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wavesoutbeingtossed · 2 months ago

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See I always got the impression she stayed with Calcium for too long for the wrong reasons. I was too young to know what was going on at the time but from strictly lyrics and a few things the fandom has brought back up, I've just alays jotted that relationship down to Taylor satisfying the crowd in the same way she did with her music. They wanted a sonically cohesive album, she fave it. They said she's never kept a good guy in a long relationship, so she stuck out longer than she wanted to until finally she couldn't and didn't want to hold those comments against herself anymore. Just falling for her people pleasing tendencies. I don't quite get what tension you were referring to (I'm probably the one in the wrong since again, I wasn't familiar with anything outside her music at the time) but what lines stuck out to you to describe that relationship the way you did in that getaway car post?

Anon, I know you’re here in good faith, but I want to be thoughtful with my language and very gently want to push back on the idea that she did anything, including dating a person, just to “satisfy the crowds.” I know you didn’t have any ill intent. But to me that’s another way of unintentionally framing Taylor as a character or an avatar when she is someone with a very human life she’s led with her own choices.

It’s the same with the music. Yes, she wanted to make albums people would like and buy. But to reduce her art to that is also doing her a disservice— by all accounts, she WANTED to branch out to pop. She wanted to explore new sounds. I’m not denying there was some external validation she was seeking, but that doesn’t mean she was living her life just to satisfy others.

Again, we’re not privy to all of Taylor’s inner life, including why she chose her partners or stayed with them, unless she’s shared that. She hasn’t nearly as much about this situation as others, so we’re just picking up context clues. But I just don’t subscribe to the thought that she picked a boyfriend just to beat the headlines, because again, she is a human with feelings, including for other people, and real life is full of complicated feelings. I think it’s just as likely that she chose a partner because he paid attention to her and loudly pursued her after years of being toyed with by other men, and he was charismatic and effusive on the surface and that was a welcome change in her life at the time. That’s from the little we could see and know in public and inferring from the Red/1989 pipeline.

As for why she stayed with him so long— sure, I think it’s likely there was some fear there about “never beating the allegations.” But again, I just am not comfortable with saying it’s to please others, or solely that, the same way I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that about anyone I knew in real life. Because again, people are full of nuance. I would guess it might have also been about proving to *herself* that she could stick it out, after years of situationships and emotional rollercoasters where she may have felt like she had no control over at times. And the control piece is one that is really important for a lot of things that were going on in her life.

It’s also important to take it within the context that has been filled out in the years following Rep's release thanks to the re-recordings and newer albums. She'd had a years-long on-and-off thing with Jake which was full of a lot of emotionally upending experiences and sunk her into a low period, she followed that with another long on-and-off situationship with Harry where neither of them could ever really say what they wanted so they just kept dancing around each other, along with other people filling up her dance card in her orbit.

So when a firmly established man, who was successful and famous in his own right, who she was attracted to and enjoyed spending time with, expressed interest in her and not only that, expressed interest in a relationship with her, when she'd literally spent her adult life up to then in these merry-go-round situations? That might have felt really, really comforting for a time, especially considering everything else that was going on in her life. And might also help flesh out why she felt she should stay, even when other alarm bells were going off. (That's a whole other discussion.) This however is just my speculation.

As for the clues in the music that things were Not Good-- well, you kind of have to use your noggin for that.

"He poisoned the well, I was lying to myself" / "He poisoned the well, every man for himself" points to a person who brought toxicity into the home. Poisoning the well generally and broadly means painting someone in a negative and false light to discredit them before others have a chance to judge on their own. Within the context of the song, IMO it paints a picture of someone who is controlling and manipulative at the very least. So in the first instance, she's lying to herself about how bad things are, and in the second, she realizes she's got to save herself because she's no exception.

(Not to point to real life events because I've said before not everything in her music refers to an event we see... But we do know, for instance, that he publicly denied she wrote "This Is What You Came For" and tried to discredit her until she revealed she was behind the pseudonym. I don't think that's what the song is referring to, to be clear, but it's just a real-life example of the type of behaviour that might inform that kind of lyric. He tried to deny her own success and knock her down a peg when that success overshadowed his and he was vengeful about her leaving him.)

"It was the great escape, the prison break / The light of freedom on my face / But you weren't thinking and I was just drinking / While he was running after us, I was screaming, "Go, go, go!"" is another indication of a very fraught relationship. The fact that she felt like she had to not only break free from this person, but speed off before they could catch her is very telling. It's different from the way she writes about running/escaping on TTPD, for instance-- where again it's about freedom, but she's in control and it's more like, I'm sick of this/I feel like I'm dying. In the fantasy situation here, it implies he's chasing after her, but not to win her back but to punish her, like a guard would chasing after a detainee. She's desperate to leave, and not just in the "I'm going to do what I want" type of way, but with the implication that she needs to flee as fast as she can before he catches her (and harms her, or worse yet, drags her back to her cell.) In other words, she was worried about how he would retaliate if she didn't leave right that second. There's an urgency implied with "GO GO GO!"

(Because if you think of prison break or heist movies, usually the escapee who gets caught ends up getting shot and killed. Bonnie and Clyde are a good example of this.)

Plus, the "I was just drinking" line is telling-- it implies she was drowning her misery in alcohol, which again is a theme we see later on in TTPD too and indicative of someone who is unwell and going unnoticed.

The tl;dr of Getaway Car is that she felt that if she didn't escape right that second, she was going to die. That's not necessarily literal to her real life, let me reiterate, but emotionally speaks to a very tense and dark situation she felt was harmful.

ivy imo furthers this same tension. With the caveat that we can't ~know~ he was the inspiration for the husband in the song, there are parallels to that same fear and unease in the love triangle.

"I just sit here and wait, grieving for the living," while not directly about the male character in the song, implies a woman who's stuck at home and despondent. There are other lyrics (like "He's in the room") implying that she feels like she's being watched, monitored, judged. (Which, to be fair, is in a song where the narrator is very much considering running off with another man, so I suppose suspicion isn't out of hte question.)

"He's gonna burn this house to the ground" is another lyric that is very evocative, but is also laced with the threat of violence. It's the implication that if he finds out that she's considering fleeing, he's going to destroy her and everything along with it-- which is also the undercurrent of her frantic escape in Getaway Car.

"So tell me to run, or dare to sit and watch what we'll become / And drink my husband's wine" again maybe doesn't sound directly threatening, but speaks to the narrator's utter despondency. It's, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to self-destruct. She's going to lose herself in the wine -- and it's her husband's, because she's been drinking everything he's been selling her, both metaphorically and in actuality. She's taken in his words and his threats and also his alcohol, careening into the abyss around him.

High Infidelity is the real damning song, and nearly the entire thing is infused with fear. "Lock broken, slur spoken / Wound open, game token / I didn't know you were keeping count" right off the bat paints an image of a dire situation, implying a fight that ends in threat. The "lock broken" line is interesting because I used to take it as metaphorical, e.g. the slur spoken is the thing that opened the damn (broke the lock) and hurt her deeply, but then I saw some people interpret the "ended with the slam of the door" line in The Bolter as the slam of a door in a home (as opposed to the slam of the car door which is what I took it as) and I think that paints an even more vivid-- and scary-- image. So, you have a broken door, yelling obscenities (and I think it's interesting that so many of us immediately thought "whore"/"slut" when High Infidelity first came out, because that's nearly always the way a man will try to denigrate a woman, and then The Bolter came out and confirmed it) and suddenly she feels ripped open inside realizing she's just a trophy to him (game token) rather than a partner. It's devastating, and we're only three lines into the song.

Then following that up with "Rain soaking, blind hoping / You said I was freeloading / I didn't know you were keeping count" continues that thread, pointing and to me is a parallel to "He poisoned the well, I was lying to myself." He accuses her of damnable offenses in an effort to keep her down (which sounds like it could even be gaslighting), and her "blind hoping" is the lying to herself that things are fine, that they'll get better, but then the reality hits that he's keeping score; it sounds like a classic manipulative tactic, e.g. "you owe me"/"I do everything and you do nothing"/enter attempt at power imbalance here. That's not love, that's transaction.

"Put on your headphones and burn my city / Your picket fence is sharp as knives, I was dancing around it" to me is very reminiscent of ivy and "he's gonna burn this house to the ground," e.g. he is going to set out to destroy her if she leaves. "Your picket fence is sharp as knives" means the home life he's selling to her is actually her prison, or the thing that will harm her. It's prickly, it's sharp, it means that this "white picket fence" life that is the marker of adult success is the very thing that she feels will destroy her, because he's so malicious.

"Storm coming, good husband / Bad omen / Dragged my feet right down the aisle / At the house lonely, good money / I'd pay if you'd just know me / Seemed like the right thing at the time" is so, so sad, and again follows her gut instinct telling her things are Bad. She can see that there is darkness ahead by staying in the relationship. The relationship is rapidly heading one way (down the aisle) but she knows that very thing will harm her. She has a vision that she's going to be left alone and lonely in this hypothetical marriage, even though imo she's implying that at the time she thought maybe this was the best she could hope for/deserve (seemed like the right thing at the time). Again, she's navigating what she feels she should want-- a long term relationship that leads to marriage and partnership-- with this growing feeling in her pit that he's going to hurt her if she stays.

"You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love / The slowest way is never loving them enough," is so sad, and like a lot of the other parts of the song, shows how hopelessly lonely she was in this relationship, and again, the premonition she was having about what would happen to her had she stayed. It's a partner who does not care about the person in their home and does not care to show them any consideration or affection, let alone whatever else is happening.

And the way she ends the song repeating "Oh, you were keeping count" again is just like: this image of someone who is predatory and looking to entrap someone emotionally. It's very, very scary in its utter insidiousness.

And lastly we have The Bolter, which again, ~might not be about him or anyone~, but the chorus IMO is referring to all these scenarios. "Started with a kiss, "Oh, we must stop meeting like this" / But it always ends up with a Town Car speeding out the drive one evening / Ended with the slam of a door, then he'll call her a whore / Wish he wouldn't be sore / But as she was leaving it felt like breathing" It's the initial flirtation and honeymoon period (kiss/meeting like this) but the speeding car out the driveway is the end of it-- fleeing the scene (like the Getaway Car, like running off in ivy, like the emotional escape in High Infidelity). Here we have the slur spoken from HI (called her a whore) and perhaps even the lock broken (slam of a door). "Wish he wouldn't be sore" is like a cutesy way of "wish he wouldn't be so mad," but it's also sad because it implies that he's always like this and it's dismissed as just one of his personality traits. And like with all the other songs, her escape is literally life-saving to her, in so many ways.

And while, "He was a cad, wanted her bad, just like any good trophy hunter / And she likes the way it tastes, taming a bear, making him care / Watching him jump then pulling him under," could be about anyone, again I think it applies here too. Because she is the game token in HI, the trophy he wanted to put on the shelf and pull down whenever he wanted. The taming the bear thing is funny at first glance because it's part of the "I can fix him" complex we see over and over again, and she loves the thrill of the chase, only her she feels endangered when the bear turns on her and shows his teeth. Hence the escape in escaping.

Anyway this was waaaaaaaaaaay too long. But I just hope that fleshes out a little more about what you were wondering about. One of the fascinating things about Taylor's discography is not only how much the stories end up calling back to each other as time marches on, but that she uses so many narrative devices to tell them. Whether it's the fantasy of Getaway Car or ivy, or the diary-entry-like High Infidelity, or The Bolter's amalgam allegory of so many situations, it's so interesting to pick up on the common threads that weave together another story.

#writing letters addressed to the fire #me thinking too hard about taylor lyrics #getaway car #ivy #high infidelity #the bolter #reputation #evermore my beloved #midnights #the tortured poets department #cause i know that it's delicate #long post #pouring out my heart to a stranger but i didn't pour the whiskey #anonymous #muses acquired like bruises

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