#and then loml and so long london are probably tied

[strangeswift]

abby i’m going crazy over the how did it end? bridge. “the deflation of our dreaming” is SO SAD OH MY GOD? oh my god

NO BECAUSE SHE WAS SO INSANE FOR THAT. “the death rattle breathing” really gets me. the imagery has me running around like a hamster on a wheel, its so fucking visceral. and when she follows it up with “silenced as the soul was leaving, the deflation of our dreaming” the deflation evokes the image of a final breath being taken and the lungs deflating. LEAVING ME BEREFT AND REELING??? and “my beloved ghost and me, sitting in a tree d-y-i-n-g” the ghost is obviously their relationship personified, which just took its final breath and fucking died, and the idea of her sitting with that ghost is so heartbreaking already.. but when you add in the play on sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g it’s such a devastating reminder of the often childlike excitement that comes with falling in love and it absolutely turns that concept on its head because she is D Y I N G. the entire bridge is being SLEPT ON so thank you for this opportunity to ramble. and the fucking end of the song. HER asking how did it end. how did we get here, how did it come to this. i’m gonna rip all of my hair out actually.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.

There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and there’s one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.

This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)

Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)

The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, it’s also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.

The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with one’s partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked her— which is why the next lover’s (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece one’s life back together by the end.

THE CONTEXT

TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.

Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if he’ll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).

Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.

Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the “sleepless nights” concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but she’s questioning so much of her life that’s reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and I’m all alone.

And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part it’s a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.

THE SETUP

So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.

I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the “Depression” playlist on Apple Music.)

If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go before I’d have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t start anymore, but from the other side of the break.

This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.

Following the music, it’s IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partner’s end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.

(If everything you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)

THE STORY

So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But it’s also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.

THE ALBUM

When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” songs underneath.

Fortnight

A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like she’s finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because there’s a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)

Down Bad

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in “Smallest Man” and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.

The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldn’t refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, I’m going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)

Fresh Out The Slammer

Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.

Florida!!!

Broadly speaking, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the “I don’t want to exist,” line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.

Guilty As Sin

Yes it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions she’s made and habits she’s leaned on ever since.

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the “swirliness” of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.

The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with “you’re the loss of my life” is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons — much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. There’s honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The juxtaposition of “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, it’s all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.

The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.

Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships she’s written about, in different ways.)

The Alchemy

Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer

Clara Bow

This isn’t about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.

She took his innuendo about “pushing strollers” as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didn’t view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

THE SUMMATION

This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.

On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, she’s talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.

If you look at the “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of “So Long, London” is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. “Loml” is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isn’t just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.

All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).

When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.

So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.

The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasn’t ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)

[taintedcigs]

EMMY’S TTPD REVIEW!!!!

i might do another review when i get some sleep and listen again but fuck do i have thoughts under the cut

i never doubted her and im being so serious. like what a wild fucking ride im in SHAMBLES. fortnight is such a good start to the album and sets the tone for the remaining songs.

florida!!! is AMAZING. taylor + florence’s voices mesh SO well together and the sounds just exploded in my ear in the best way possible. title track is cheeky which I LOVE. down bad is just so catchy and the way she says “fuck it if i can’t have him” is engraved in my brain forever.

so long, london. my god. what a fuxking intro. perfectly describing to carry on a relationship you know is dead weight???? the wedding reference ??? “how much sad did you think i have in me” ??? im literally dead?

but daddy i love him is unhinged. self-aware. again VERY cheeky. and imo a slight attempt to cut the parasocial ties a bit w swifties LMAO!

fresh out the slammer, guilty as sin, the alchemy and clara bow (the stevie nicks NAME DROP??? i gasped) are ALL SO EXCELLENT. i need a second listen to have more opinions tho!!!

who’s afraid of little old me is fuckiiiinnnnggg genius. same with i can do it with a broken heart. this album employs a tone that is so very self-critical (that she previously tapped into in midnights) and we can see how most of the lyrics are more in on the joke. its so genius and like i never doubted her ever i have noooo words. also the way she explores the “toxic positivity” in icdiwabh is just SOOO genius. she does so much twists and turns with this album and im eating up all of it. (also the overall way she describes mental health complexities in both of these songs is so important to me)

the smallest man whoever lived. THE ANGER. oh god im living for her unhinged lyrics its so fucking good.

loml: look i hate this title. im sorry. but ou my god. this fucking song. love of my life turning into loss of my life…. like she’s killing me overrrr here😭😭😭

i can fix him (no really i can). the sound. i just. i have no words. i will try to express my feelings better later but the “whoa maybe i can’t” at the end. GOD. thats how the entire album is. self-referential, critical, and in on the joke. im in awe of how good it all sounds together.

like ill just probably be rambling but holy fuck. it exceeded my expectations in the best way possible. idk how this woman does it. but shes a powerhouse. in every way possible. the album is very unhinged, depressing, cheeky, and entirely raw. this is seriously one of her best works and its MUCH different than anything else she has put out. 10/10. im gagged.

i will now be going to sleep, but if any fellow tortured poets want to discuss this album (lyrically, sonically, parallels, influences, ANYTHING) send me an ask bc i can’t be normal about this masterpiece

[jewishrizahawkeye]

hello fellow members of the tortured poets department.

i shall now enter into evidence the smallest man who ever lived and analyze it.

previous days:

fortnight; THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT; my boy only breaks his favorite toys; down bad; so long, london; but daddy i love him; fresh out the slammer+florida!!!; guilty as sin?; who’s afraid of little old me?; i can fix him (no really i can), loml+chloe et al. (part 0.5), i can do it with a broken heart

what can i say about this song that hasn’t been said? it’s a beautiful song about coming to terms with being used and hurt as well as the anger left over and knowing you’ll probably never truly be over it.

there are so many lines that help portray this. one of my favorites is the line “you stuck me on your wall with push pins”. because on one hand, if we follow the constant theme of science and hospitals and being experimented on, one could view this line as a bug or frog pinned to a wall, for decoration or dissection. (which ties into the fortnight music video and how the person she loved experimented on her). but if we look at it in connection to i can do it with a broken heart and taylor’s fame it can also be he stuck her on her wall like a poster. that he thought of her similarly to how we, fans of her, treat taylor. he created a version of her in his mind, a foreshadow to chloe et al., the girl of his american dreams that he said was the love of his life and played make believe and dolls like how the rest of the world treats her.

which can also tie back into the fortnight video. perhaps the two scientist were meant to represent us, the general public, and how we treat her. but he’s also there, watching as they torture her, another nod to chloe et al., and only pulls the plug at the last moment. but it doesn’t erase how he hurt her. and maybe that’s because he loved the idea he built of taylor that we all share but once he actually saw and touched her he realized it was fake. so he ended it, ended her suffering, and left her but only made it worse for her by causing longer pain.

but that can be a kinder interpretation. because as a whole this song is angry and doesn’t view him in a kind way. she asks if he hurt her like this because someone made him or he wanted information. because she can’t understand how someone can just hurt another person so casually like he did. by giving her a false hope and ending her six year relationship only to leave her high and dry after two weeks. which is why “and you deserve prison but you won’t get time” hits so hard because we all know a person who we consider deserves prison but will never serve because it either can’t be proved or it isn’t really a crime. or maybe in this case it’s that this man can still continue on with his life and career and receive little hate for what he says and does because he simple doesn’t care.

there’s a lot of layers and levels to this that are very self explanatory and are redundant of me to repeat. but all and all this song is so heartbreaking and the fact that taylor says “you didn’t measure up/in any measure of a man” is so petty of her and i love it. tell the world he sucks in bed and has a small dick.

anyway, fuck this guy. i hope he gets hit by a shoe.

[harley-michaels-main]

Connections for The Tourtured Poets Department:

THIS IS A NO HATE JOE ALWYN PAGE!! They may not be together anymore but I still don't support hate towards him. Please keep all that negativity to yourself 🙏

This is simply to keep track of the connections and Easter eggs that have been pointed out. Ty 🩷

The title is reminiscent of Joe Alwyn's old group chat, The Tourtured Men's Club. A group chat that he has stated he hardly talks in anymore.

Track 5, So Long, London, can be tied to Track 11 from Lover, London Boy.

Track 12, loml, is an acronym for Love of My Life. It shares the title with a song by Harry Styles, her ex from 2013.

Track 6, But Daddy I Love Him, can be another reference to Harry Styles, who has been spotted multiple times wearing a shirt with the same lyrics.

Track 6, But Daddy I Love Him, could also be a reference to a quote from The Little Mermaid, releases in 1989, the same year Taylor was born. (This is a stretch)

The back vinyl cover is paralleled to Lover, where Taylor is looking to the side, whereas The Tourtured Poets Department has Taylor facing the same way, but looking down.

Track 15, The Alchemy, can be referenced back to how Taylor describes her relationship with Joe as gold and how she references The Midas Touch, where everything you touch turns to gold. Alchemy is known as a fake science of turning things into gold.

Track 16, Clara Bow, is about the late actress Clara Bow, who back in the 1930's was the og "It Girl". She faced backlash with the public about her private and romantic life. After she got married, she retired from the film scene.

Track 8, Florida!!! ft Florence and The Machine, can be referenced to Taylor's Florida tour dates, which were the first shows she performed after her break up with Joe Alwyn was made public.

The title of the album can also be referenced back to The Lakes from Folklore where the lyrics state, "take me to the lakes where all the poets go to die..."

The title of the album can also be referenced back to Sweet Nothing from Midnights, her last known love song written about him, where the lyrics state, "and on the way home, I wrote a poem. You say what a mind..."

The quote on the back cover, "I love you. It's ruining me." can be tied back to the lyrics from Track 2 of Lover, Cruel Summer, "I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard."

More Easter eggs and references will probably be added as the swifties discover more things. This also is all just speculation, none of these are confirmed.

DO NOT TAKE THESE AS FACT THEY ARE MERELY SPECULATION!

Also, if you notice anything, add it on!!

[stereotypical-jew]

ttpd songs ranked by death mentions

got bored so i made a tier ranking of ttpd songs based on how much death is mentioned

definitions/explanations below the cut

categories and definitions:

death relating to taylor: songs went here if they directly mentioned taylor dying/wanting to die/almost dying. this also includes some songs she is technically talking in the third person but it's pretty clearly about her (cassandra, the bolter)

death to another person: songs that talk about another person dying

death as an abstract concept: this is probably the hardest category to define, but basically it's for songs that discuss death/dying but not specifically tied to a person, or about concepts/ideas dying

death in figurative language only: for when the only death mention is when it's being used in a figure of speech (in the dead of night, for example)

no death!: there are no mentions of death in any form in these songs! woohoo!

note: many songs fit into several of these categories. however i ranked them as the more specific, the higher on the list, so songs where taylor talks about wanting to die and also death as an abstract concept just went into the taylor death category

explanations for each song w/ accompanying lyrics

fortnight: "your wife waters flower/i wanna kill her" and "my husband is cheating/i wanna kill him" pretty straightforward

the tortured poets department: "you told lucy you'd kill yourself if i ever leave/and i had said that to jack about you so i felt seen" could fit into either of the top two categories but bc of the ranking they go into taylor death

my boy only breaks his favorite toys: "cause it fit too right/puzzles pieces in the dead of night" dead here is not being used to talk about someone actually being dead so it just goes into figurative language.

down bad: "i might just die it would make no difference" well. i mean.

so long, london: this one is full of death references but the most explicit i think is "i died on the altar waiting for the proof"

but daddy, i love him: "we came back when the heat died down" again, not real death just figurative langauge

fresh out the slammer: nothing! there are no lyrics that relate to death in this song

florida!!!: this is a close one between death as an abstract concept and other people death, but i went with other people bc i think the implication is pretty clear that florence murdered someone and left their bodies in a swamp "i did my best to lay to rest all the bodies that have ever been on my body/and in my mind they sink into the swamp"

guilty as sin?: lotta references to death here again folks the two most explicit are "oh what a way to die" and "throwing my life to the wolves or the ocean rocks"

who's afraid of little old me?: "if you wanted me dead you should've just said" which is in reference to taylor dying so that's where it goes

i can fix him (no really i can): nothing! no death here.

loml: death as an abstract concept is strong here but we end with "i'll still see it until I die/you're the loss of my life" so top category again

i can do it with a broken heart: "even when you wanna die" poor taylor

the smallest man who ever lived: again a couple references but big one is "i would've died for your sins/instead i just died inside"

the alchemy: nothing again! happy taylor!

clara bow: "i think i might die if it happened/die if it happened to me" and "i think i might die if i made it/die if i made it" and well. seems like she came close.

the black dog: "even if i die screaming"

imgonnagetyouback: "i might just love you til the end" and "pick your poison babe/i'm poison either way" love you til the end is more death as an abstract concept and i think the concept of poison goes there too? even though she's singing about maybe her poisoning someone else i think it's still more about the concept but idk. i could be convinced otherwise.

the albatross: this is another one where it's a bit iffy, i went with death as a concept bc several of the wise men quotes are about death ("wild winds are death to a candle" and "one bad seed kills the garden") but she also says "she's the death you chose" so it could be about a person? but death seems a bit more abstract here, but again. i could be convinced otherwise.

chloe or sam or sophia or marcus: "can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses?" abstract because phantoms are death adjacent but she's not talking about a specific death here

how did it end: whoo boy. "we hereby conduct this post-mortem" someone's dead. and the entire bridge basically ending in "my beloved ghost and me/sitting in a tree/D-Y-I-N-G" she's sitting in the tree dying so i went with the top category, but it is also abstractly about the relationship dying

so high school: "are you gonna marry kiss or kill me/it's just a game but really/i'm betting on all three for us two" you can argue this fits into the top category but i think it's more of an abstract part of a game thing? aghh that category is so tricky

i hate it here: "i dreamed about it in the dark the night i felt like i might die"

thanK you aIMee: "my mother is a saintly woman/but she used to say she wished that you were dead" talking about the subject (aimee) dying so 2nd category. she also talks about aimee walking on her grave so there is an argument for taylor being dead too.

i look in people's windows: "i had died the tiniest death"

the prophecy: "poison blood from the wound of the pricked hand" again i'm using poison as sort of an abstract death concept here, as there is no victim directly stated, just the idea of poison

cassandra: "so they killed cassandra first/cause she feared the worst" and "they say what doesn't kill you makes you aware/what happens if it becomes who you are" i think it's pretty clear that taylor is referring to herself both as the 'you' here and also as cassandra. so it's about her death again.

peter: "the shelf life of those fantasies has expired" an abstract concept is dying here, so into the abstract category it goes

the bolter: "by all accounts she should've drowned/when she was six in frigid waters" story about taylor drowning. yeah she's talking in the third person but it's about her.

robin: nothing! hooray!

manuscript: also nothing!

other things to note: how did it end?, loml, guilty as sin?, and so long london have the most discrete mentions of death i believe

i am very much open to other ideas and interpretations if you think i missed something or there's a better way to categorize this. i just thought it was striking how much death was on the album and wanted to sort it in some manner.

[janeaustenmademedoit]

Okay, I definitely agree with the assessment that TTPD is a grower. It has grown on me after listening to it more, but I still wouldn’t put it in my top 5 albums. I would say it’s probably tied with Midnights for album ranking.

There are some great songs with great lyrics and some songs I originally was meh about that have grown on me. There are still some songs I’m meh about and will probably skip though.

Overall it’s a good album and I still stick to my original grade of a B-

My top 5 in no particular order are:

1. How Did it End?

2. So Long, London

3. The Prophecy

4. loml

5. I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

Honorable mentions:

-Guilty as Sin?

-Whose Afraid of Little Old Me?

-Fresh Out the Slammer

-Peter

-Cassandra

[ultranerdygirl]

Tortured Poets Department Album Thoughts:

**Note for Tumblr: these were originally sent to my sister through the notes app on my phone. These message are directed at her, but my mom thought I should share them here. Here ya go!

Fortnight: scared me, don’t like it. You probably like it cuz it’s akin to “No Body No Crime”. Edit: after watching the music video, I like the song now.

TPD: made me laugh, very good. My second favorite on the album.

My Boy: made me say “Jesus Christ” several times. Wtf.

Down Bad: no thoughts on this one, kinda zoned out oops

So Long, London: thought this was gonna be a fun song like “ha ha, suck it Joe.” it was not. Sadder than I expected?? You can really see how heavily it ties into “You’re Losing Me”.

But Daddy ILH: also very sad. The title makes me think of “The Little Mermaid”.

Fresh Out The Slammer: I like this one. It’s got nice lofi vibes.

Florida!!!: I was surprised to see Florence on this as a collaborator, I really dig it, very good song! My favorite on the album, probably not surprising.

Guilty as Sin: very chill, I could fall asleep to this, I dig it. I also need to look at Genius Lyrics cuz I don’t know what he’s “writing on her thigh.”

Little Old Me: It’s giving “My Tears Ricochet” energy. Classic Taylor revenge-ish song. Also kind of scary. Like she’s a banshee or something (not in the way she sings, but the visuals. Scary ghost.)

I Can Fix Him: title makes me laugh, not sure how to feel about the song itself. I just don’t know.

Loml: title also makes me laugh, the piano is giving church music. I feel like I’m supposed to be falling asleep in a pew during mass.

Broken Heart: it’s giving Olivia Rodrigo “Guts” vibes. Jeez. Also a very sarcastic song. This’ll probably be a bop in your daily rotation of music. 🤣

Smallest Man: she is going for the throat in this song, holy shit. Was Joe a drug addict or was that just a really heavy-handed metaphor?? Also I guess we know now why that song was called “Cruel Summer”. Jesus h Christ.

Alchemy: Damn. <— main reaction from me. Also I feel like she’s kinda referencing the “You Belong With Me” video with all the talk of signs and whatnot.

Clara Bow: I need to google if a Clara Bow is a type of plant. Was not understanding it. Also got jump-scared in the last chorus by Taylor saying her own name, lol. Feels like this song is her talking to her younger self?? Idk…. Okay, I just googled it and apparently Clara Bow was hugely famous silent film/film-with-sound actress during the Jazz Age. I think the line directly after about a freshly picked rose made me think “Clara Bow” was a type of plant.