#hockeytwittereats

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I think Taylor's choices of variant songs for TTPD are: how did I end up here.

The Bolter: I ran until I taught myself not to, got hurt because of how long it took me to leave, got bolted on immediately after.

The Albatross: I am dangerous and choosing life with me means you choose this danger as well.

The Black Dog: I felt so abandoned that I had to leave, but it felt so sacred I couldn't just leave.

The Manuscript: this guy did it all to me first and then when I revisited the story, I couldn't close the wound that reopened

Suuuuuuuuch interesting observations!!! Tbh I didn't give the choice of variant tracks much thought (beyond The Manuscript) but you may be onto something! That certainly tells a story in itself.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

patterns keep repeating unless you actively work to break them.//

The double meaning of "The story isn't mine anymore" is really working hard here.

Releasing of the story (ATW) gave it to fans to make their own

Letting go of old behaviours that only ever left her feeling used and abandoned in the end.

yup, I always thought that was a beautiful way of ending The Manuscript. ❤️

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I think there is a pretty direct line between Lover and Midnights because in the Lover prologue she uses the Daylight outro...

I've decided that in this life, I want to be defined by the things I love- not the things I hate, the things I'm afraid of, or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.

...and then three albums later she brings up back to the things that haunt her in the middle of the night.

Actually the Lover prologue is so interesting in the Lover -> folklore -> Midnights -> TTPD pipeline because you can see she really wanted to move into the daylight and take the brave step forward with softness. Ultimately, it seems like it took longer than she wanted and had more twists than she ever intended, but the person she appears to be now is the person she ultimately wanted to be then.

that's a really interesting observation. And I think it's also a testament to like, the non-linear nature of healing and growth, and also how much life happened between those points.

Like you said, the Lover was her trying to claim that light and softness after the events preceding Rep, and that was really brave of her even amidst all the obvious fears still within and around her. As you move through subsequent albums, those demons still gnaw at her though, until TTPD blows it all up. But it's like she had to blow it all up to finally get to the place she was hoping for herself in that Lover prologue.

That's sure food for thought!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Do you think the wisteria mentioned in The Lakes is at all related to the Ivy in Ivy? I know Ivy is more about how someone can root themselves and over you in themselves, but I had the thought about the wisteria yesterday while driving.

(Sorry, I've missed a lot in my inbox in the last month. And always.)

This is such an interesting ask!

I've never made the link between the two, and I don't personally think they're intentionally related, beyond being part of the "escape to nature" motif in folkmore.

If anything, I think the link between the two is that they're romanticized plants that are actually often invasive species and can kill other flora around them 🥴

In all seriousness, I think what you mentioned about rooting oneself is probably what the actual common thread is, and knowing what we know now, is probably pretty understandable with her mindset while writing the albums. Wanting to plant roots, be wrapped in your lover, watch something beautiful bloom from under your feet-- I think those are sentiments that are hopeful and lovely under the right circumstances.

I know she's repurposed Ivy and leaned into the nefarious nature of it recently, but I do think the original intention was much more romantic, if on the tragic side. Her house of stone (immovable, cold) being covered by the ivy, adding beauty and life to her darkest days. I think the sentiment in The Lakes is similar, with watching the vines grow over her, possibly meaning watching something grow out of being "frozen" for years. I go back and forth on that verse a lot, and confess that I'm too tired to dig into it right now.

But I always found the next line about the red rose blooming out of ice-frozen ground so hauntingly beautiful, because to me it's saying that out of this time of deep pain and sorry (calamitous love/insurmountable grief), something beautiful emerged. And I don't mean in a "silver lining" kind of way to justify it all, but in a "life goes on" kind of way: things are awful and feel like they will be forever, but bit by bit winter gives way to spring, and the bad times very slowly melt away, and out of that you can find life again in a new season.

So tl;dr: I don't think they're intentionally related, I just think she was escaping to the metaphorical secret gardens in her mind and was taken by the nature imagery in her writing in general during that time period.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

It’s not Taylor’s vocals, but her vocals and the piano (and I think orchestra in the end) in The Manuscript tells a whole story in itself as well. The piano starts off as almost childlike which matches Taylor’s voice. It was the time that almost broke her. As the song progresses, everything becomes more certain and fuller. She’s grown and understands what happened. But then at the final “but the story isn’t mine anymore” it goes back to the beginning. The same broken girl left in pain.

Yup! I think I’ve mentioned it before but lord knows we’re never going to find the post on tumblr, but the opening of The Manuscript has a very eerie, unsettling quality to me, almost like the score to a horror movie trailer. The stripped down simplicity of it SOUNDS like someone just banging away at a piano with one finger, totally aimlessly and lost in their thoughts. The way the music turns cinematic with the big sweeping orchestral arrangement as she shifts from the girl to the director on set is very on point; she’s taken these individual painful moments and turned it into an entire score, the soundtrack to her life and now to millions of others’.

And yes it goes back to the beginning, because that girl is her and she is that girl. The girl that experienced the pain is the woman who had to learn the lesson from it.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I think you are onto something calling Mr. Jehovah's Witness Suit the Rental Getaway Car due to the "crashed my party in your rental car". Her plan for a sparkling summer (party) was destroyed by the Rental Getaway Car of it all. (Also, this story seems painfully real and valid for probably A LOT of people).

yeaaaaaaaaaaah I know =/

Also the fact that when I first heard the song my brain went "oh rental car is totally a metaphor for how he just borrowed someone else's life and dream for the weekend" (ahem) but then he actually DID crash a rental car last year asdfghjkl maybe sometimes you DO need to be literal lol.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I feel like the grief and trauma from 2016 manifested itself slowly, she healed part of herself, but there were other parts that just needed to do the brave thing to breakthrough. The outro of Daylight where she talks about not being defined by what she hates or scares her only for her to end up pulling more inside is telling. I ultimately think that I Hate It Here explains how grief compounds with trauma to cause you to pull out of the world, into your head and ultimately hate where you are and change that to find the next part of healing. Lover->folklore->Midnights is the grief+healing while TTPD is the ultimate breakdown -> breakthrough of the grief and healing.

That's super insightful!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Taylor's favourite activity is gagging her dad with surprise guests during the TTPD set. First Travis and now Florence.

OMG YOU'RE SO RIGHT.

Scott Swift #1 audience reaction cam fan.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

More Clara Bow talk in light of Taylor befriending and mentoring/helping younger female artists:

listen to the difference between Nothing New and Clara Bow. She has fully accepted her fate for lack of better term in Clara Bow while in Nothing New she is rightfully still upset by the disposable nature of things.

Which also brings me to an interesting one: The Albatross. The whole part of "When the sky rains fire on you/And you're persona non grata/I'll tell you I've been there too/And that none of it matters." I have previously listened to The Albatross as the counter to peace where she is saying, "yes I cannot bring you peace, but...". However, it also fits her mentoring younger artists because her lived experiences are so vast and she has survived.

That's a really good point. And I think another difference is that in Nothing New she was actively going through it while being on the cusp of no longer being the ingenue, so she was struggling to reconcile her public image with what she felt was perhaps rapidly approaching irrelevance. Clara Bow is kind of a biting song, but it's true that it's from the perspective of someone who has seen it all; I don't know if I'd call it cynical or pessimistic, but it's definitely cautionary from a "seen it all" kind of perspective.

I definitely think The Albatross falls more into the realm of peace as in being about a (romantic) partnership, but I think that perspective she's learned and is reassuring the other person about is *because* she's learned all of that life stuff (e.g. the Nothing New/Clara Bow/everything of it all) and she's realized that it's all noise at the end of the day if you don't let the tide take you under. A really interesting way of showing how her professional life informs her personal one and vice versa.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

is it time to talk about Wendy and how it sounds very pertinent to a time in Taylor’s life?

Never not thinking about this tbh.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

This is random and off anon because it is VERY CANADIAN: I really hope Taylor has heard Ahead by a Century because I feel like the song would cut right through a lot of feelings (like it does for everyone IMO).

Ahead by a Century is ELITE. "I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand" is one of my favourite lyrics ever. (Also "No dress rehearsal, this is our life.")

I never really know how well-known The Hip are outside Canada but boy, you can't escape a classic rock station playing them here lol.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Taylor changing the last line in SLL is very much giving: I've had space from this relationship ending and I am not feeling as gracious as I once was for reasons.

I definitely think that her feelings are changing as she has distance from the relationship (actually had a really interesting convo about this with @taylortruther earlier) and things are at once clarifying and becoming more... complicated.

I don't know if it's that she's not feeling as gracious, but I think it might be more... now that she's in a much healthier and happier place (relationship-wise but also just life-wise), she's even more aware of how much she had given up by staying as long as she had, and how many other choices she and they could have had if he were willing to hear her out. (Which... is the whole point of the song and the album, he ultimately wasn't.)

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Hits Different/Immagetyouback -> Rental Getaway Car/Miracle Move on Drug pipeline is very real on TTPD and it seems forbidden to talk about alongside the Unspeakable Things and the loss of intimacy. Like the entire album with it's blurred muses has three key pieces:

Breaking up needed an out because the first time they did it was so hard on her.

Unspeakable Things which sounds like discussions never followed through on (and possibly why the Fame Sucks stuff entered the chat)

Loss of intimacy to help a relationship stay together which leads back to one.

oh I must have missed this during Drunk Emo Hours the other night! Can you tell I am awful at checking the inbox sorry friends every time I open it it's brand new information to me

I don't know if that particular pipeline is forbidden to talk about as much as... other things... lol. I think maybe that it ended up being like, the least salacious or shocking revelation so folks moved on from it pretty quickly after TTPD came out.

Re: the Miracle Move On Drug: It's funny how in the context of Fortnight, it's the men after the subject who are the Miracle Move-On Drug from their initial relationship (e.g. CH/Joe). But then things IRL come full circle because in the end, he basically became that too from the previous relationship.

The cycle you described is so concise, and the funny/sad thing is that again, it kind of applies to both of the main relationships depicted on the album, but again, it's because the second copycat version doesn't happen without the first one coming to a slow, painful, protracted death.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The funny thing is there are A LOT of strings on Aaron produced songs even if they include synths. Seems like having a brother who can write orchestral arrangements is something that Aaron and Taylor take advantage of often.

I know I sure as heck would if I were a wildly creative musician in a cozy artist collective!!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Also it reminds me of when me and a friend does something crazy like going on an intense roller coaster and when we get off we say let’s do it again but we don’t 😂 Like the thought is in our heads but we don’t do it but it doesn’t mean that we didn’t have a good time. This is in relation to Travis doing another stage appearance.

Such is life 😂

Honestly don’t think it was that serious lol. They’re two theatre kids who had fun and then moved on to the next hijinks in their lives because they always ensue 😂

I’m not inviting this discourse and am stopping it there (unless something funny happens) but to quote @hockeytwittereats it was just a permanent cahoots warning in my eyes lmao