against him, she was determined to ignore the rough sides of him, and focus only on the good in him. Because that was simply the kind of person she was. He took advantage of that; he took advanatge of her naivety. He saw this young girl full of innocence and optimism and messed with her simply because he knew he could. And again, it is only in hindsight Taylor realises how foolish she was; how foolish she was for trusting this person and welcoming them with open arms, when she should’ve had her guard up. She’s again blaming herself.

But then she redirects her anger and turns it back on him. Maybe it’s not her optimism to blame, maybe it’s his sick and twisted need to mess with people; to shower them with love and then just as easily take it away. I’m reminded of a lyric from Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve: “Lord, you made me feel important, and then you tried to erase us.” One minute, he would show her so much attention and affection like she was his entire world, and then the next minute, it was like she didn’t even exist, like he didn’t care about her at all. She’s again reiterating how hot and cold he was; how he could switch at the drop of a pin.

The next line, “you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don’t understand,” is a common thing with toxic, manipulative people. They always have a long list of ex-friends and ex-lovers who cut them out, and somehow, it’s never their fault. They never see the pattern of them being the problem every time, the other person is always the problem. They don’t understand that it’s not normal to have so many people decide they don’t want to be around you anymore. Will this trigger any inward reflection? Of course not. Taylor knows she will just become another name on this person’s list. He will insist she was the problem. She just didn’t understand him, and that’s her own fault.

Taylor regrets not listening to the people who warned her. She thought all these people just didn’t know John the way she did. They hadn’t seen the soft side of him. She had. Sure, he had made some mistakes in the past, but haven’t we all? These were the excuses she told herself. The Speak Now deluxe track Ours is an interesting song, because it was written by Taylor when she was still blinded by her love for this person. She scoffs at the people warning her, saying: “Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves, they’ll judge it like they know about me and you (…) don’t you worry your pretty little mind, people throw rocks at things that shine.”

She even acknowledges John’s spotty past and brushes it off; “Ghosts from your past gonna jump out at me, lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles, but I don’t care, ‘cause right now you’re mine.” She also speaks of John’s manipulative nature in an endearing light; “I love the riddles that you speak.” It’s funny how everything can seem so clear and obvious only in hindsight.

In Ours, Taylor says: “It’s not theirs to speculate if it’s wrong, and your hands are tough but they are where my belong in.” But now, she’s saying: “I see it all now, it was wrong.” She’s realised they were right all along. It wasn’t right for a 32 year old man to date a 19 year old girl. Instead of just saying she was too young, she specifically says she was 19. She wants to really drive home and emphasise how young she was. She was still a teenager, she wasn’t even in her 20s yet. She realises now that he never actually cared about her, he just wanted someone to be a pawn in his game. She genuinely loved him, and all he ever did was mess with her.

Taylor was a different person after this. There is who she was before this person came into her life, and there is who she was afterwards. Emotional abuse is often overlooked and underestimated, but make no mistake, it can leave a huge psychological impact on a person. Especially if your brain is still developing, as it was during this time.

Every time Taylor would vent her frustrations and feelings to John, he’d apologise, and he was good at making it seem like he was genuinely sorry, but he never actually meant it. In the beginning, Taylor would buy it. She would believe he was genuinely sorry which is why she’d keep giving him more chances. But she sees now he was just playing with her. He was also good at keeping the lines blurry; he would never be direct with her about what they were to each other or how he really felt about her. Taylor was never totally sure where she stood with him.

As has already been estabolished, John liked to play mental games with people. Even when Taylor would pass every test and be a step ahead, John would never be impressed. As Taylor said earlier, it was a chess game, but he changed the rules every day. She could never win with him. This person Taylor is referring to has a bit of a repuation when it comes to their dating life. Taylor has seen what happened to the other women who have dated him. He drained the life out of them; he killed their spark. Taylor was headed towards the same fate. He almost had her. But she stole his matches before he could burn her. She escaped.

One of the most powerful lines of the song is, “I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town.” Taylor sees it now, clear as day: she will go on. She will go on to thrive, she will continue to achieve so much in her career, and John… he will remain a pathetic little man who got a power trip out of messing with a 19-year-old girl.

In the final moments of the song, Taylor changes the line, “I should’ve known,” to “You should’ve known.” No longer is she blaming herself. The girl in the dress he sent home crying has written him a song. He should’ve known that if he was going to mess with her, she wouldn’t hold back. He should’ve known she would write the most scathing song she could exposing him as the manipulative asshole he is. And with that, she gets the last word.

With this song, she’s reclaiming the power he took from her.

I will forever believe this is one of the most heart-wrenching songs on Taylor’s entire discography. But it’s also one of the most well-written. If you’ve enjoyed this, make sure to look out for my upcoming analysis of Dear John’s sister song, Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve.

See you in the next analysis,

Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, a series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. In part 1, I looked at So Long, London by Taylor Swift. In part 2, I analysed Burn from the musical Hamilton. For this one, I thought it high time to shift to the person who is probably my second favourite artist after Taylor Swift: Lorde. The song I’ve chosen, Ribs, is on her debut 2013 album, Pure Heroine. This song was a grower for me, but I now consider it to be one of my all-time favourites.

This song, to put it in the most simple way, is a song about growing up. It is a song about struggling to accept that childhood is almost over. Which is why I think this song is so universally loved, because that is a feeling most if not everyone can relate to. Lorde was 16 when she wrote Ribs, so she was at that weird age when you’re mostly still in the realm of childhood, but you have one foot in the door of adulthood. This is what the late-teen years are all about; you’re trusted to do adult things like driving, working, and make some of your own decisions, yet everyone still treats you like a kid.

Once at a concert, Lorde told the crowd she wrote this song after throwing a party with her sister and best friend. After the party was over and they all went to bed, Lorde found that she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that throwing a party made her feel like an adult; it felt like a grown up thing to do. She said, “it scared me to think of having one foot in that adult world, because who says we can go back? Like, can you be a kid and still do adult things? Do you have to leave that world behind? And this is the thought that keeps me up at night all the time.”

The opening lines of the song set the scene. “The drink you spilt all over me,” creates imagery of a party setting. Lover’s Spit is a real song by a band called Broken Social Scene, and Lorde mentioning that the song has just been left on repeat adds to the atmosphere of a party that is coming to a close. It’s late, the crowds are gone, the people left behind are packing up and cleaning up spilled drinks, meanwhile the same song is playing on loop over and over and nobody can be bothered to turn it off.

Lorde says her mum and dad let her stay home, and it’s almost as if she’s in disbelief about it. She can’t believe she’s old enough now that she’s allowed to stay home on her own. Everyone remembers the thrill of being allowed to stay home alone for the first time as a kid. There’s something exhilarating about it; it’s the first taste of independence for most teenagers. While this is something Lorde should be excited about, she follows it up with, “it drives you crazy getting old,” suggesting she’s unsure how to feel about this newfound freedom.

Most kids spend their childhoods wishing they could be adults. They want to be an adult so they can make all their own decisions instead of having someone tell them what to do all the time. They want to be an adult so they can eat as much junk food as they want, play video games whenever they want, go to bed as late as they want. But as soon as we become adults, we wish we could go back to being kids. We long for the simplicity of childhood; to go back to a time when we had no responsibilities or stress. We wish we could go back to a time when someone else made our decisions for us. Back to a time when we didn’t have to worry about money or work or taxes or car insurance. The freedom of independence is exhilarating at first, but it loses its novelty quickly.

The ‘we’ Lorde talks to in the second stanza is presumably the same friend she talks to later in the bridge. She talks about how easily she and this person can talk with each other; how everything feels so much lighter when she’s with this person. When they’re together, she no longer worries about the ever-looming adulthood; instead she’s carefree like a kid again. She can’t help but wish she could feel like that all the time.

There is a lot of repetition in this song and we see it first here. The first chorus is just Lorde singing the first section of the verse again, but she sings it differently. She sings it at a much quicker pace and with a sense of urgency this time. This could be a representation of how quick growing up feels, or how Lorde feels as if her childhood is slipping through her fingers so she’s desperately trying to hold on. I’ve also seen people compare this section to a quickened heartbeat, which could be a representation of the anxiety Lorde is feeling throughout the song.

The second verse parallels the first by following the same structure and rhyme scheme. She starts this verse off by saying, “this dream isn’t feeling sweet,” and I can’t help but connect that line to the idea of the “teenage dream.” The term teenage dream refers to the way the teen years are romanticised. The teenage experience, from high school to young love, is heavily documented across movies, tv shows, books, and music. Kids and preteens grow up absorbing all this, and then build up high expectations for their teen years in their heads. Because of this romanticisation, once kids actually become teenagers, there’s often a sense of underwhelm.

However, kids are not the only ones who romanticise the teen years. Adults do too. Many adults wish they could go back to their youthful teen years. It seems as if everyone wants to be teenagers expect teenagers. The teen years are known for being a time of emotional turbulence, growth, and discovery; so it’s easy to understand why this is a period of life so often romanticised.

The idea of the teenage dream is also well-known in pop music. There’s Katy Perry’s famous song (and album) Teenage Dream: “You make me feel like I’m living a teenage dream.” Olivia Rodrigo also touches on it in her song Brutal: “I’m so sick of 17, where’s my fucking teenage dream?” Lorde was likely feeling a similar way, in that her teen years weren’t meeting the expectation she’d dreamed of as a kid. This lyric is also a play on words of the term, “sweet dreams,” which is a phrase parents often say to their children, again tying in the theme of childhood.

“We’re reeling through the midnight streets,” again adds to the atmosphere of the song. This is a story taking place in the middle of the night. Lorde and her friends have just left a party and are tipsily walking through the dark suburb lit up by streetlights, meanwhile she can’t stop her head from reeling because childhood is over. We then get the two most vulnerable lines in the entire song: “I’ve never felt more alone. It feels so scary getting old.” Even though everybody goes through it, growing up can often be an isolating and terrifying experience. Lorde is opening up to the listener and straight-forwardly admitting she’s scared to grow up.

Kids see the world in a very different way to how adults do. To kids, everything is black and white. Everything is either good or bad. For adults, everything is varying shades of grey. Again, Lorde is longing for the simplicity of childhood. She wishes she could get back that black and white way of thinking; back when everything was simple and straight-forward. Back when she had no resposibilities. Back when her biggest concern was who she was going to play with on the schoolyard that day, not what she’s going to do with her life after school finishes.

The ending of the stanza where Lorde just repeats “I want them” again and again mimics a kid throwing a tantrum. The cadence in which she sings makes it sound as if she’s a kid in a grocery store stomping her foot and pleading with her parents to buy her candy. I’m reminded of the Taylor Swift song seven from her album folklore, which is a song she wrote from the perspective of a seven year old. There’s a moment in the song where she says: “Before I learned civility, I used to scream ferociously anytime I wanted.” She expands on this lyric in the Long Pond Studio Sessions, where she says whenever she sees a kid throwing a tantrum in public because they didn’t get what they wanted, she can’t help but think at what point growing up is that something we grow out of. Kids let their emotions out freely, but at some point growing up, we learn to suppress our emotions. Lorde is so upset about growing up that she wants to throw a tantrum, but she can’t do that, because she’s not a kid anymore.

With the way the bridge is set out, with a voice in the background repeating every line Lorde says, it’s almost as if the friend she’s talking to is singing back to her. The things she’s saying also sound like things a kid would say. It reminds me of one of those clapping chants you’d do in school like “apple on a stick.” Lorde is reminiscing on the innocence of childhood friendships — having sleepovers, laughing until your ribs are sore, pinky swearing you’ll be friends forever.

Despite the sweet nostaglia of the bridge, the song ends with the line, “but that will never be enough,” playing on loop. No matter how much time Lorde spends reminiscing on childhood, she’ll never get it back. it’ll never be enough.

It wasn’t until I dived into the lyrics that I realised just how many layers there are to this song. Like I said, this is a fan favourite amongst Lorde fans, and I completely understand why. Being scared of growing up is such a universal feeling, so is wanting to get childhood back. I know I sure as hell relate to this song.

If you have any differing interpretations to this song or anything you feel like I missed, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Until the next analysis,

- Lilly :)

Welcome or welcome back to Analysis of a Song, a series where I pick a song and break down the lyrics section by section. Last time, we analysed So Long, London by Taylor Swift. This time, I decided to break down my favourite song from my favourite musical. I’ve been a Hamilton fan since 2019 (and I saw it live in 2022). Burn is one of the few solo songs of the musical; it’s an emotional ballad sung by my favourite character, Eliza (originally played by the talented Phillipa Soo). A quick warning: this analysis will contain spoilers for Hamilton.

It’s important to know the context that leads up to this song. At the beginning of Act 2, the audience watches as Alexander has an affair with Maria Reynolds while Eliza, their son Phillip, and Eliza’s sister Angelica are away. After Jefferson, Madison, and Burr accuse Alexander of embezzlement, in order to clear his name, he published a document called “The Reynolds Pamphlet,” detailing his affair for public consumption. This is a real document that Alexander Hamilton published in 1797.

The Reynolds Pamphlet is one of the most chaotic songs of the musical, which makes the transition into Burn even more jarring. From the moment the audience discovers Alexander’s cheating in Say No to This, all they want is to see Eliza’s reaction to her husband’s infidelity. They’ve been anticipating this moment. So the fact that when we finally get to see Eliza’s response she’s the only actor on stage (the only song of the musical where this is the case), just makes it all the more impactful.

She begins with discussing the letters Alexander wrote to her when they first met. The letters they wrote back and forth to each other are referenced in the song Helpless, “one week later, I’m writing a letter nightly. Now my life gets better every letter that you write me.” It’s apparent in Helpless how enamoured Eliza was with Alexander, but now as she’s going back and re-reading these letters knowing what she knows now, she’s questioning everything. The progression of “I knew you were mine” to “you said you were mine” to “I thought you were mine” perfectly demonstrates how Eliza is no longer sure of what she thought she knew to be true and is now reassessing her entire marriage.

Eliza then reflects on something Angelica said when Alexander first started sending letters. Angelica warns Eliza to be careful, as Alexander is the type of person who will “do what it takes to survive.” It is well estabolished throughout the story that Alexander is an ambitious, determined, and assertive person; but in addition to these positive traits, he’s also incredibly reckless and impulsive. As he says to Angelica in Satisfied, “You’re like me, I’m never satisfied. I have never been satisfied,” referring to how nothing in life will ever be good enough for him; he will always want more. Alexander is obsessed with his legacy, to the point where he will do anything to protect it — including destroying his own marriage and political career.

Angelica knew this about Alexander because she too is of a similar disposition. It’s clear from the way Eliza speaks of Angelica in this song that she deeply values and respects Angelica’s opinion.

Another key characteristic of Alexander’s character is that he has a way with words. He’s articulate, persuasive, and quick-witted. He uses his words to get things he wants; as he says in Hurricane: “I wrote Eliza love letters until she fell.” The way Eliza speaks of the effect these letters had on her is almost like she was being entranced. With every word, every sentence, every paragraph she read, the further in love with Alexander she fell.

She says, “your sentences left me defenceless,” because she let her guard down. She was completely blinded by love; Alexander’s sappy, flowery language clouded her judgement. This is evident enough in the song in which Eliza recites her love story with Alexander being called Helpless; “Boy, you got me helpless. Look into your eyes and the sky’s the limit, I’m helpless.” She compares Alexander’s letters to him building palaces and cathedrals for her, because he made her feel special. He made her feel as if Eliza was the only woman he had eyes for; which is reinforced in the things he would say to her, like telling her, “my love for you is never in doubt,” in Helpless, and deeming her, “best of wives and best of women,” in his last conversation with her before his death.

But we as an audience know that Eliza was far from the only woman Alexander had eyes for. Not only because of his affair with Maria Reynolds, but also because of his constant flirting with Angelica (and let’s be honest, there was definietly something going on between him and John Laurens. I guess what I’m saying is Alexander Hamilton was a total slut). The fact that it was all lies is what makes the betrayal run even deeper for Eliza.

There is a lot of parallelism in this song, and we get the first instance of it here. In the first section, Eliza states, “I saved every letter you wrote me,” now she’s changed it to, “I’m re-reading the letters you wrote me.” She’s re-reading the letters because she’s desperate for any clue, no matter how small, that she didn’t make it all up; proof that Alexander did love her too. But she’s also desperate for answers; answers to why Alexander betrayed her, any warning sign this was coming.

“When you were mine, the world seemed to burn.” When Eliza was with Alexander, nothing else mattered. It was just her, Alexander, and the love and passion they had for each other.

Essentially everyone who’s seen this musical agrees that what Alexander did to Eliza was horrible, but less so from the fact that he cheated on his wife on multiple occasions and hid it from her for years, but more so that he wrote an in-depth piece about it and published it publicly for all the world to read. I cannot imagine how humiliating an experience that must be; not only to have everyone you know be aware that your husband cheated on you, but for them to know all the details because he told them.

He even attatched the private letters Maria Reynolds wrote him when he published it (it’s not just a line in the song, he actually did that). Publishing the Reynolds Pamphlet is by far the most selfish thing Alexander does throughout the entire musical. It was through and through an act of self-preservation; or, as he describes it to Angelica in the cut song Congratulations, “it was an act of political sacrifice.”

But Eliza doesn’t just say, “in clearing your name, you have ruined my life,” she says, “in clearing your name, you have ruined our lives.” Eliza wasn’t the only one who suffered the fallout, their entire family did. In real life, Alexander and Eliza had 8 children in total; in the musical, we only get to meet their first-born, Phillip, and in the story, we see him also struggle to accept what his father did. But Alexander didn’t just ruin his family’s lives, in a way, he also ruined his own life. Publishing the Reynolds Pamphlet did serious damage to his political career; as Jefferson so eloquently puts it in his taunts, “Well, he never gonna be president now.”

We then get more parallelism, with Eliza yet again reflecting on something Angelica said. Angelica compares Alexander to the famous figure in Greek mythology, Icarus. The story goes that while Icarus and his father Daedalus were trying to escape prison wearing wings made out of wax, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun because it would melt his wings. Icarus disobeyed his father and flew up high anyway. As Daedalus predicted, Icarus’s wings melted, thus causing him to fall and drown. The story is where the saying “don’t fly too close to the sun” comes from. It’s a story that warns against getting too greedy, ambitious, or prideful.

As I mentioned earlier, ambition is a key aspect of Alexander’s character. No matter how much he achieves, he continually wants more. Eliza and the life he had built wasn’t enough, he needed more. Maria was more. But he got too greedy and flew too close to the sun, and now he is facing the reprecussions of his actions. I absolutely love the way Phillipa delivers this line; she says it with so much shame in her voice, like she can’t bear that Angelica is expressing disappointment in her.

Yet again, we get more parallelism. It’s the same structure as the third stanza, when Eliza reflects on the impact Alexander’s words had on her: “You and your words flooded my senses. Your sentences left me defenceless.” Now, the same structure is being used to show Eliza’s feelings upon re-reading the letters: “You and your words, obsessed with your legacy. Your sentences bordered on senseless.”

Now that she’s no longer blinded by love, Eliza is able to re-read the old letters without the veil of ignorance and can see plain as day the bad qualities of Alexander she previously ignored. She sees now how self-obsessed and reckless he is. She sees now how rambling, overly wordy, and lacking in common sense his writing can be. This was a criticism Alexander was not unaquainted with; in Cabinet Battle #1, Jefferson mocks Alexander’s excessive wordiness; “this financial plan is an outrageous demand and it’s too many damn pages for any man to understand.” Additionally, Burr always warned Alexander agaisnt this habit, repeatedly telling him to, “talk less, smile more.” Alexander himself even acknowledges this habit in Non-Stop: “I know I talk too much, I’m abrasive.” But I can imagine this insult he’s familiar with would hurt even more coming from his usually patient and kind-tempered wife.

Eliza also sees now how paranoid Alexander is over his reputation and the way others perceive him. He constantly feels the need to defend himself to anyone he feels misperceives him. When John Adams publicly insulted him, Alexander came back even stronger, releasing a letter disgracing him. When Alexander was accused of embezzlement and thereby abusing his power as treasury secretary, he came back with the Reynolds Pamplet. In Congratulations, Angelica calls him out on this, saying: “So scared of what your enemies will do to you, you’re the only enemy you ever seem to lose to. You know why Jefferson can do what he wants? He doesn’t dignify schoolyard taunts with a response.” Eliza even lectures him on this in another cut song, Let it Go: “You don’t have to bring a gun to a knife fight.”

A core aspect of the musical is Alexander’s obsession with legacy. Everything he does, he does with the intention of preserving his legacy (I talk about this more in-detail in a past essay). This is a major difference in how Alexander and Eliza think. In Act 1, on a song called That Would Be Enough, Eliza says to Alexander, “we don’t need a legacy. We don’t need money,” in an attempt to highlight to him that his priorities should be the here and now — his wife and his family — not chasing material wealth and being remembered in history.

I’m sorry, but the literature girlie in me couldn’t help but geek out over the use of alliteration and assonance in this part:

You and your words, obsessed with your legacy
Your sentences bordered on senseless
And you are paranoid in every paragraph how they’d perceive you

Eliza then finishes this stanza by repeating the word: “you, you, you.” This can be interpreted in multiple different ways. I think in part it is Eliza again mocking how self-absorbed and selfish Alexander is, but she delivers the line with so much pain that it makes me think she’s also in part referring to how much Alexander has taken up her own mind. In a way, she too is just as infactuated with Alexander as he is with himself. It’s also worth noting the use of second person throughout this entire song; the fact that Eliza is adressing Alexander directly instead of referring to him in third person makes it more personal, intimate, and all the more scathing.

At this point in the song, Eliza takes the letters she’s holding and begins to burn them with a lantern. This is based on something that actually happened. While she didn’t burn all of the letters as she does in the play, Eliza really did destroy the majority of her letter exchanges between Alexander and herself, and her reasoning for doing this is unknown by historians. In Hamilton: The Revolution, Lin Manuel Miranda says: “This gave me enormous freedom, but also gave me a dramatic action. What if Eliza’s reaction is to erase her reaction from memory?” (p. 238).

Eliza says, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative.” It’s a call-back to something Eliza says to Alexander in That Would Be Enough; “Let me be a part of the narrative, in the story they will write someday. Let this moment be the first chapter where you decide to stay.” Eliza no longer wants to be part of this narrative, but this time, she’s not asking for Alexander’s permission. She’s erasing herself from Alexander’s narrative without letting him have a say, and in doing so, she’s taking back control of her own narrative. However, by the final song of the musical, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, Eliza reverses this, saying: “I put myself back in the narrative,” once she’s forgiven Alexander and devotes the rest of her life to preserving his legacy.

There is most definitely a mocking undertone to, “let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart.” Eliza knows there is nothing more important to Alexander than his legacy and being remembered in history instead of fading into oblivion, and by burning the letters he wrote to her, she is damaging his legacy and erasing a part of his story. She knows that is the best way she can hurt him. As Jeremy McCarter says in Hamilton: The Revolution; “What retribution could be crueller and more fitting? She burned the letters he had written to her — she destroyed his words” (p. 228).

As the song progresses, Eliza gradually gets angrier and angrier, which is shocking for the audience to see, because up until this point, all that we’ve seen of Eliza is a character that is patient, empathetic, and a calming presence among the other chaotic characters. That’s what makes it so impactful when we finally get to see Eliza lash out in this way. She scorns Alexander for invading her privacy and letting the world in on something that wasn’t theirs, and because of this, he doesn’t have the right to those things either anymore.

She doesn’t just say that he’s losing the right to her heart, she specifies that he’s forfeiting; he’s only losing her heart because of his own wrongdoings. She knows in the future historians may use her and Alexander’s back and forth letters to redeem him and paint him in a better light because of how affectionately they spoke to one another. But Eliza knows Alexander doesn’t deserve redemption, so she’s destroying the evidence.

The use of the word “mine” is a motif in Eliza’s relationship with Alexander. In Helpless, she says: “Grab my sister and whisper, ‘yo, this one’s mine.’” In fact, the very first demo of Helpless was called, “This One’s Mine.” She also references it multiple times in this song: “I knew you were mine, you said you were mine, I thought you were mine,” and, “when you were mine, the world seemed to burn.” But now, she’s letting go. Now Alexander will only be left with the memories of when he belonged to Eliza.

After the build up comes to an end, we come back down and all becomes quiet and still as Eliza delivers the final and most scathing line of the entire song- “I hope that you burn.”

As I said earlier, Hamilton is easily my favourite musical, and Burn my favourite song from it. This song has always been my favourite because through both the lyrics and the vocal performance, I can feel Eliza’s emotions so clearly. It’s such a well-written ballad and one of the most pivotal and unforgettable moments in the show.

If you have any other different interpretations to this song, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I’ll see you in the next analysis.

- Lilly :)

Welcome to the first post of a new series I’m starting — Analysis of a Song. I love analysing lyrics because it helps me form a better understanding of songs, so in each part, I’m gong to select a song to break down section by section.

For my first analysis, I knew I wanted to start with a Taylor Swift song. But I was stumped with where to start because there’s so many brilliantly written songs to choose from. In the end, I decided on a song that I have been obsessed with for the last four months. So Long, London. It’s my favourite song on the standard edition of Tortured Poets, my second favourite overall; second only to I Hate it Here (a song which I’ve already written a post about). I wholeheartedly believe So Long, London is one of the saddest songs on Taylor’s discography, and yet it is already criminally underrated. There’s so much to unpack in these lyrics, so let’s jump right into it.

I have seen that opening line interpreted in so many different ways. One user on Reddit theorised that it could be a reference to old folk tales, in which fairies would use lights to lure travellers into danger; suggesting that Taylor thought she was headed towards a relationship of safety and security, but really, she was trapping herself into a relationship that would slowly drain the life from her. Others have drawn a connection to the line, “We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘till January,” from the 2019 song Lover, meaning that the home she and her partner had built together was fading and slipping from her grip.

Nevertheless, she tried her hardest to remain calm. Listeners have connected that line to the saying, “keep calm and carry on,” which is famously a very British saying. Essentially what she’s saying in this first stanza is that she was stuck in a relationship where she was the only person putting in any effort. She uses the word weight, which implies this task of carrying her relationship was weighing her down emotionally. The description in this passage is incredible; you see the imagery of Taylor carrying her and her partner up a hill in the pouring rain and struggling under his weight- the alliteration of “spine split” also adds to the image of the pain she felt. It’s a great metaphor.

He kept distancing himself from her emotionally, and each time, she would have to reel him back in. She was desperately doing everything she could to keep this relationship from falling apart. This isn’t the first time Taylor has referenced her partner being emotionally distant, in the 2021 song Renegade, she says: “Open the blinds, let me see your face. You wouldn’t be the first renegade to need somebody.”

For so long, she was the only one putting any effort into this relationship. But as time went on, she eventually gave in. She stopped trying as well. She stopped trying to make him laugh; she stopped trying to make him smile. She stopped trying to make him fall back in love with her. I love the metaphor of “stopped trying to drill the safe,” because he was like a guarded safe with how much he kept his thoughts and feelings close to his chest, and, as she says in Renegade, she was tired of trying to force him to open up to her and be vulnerable with her. I think tired is the perfect word to describe Taylor’s mood in this first verse, because you can tell how tired she was of being in a one-sided relationship with someone who constantly had walls up around her.

She’s essentially asking this person: How long did you think I was going to be able to put up with it? How long did you think I was going to be able to willingly stay in a miserable situation before I physically could not take it anymore? I love the melodrama of the line, “oh, the tragedy.” It feels very Shakespearean, mostly because Shakespeare is often strongly associated with tragedy. It feels like an appropriate word to describe the situation, because the relationship Taylor’s describing is very tragic. Throughout the beginning of this relationship, Taylor thought she had finally found her person; her soulmate; the love she was going to grow old with. But as the years went by, this relationship started to slowly drain the life out of her and she felt herself gradually falling out of love with them, until it got to the point where she had to let go of this person in order to save herself. That is undeniably a tragic love story.

Even though this is only a two-line chorus, there is so much to unpack. It’s common knowledge among fans that for the person discussed in this song, Taylor essentially relocated to London. This is a big deal because Taylor is so American. Being American is a major part of her brand and identity as an artist; her documentary is literally called Miss Americana. So the fact that she moved away from America - from her family, her friends, her home - just for a relationship shows how serious and committed she was. During this time, Taylor became very enriched in British culture. She started using a lot of British phrases and even pronouncing certain words the British way. Through this process, her partner and London became entwined and inseparable in her mind.

The chorus draws parallels to the 2019 song London Boy; “They say home is where the heart is, but god, I love the English. You know I love a London boy.” In So Long, London, she’s saying goodbye to London because it’s a city that is now forever tainted for her. But she’s not just saying goodbye to London. She’s personifying her partner as London and therefore saying goodbye to him as well.

The next line, “you’ll find someone,” also carries so much weight. It makes me think of five different lyrics from other songs. Firstly, So it Goes…, “I’m so chill but you make me jealous.” The same idea is expressed on Lover, “I’m highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you,” and Hits Different, “I pictured you with other girls in love, then threw up on the street.” I’m also reminded of Cornelia Street, “I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends (…) and baby, I’m so terrified of if you ever walk away,” and Don’t Blame Me, “if you walk away, I’d beg you on my knees to stay.”

All these lyrics demonstrate how possessive Taylor was and how scared she was of this person leaving her. To go from that to, “you’ll find someone,” shows how much she’s changed; how much her feelings towards this person have changed. Yes, she’s sad. Yes, she’s angry. But there’s also acceptance. She’s accepting that she and this person just weren’t meant to be.

Again, Taylor is referencing the fact that she completely uprooted her entire life to move to London for this person. That was a huge sacrifice she made. She didn’t make that sacrifice just for him to take her for granted and not appreciate her. Taylor didn’t go all-in on their relationship just for him to give her nothing in return. She compromised her lifestyle not just in moving to London, but also by reducing how much she went out in public and how open she was about her life as a public figure.

In the next line, a mysterious “she” is brought into the equation. At multiple moments throughout the album, it’s implied that there was an “other woman.” In Fortnight, Taylor says, “my husband is cheating, I want to kill him.” In Fresh Out the Slammer, she says, “he was with her in dreams.” I’m inclined to believe that the “she” in question is the same woman referred to in the other songs. There’s been multiple different interpretations of that line. I’ve seen some suggest that the “club” in question is actually a metaphor for her partner’s career, considering this person she dated wasn’t particularly well-known until he was linked with Taylor, hence her “founding the club she’s heard great things about.”

Or you could interpret this line as her reminding her partner that she’s not just Taylor — she’s Taylor Swift. Before she started dating this person, she was constantly out and about; living in New York, throwing A-List parties, going to the most expensive clubs and restaurants in the city. I see this image of her partner coming home and going on and on about this great club this “other woman” heard about, and Taylor getting annoyed because years ago, she practically founded this club she’s raving about. To me, this lyric is dripping with spite.

It’s rumoured that Taylor and her partner lived together near an area of London called Hampstead Heath. She appears to reference this place in the next line, “I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath.” This line gives me the devastating imagery of her partner going out to the so-called great club with his friends, including this “she,” while Taylor stays up in a big, dark, empty house, waiting by the fireplace for him to get home. And while she’s left all alone at the house, she can’t help but think yet again of how much she sacrificed in moving to London; leaving all she knew, just to be left behind at the house.

It’s important to notice she says house and not home. She doesn’t say, “you left me at home by the Heath,” she says, “you left me at the house by the Heath.” There’s a big difference between those two words. It indicates that while she lived at this house with her partner in London, it wasn’t her home. But this contradicts how she once felt. In Lover, she says: “Can I go where you go? (…) Take me out, then take me home.” In the 2020 song long story short, she says: “He feels like home.” But then a mere two years later, in the song Dear Reader, she says: “If you knew where I was walking - to a house not a home all alone ‘cause nobody’s there.” So at one point, yes, this person felt like home to her. But somewhere along the line, that changed.

When she mentions CPR, I’m reminded of the song You’re Losing Me. That song is all about a relationship slowly dying, which is why throughout it, you can hear a heartbeat beating in the background. As discussed in the first verse, for a long time, Taylor was holding out hope that she could salvage their relationship. But eventually, she accepted that their relationship was dead, and no matter what she did, she could never bring it back to life. The spark that had once been between them had gone out.

The final line in the second verse is perhaps the most devastating line in the entire song. We know Taylor got into this relationship when she was 26. By the time the relationship ended, she was 33. She wasted the last few years of her 20s in a dead-end relationship. When you’re a woman, your 20s are sacred. Once you reach your late 20s, that’s when you start to hear all these societal pressures of your “biological clock” and settling down before you’re 30. Taylor has spoken before about the way society tends to discard women as soon as they hit 30, especially in the entertainment industry. So by 26, she was definitely starting to look for a more permanent relationship.

The diction here is really important, because she doesn’t say, “I’m pissed off I gave you all that youth for free,” she says, “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.” It’s almost accusatory, like she’s saying to him: Why did you waste my time? Why did you let me waste the last few years of my 20s on you? Why did you let me stay in a relationship with you for all those years when you knew you were never going to marry me? She’s pissed off he wasted her time.

She says that she gave him her youth for free, because she never got anything in exchange for doing so. She never got a ring, and she never got a baby. Instead, she gave away 6 years of her youth for absolutely nothing in return. And the thing about youth is that once its gone, you can never get it back. As she said in her 2023 TIME Person of the Year interview; “Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back.”

She uses ‘so long’ in a different way here. In the first chorus, she says “so long” to mean goodbye. In this chorus, she uses “so long” to mean a long period of time. The end of the second verse trails right into the chorus; she let this person waste her youth for so long.

The next line, “stitches undone,” makes me think of a lyric from the 2017 song King of My Heart, in which she says: “is this the end of all the endings? My broken bones are mending.” A similar idea is expressed later in the album on the song Call it What You Want, “windows boarded up after the storm, he built a fire just to keep me warm.” I’m then reminded of invisible string, in which she says, “something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire.” This is then referenced in tolerate it: “Where’s that man who’d throw blankets over my barbed wire?” All these lyrics in relation to this song convey the same message. This person once healed her, but now that’s all unravelling. She is no longer healed. The stitches have come undone.

For me, I interpret the line “two graves, one gun” to mean that they were both killing each other. The longer they both stayed in the relationship, the more harm and damage they caused each other emotionally. I’m reminded again of the song Renegade; “You fire off missiles ‘cause you hate yourself, but do you know you’re demolishing me? And then you squeeze my hand as I’m about to leave. Are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these? And let all your damage damage me?”

At the end of the first chorus, she says, “You’ll find someone.” She’s now changed that to- “I’ll find someone.” It shows that even though she’s upset, this relationship hasn’t completely destroyed her. It hasn’t made her lose her faith in love. She knows she’ll love again.

As she was leaving, her partner accused her of jumping ship; of giving up on them just because the going got tough. But it’s not that Taylor gave up, it’s that she finally gave in. Staying in the relationship was killing her; she had to let go in order to save herself. She spent years holding on as tight as she could, but she couldn’t hold on any longer.

I mentioned earlier that Taylor could sense her partner slowly falling out of love with her, but she could also feel him slowly starting to resent her. She could feel it, but it was subtle; it was quiet. You can always tell when someone is starting to get sick of you; they’ll discreetly roll their eyes or sigh when you talk, they’ll seem annoyed by even the littlest things you do, they’ll stop showing you as much attention. I’m sure Taylor was probably picking up on a million little signals like those that warned her this person was gradually starting to resent her. But she was in denial about it, so she continued to hold on for dear life. Resentment is such a complicated emotion; you can’t choose not to resent someone, and once it’s there and settled inside you, it’s so hard to get rid of.

During this time of desperately holding on, Taylor’s friends and the people closest to her were telling her that what she was experiencing wasn’t healthy. It’s not healthy to suspect that your partner resents you. It’s not healthy to feel as if you’re the only one who actually cares about your relationship. It’s not healthy for a relationship to wear you down and feel heavy. It’s not healthy for every good moment with your partner to feel like a rarity and a breath of fresh air because half the time, you’re not sure if they even like you.

She resorts back to asking the same question she asked earlier: How long did you think I was going to put up with it? How long did you think I was going to allow myself to be miserable? She wouldn’t have been able to sink much lower before she’d completely self-destruct. She had no choice but to free herself from the shackles that were pulling her towards the bottom of the ocean, suffocating her in the process.

Actions speak louder than words. This person could insist time and time again that he loved Taylor, but at the end of the day, if he didn’t show through his actions that he loved Taylor, then she was never actually going to feel loved. It’s easy to say that you love someone, it’s harder to prove it.

Over the years, Taylor has made it apparent time and time again in her songs that marriage is something she wants. She’s been referencing marriage in her lyrics ever since her debut album. On the song Paper Rings, she says: “I like shiny things, but I’d marry you with paper rings.” On I Think He Knows, she says: “I think he knows he better lock it down or I won’t stick around, ‘cause good ones never wait.” Well, she was done waiting.

She was done waiting at the altar for him to show up and prove that he loved her; prove that he was just as committed to their relationship as she was. As she says in You’re Losing Me; “I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.” I know I keep bringing it back to this song, but the next line, “you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days,” reminds me of Renegade. Both that song and this song imply that her partner struggled with mental health issues. It’s a complicated topic; because if your partner is struggling, you obviously want to help them and stick by them. But there’s only so much you can do if they’re pushing you away and not letting you help them. And if they’re not helping themselves and are just wallowing in their own self pity instead of trying to get better, then that can start to take a toll on your own mental health.

It sounds like it was a similar situation for Taylor. Her partner’s mental health was declining and she was trying to help him, but in the process, Taylor’s own mental health took a hit. Meanwhile, he wasn’t even trying to improve his own mental health. You can try with all your might to help someone, but there’s only so much you can do if they’re not willing to help themselves. So in not trying, he sacrificed their relationship to his “bluest days,” as blue is a colour often used to symbolise sadness.

It’s also worth noting that many of the songs about this specific muse mention the colour blue; it’s a motif. It seems that in the same way London and this person are forever connected, so is this person and the colour blue.

In all the despair and sorrow there has been in this song, there are still moments where she sprinkles in moments of hope. In You’re Losing Me, she says: “My face was grey but you wouldn’t admit that we were sick.” This entire song, she discusses the way this relationship drained the life out of her. But now that she’s finally broken free, she’s starting to come to life again; the colour is starting to come back to her face.

But she’s still pissed off. Because she loved London. She loved performing there, she loved the culture, she made so many happy memories there. Even though it was a rough ending, for a solid few years, London was the place she called home. But this place that she once loved is now forever tainted for her. From now on, whenever she steps foot in London, she will be reminded of how trapped she felt; how unwanted she felt; how suffocated and miserable she felt- for so, so long. She will never be able to visit London without seeing that person’s face etched in her brain, because as I said earlier, they are now entwined in her mind, and they cannot be separated.

The ending is so bittersweet. Despite her mixed bag of emotions, she can at least still acknowledge that they had a good run. Even though it ended with rain, they had a moment of warm sun together. But even though they had their good moments, she’s not “the one.”

To go from: “You are the one I have been waiting for, king of my heart, body, and soul,” and, “my one and only, my lifeline,” to, “I’m not the one…” Again, it just shows how much changed. This line also draws parallels to the 1, “it would’ve been fun if you would’ve been the one.” There was a period of time where she whole-heartedly believed this person was her endgame, her soulmate, her one true love- however you want to put it. But now, she’s accepted the fact that at the end of the day, they’re just not compatible. At the end of the day, she’s just not the one. He will move on and find someone else, and eventually, so will she. Life will go on.

Clearly I had a lot to say about this song. I cannot express enough how much I am obsessed with it; it’s quickly becoming an all-time favourite. If you haven’t yet heard it, do yourself a favour, and give it a listen.

If you’ve made it this far into this long-ass post, you deserve a medal. If you have any different interpretations to this song, I’d love to hear them in the comments. I’ll see you in the next analysis.

- Lilly :)