Analysis of a Song Part 1: So Long, London by Taylor Swift
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.
Verse 1
I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist
I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift
Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away
My spine split from carrying us up the hill
Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill
I stopped trying to make him laugh, stopped trying to drill the safe
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.
Pre-Chorus 1
Thinking, ‘How much sad did you think I had?
Did you think I had in me?
Oh, the tragedy…’
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.
Chorus 1
So long, London
You’ll find someone…
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.
Verse 2
I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out
I founded the club she’s heard great things about
I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath
I stopped CPR, after all, it’s no use
The spirit was gone, we would never come to
And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free
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.”
Chorus 2
For so long, London
Stitches undone
Two graves, one gun
I’ll find someone…
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.
Bridge
And you say I abandoned the ship
But I was going down with it
My white knuckle dying grip
Holding tight to your quiet resentment
And my friends said, “it isn’t right to be scared
every day of a love affair”
Every breath feels like rarest air
When you’re not sure if he wants to be there
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.
Pre-Chorus 2
So how much sad did you think I had?
Did you think I had in me?
How much tragedy?
Just how low did you think I’d go?
Before I’d self-implode?
Before I’d have to go be free?
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.
Verse 3
You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?
I died on the altar waiting for the proof
You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days
And I’m just getting colour back into my face
I’m just mad as hell ‘cause I loved this place for
So long, London…
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.
Outro
So long, London
Had a good run
A moment of warm sun
But I’m not the one
So long, London
Stitches undone
Two graves, one gun
You’ll find someone…
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 :)
I have probably spent the least amount of time with TTPD than any other TS album, but So Long London has grown on me too! And how fitting to post this after she just performed it on the Eras Tour for the first time. It's haunting and beautiful, saying so much. Thanks for sharing your insightful analysis!