#ttpd analysis

[agreyrose]

“Taylor Swift doesn’t have any queer themes in her lyrics”

Taylor Swift:

“Oh muse, let’s run away together to a place where I can keep you safe and we can be free to be together away from everybody who would want to keep us apart. A place different and far away from here where everyone hunts us and tears us away from each other because they don’t understand our love. Come with me, muse, to a faraway fantasy land where there is no media, no paparazzi, and the only people who live there are gentle and clever, and they DO understand because they’re like us.”

[lipslikethegardensofbabylon]

#ttpd analysis day fourteen - The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

i'm gonna be honest with you this was the hardest song to dissect because every time i listen to it the bridge makes me lose my mind. it has the same addictive pull as the bridge of Would've, Could've, Should've, Cruel Summer, Getaway Car. it's SO good, imo one of her best bridges ever written.

i first want to comment on in your Jehovah's Witness suit which is again another lol-lyric moment, but in a big brain connection i saw that @thisisctrying pointed out that he was essentially selling her a religion. i love this bc it continues the religious imagery of Guilty As Sin?

you hung me on your wall, stabbed me with your push pins makes me think of a couple of different things - image wise, it makes me think of pinning a map up on a wall, marking places that you’ve been (also a hint of carve your name into my bedpost ≠ i'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song (from FOB)). it also makes me think of pierced through the heart but never killed. the other connection that comes up is to “put a pin in it” means to save something for later, typically to postpone something useful but not for immediate use. this meaning feels more likely given the subsequent were you a sleeper cell spy? in fifty years, will all this be declassified?

the bridge just goes so hard, I’m obsessed. there are a few callbacks to previous work but to me this bridge is on mtr echelon:

the betrayal in did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? is so good. esp given how she historically describes her bed/room as a safe space - turned my bed into a sacred oasis/drew a map on your bedroom ceiling/the warmest bed I’ve ever known

the gun weapon of choice is also interesting to me considering she’s also discussed daggers and poison, and a gun specifically has to be loaded. it makes me think of memories feel like weapons/we gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring

the line were you writing a book? IMMEDIATELTY made me think of so I'll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends who'll write books about me, if I ever make it which is especially painful i think for the narrator. they’ve historically said “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized,” she continued. “Not to sound too dark, but I just struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” and this lyric does exactly that - it reduces the person to a product, a story to be sold for a profit.

to end, the lyric and in plain sight you hid but you are what you did and I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive gives me such chills. i saw someone share that they had a history of abuse and that lyric made them feel so validated. there’s just something so haunting and angry but beautiful about it.

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

I don't understand, what's going on with Taylor and Matt trash being a couple? Could you explain to me?

nothing is really going on at the moment tbh, cuz they broke up a pretty long while ago, but the issue is the album (if that's what you're referring to) and taylor swift herself.

[will add sources and more stuff when I find the links and if I realise I missed something out, cuz this is a general thing based off of memory]

Context: dating history

Basically she and matty had been friends for a few years (there are rumors of them hooking up ig in 1989 era maybe, but I don't really care enough to believe shit like that). Apparently he had also been pining for her (according to stuff he said in interviews and tweets) for years, but again, you can still chalk it up to rumors if you wanna.

The thing is that post her breakup with joe alwyn, she started dating him (in like april I think) [there had been dating rumors of them since 2014 tho, and again in March 2023] and the fandom kinda got divided.

Here is the link to their entire timeline

Context: what matty healy did

Matty healy (you prolly know this) is basically racist, sexist, antisemitic, homophobic and God knows what else I have missed out or not been aware of. He did shit like doing the nazi gesture on stage, mocking asian accents, tastelessly making fun of ice spice on her race and bodyshaming her, laughing and basically confirming that he watches violent rape porn of black women on a site that is known to be highly problematic and force their actors (gender neutral) to do things they dont consent to (there was also an actress who was assaulted or something but im not informed on it). Even when he was called out on stuff like this, he accused people (who were poc, btw) of overreacting.

Context: taylor and activism

Taylor had also, in the past (lover era, and miss Americana the doc) had talked about how she had been too quiet about political issues and politics itself for too long, that she understands her influence and power in society, and that she "needs to be on the right side of history" and even specifics such as that she thinks it's spineless to go on stage and say "happy pride month" and not acknowledge the political oppression that queers in USA were facing (something about a bill or the republican party idk man I'm not american, i dont remember but i did research when i watched the doc tho). She has claimed she was gonna be clear about where she stands (many republicans had considered her to be one, and many thought she's conservative or something, but she was always quiet about it, until the lover era). However, she just stopped that activism after the lover era, and went back to being quiet on where she stands (I've seen many swifties refer to the lover era as the activism era) and hasn't spoken about anything substantial really. She did some things like post a black square with 13 hearts during blm, and stuff that every celeb who wasn't openly a pos did, but that's kinda it. Even as a self proclaimed feminist, she didn't speak up on issues such as roe v wade, or about an issue regarding drag queens despite having them in yntcd, or talking about trans/queer rights until she was in a blue state (im not an American, I just like to keep up a little with stuff in usa cuz it's always up in my face sadly, and thus i cant be specific, but anyways, correct me if I'm wrong, or if I missed something).

So even after saying she'll be vocal, she was just... not. And that's basically her on politics or giving a shit about minority communities.

Context: Fandom's reaction

Swifties were extremely disappointed that taylor CHOSE to associate with a man like this, and there were fans calling her out, and she received backlash, too.

Most of these swifties were poc (myself included) and they felt hurt that an artist that they not just supported and developed such a deep connection with, but also financially supported for years, would have such disregard for them. Not just was she dating him, but she kept saying things such as "I have never been happier in all aspects of my life" or saying "I love you" or "uk who you are" in romantic songs on the tour, which was just adding insult to injury. She also did a collab with ice spice (which was completely out of nowhere, and the collab itself seemed badly made and rushed), which fans and others speculated to be a pr cover up for the fact that matty healy had mocked her (many ppl also believed that it was too quick for it to be a pr cover tho).

Now, in the fandom, when poc swifties were calling her out on dating mh, (mostly) white swifties started harassing poc swifties for doing so, or saying that they are hindering with her happiness or some bs about it being "just a fling" (again, myself included). They said it's the same as seeing a friend get out of a long-term relationship and make bad dating choices, and poc swifties should let it go (as if taylor is our close personal friend). In a mostly white fandom, poc swifties felt alienated and sidelined.

Ofc, taylor never addressed any of this backlash, and after she broke up with him, there were articles saying that sources say (which mostly means her pr team atp) that her breakup had nothing to do with his controversies or behavior.

The album release (lyrics, references and reaction)

Now, with the release of ttpd, contrary to what most of the fandom believed, most of the songs on both the albums are believed to be (and heavily hinted on) about matty healy. These include 4 songs- "ttpd", "but daddy I love him", "I can fix him (no really I can)", and "guilty as sin?"

Ttpd, the title track, talks about mh being "a tattooed golden retriever" (wtf) and about him love-bombing her, and her pining after him, thinking about marriage and shit. But daddy I love him and I can fix him, are basically that no one supported her dating decision and she's claiming that she loves him oh so goddamn much, but more importantly, her talking about her fans' reactions. Specifically, describing her poc fans to be "vipers" and "judgemental creeps" who hate her and them being hurt as "bitching and moaning", and basically took the side of the (white) fans who defended her, indirectly. She described his racist bs as "crazy" and said shit like she could "handle a dangerous man." She also has another song, "Guilty as sin?" and while I genuinely don't give a fuck about what she chooses to do in her private life, unless it is problematic, it is about her fantasizing about being with that racist man while being in a long term relationship with joe alwyn. She sings about how she wants him and wants to be with him... in multiple ways, iykyk. Again, out of context, I love this song so much, but that doesn't erase the context, right?

She also has a song "I hate it here" where she says the following lines:

"My friends used to play a game where

We would pick a decade

We wished we could live in instead of this

I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid"

And while there are many reasons why this line by itself is racist (romantisization of a time that was extremely shitty to many communities, most of which she is not a part of, showing herself to be "oh look I'm so woke I still remember the bad things even when I romanticize bad eras in history" which is something you expect from an ignorant white high schooler maybe, not a 34 y/o billionaire who claims to be well-read, etc.) but taylor swift herself saying these is adding insult to injury cuz she has shown time and time again she has no problem with racism (she kept quiet when antonia gentry, a black actress, received hate and racist threats by swifties because of a line BY NETFLIX that taylor didn't like, and she shouldn't ofc, but it wasn't the actress' fault), or associating herself with them (matty healy, for example). It is hypocritical to write something like that after writing an album about pining after a man and his "dangerousness," which is just bigotry. Way to romanticise racism, sexism, and antisemitism, taylor.

Even now, after listening to the album, she clearly doesn't like mh anymore, NOT because of his actions, but because he broke her heart, showing that she still enables and is okay with everything he did.

And that's kind of it (ig) about her and matty healy. I'm not really sure exactly which part you wanted to know, so this is just a gist of it all. Hope it helps :)

[bookmarksandbonfires]

All of this talk about @taylorswift's new album is really just proving to me that people have no idea what poetry is??? Like every time I see a post online someone's put in the comments "wow how poetic touch me while your boys play grand theft auto" or "that metaphor is so obvious how can you say her lyrics are poetry" or whatever and like I get it. The Poetry you had to read in high school felt Incomprehensible and you were Bad At Analyzing It. I felt that way too, and I got a degree in literature.

But "Incomprehensible" is not in the definition of poetry. It doesn't need to be endlessly complex with allusions and metaphors you'll never be able to unravel. The Google definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is:

All poetry has to do is be words that express meaning and have rhythm. (That's basically all songs.) There's nothing in the definition about how you should be unable to parse all the meanings behind it. If you hear a collection of words that make you feel something, that's poetry. It just is.

Or, to quote Wordsworth, poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which he believed should be written in plain language, and since there's a heavy Gothic/Romantic strain in Tortured Poets Department, I think it's reasonable we should default to a definition from that school of thought.

Poetry does not have to be incomprehensible to be meaningful. You can feel something because of the specific words in their specific arrangements, or the literary devices utilized, or even just the rhythm in which they are spoken. It doesn't have to have you getting out a dictionary or diagramming the sentences or spending hours trying to guess what the author really means. It can just make you feel.

I don't know if Taylor Swift is the greatest poet of our generation or whatever. But to say her songs aren't poetry because you think you understand them is belittling and reducing poetry to something it never has been.

[veinsglisten]

I Look in People’s Windows

Peter and cardigan are from Wendy’s perspective.

I Look in People’s Windows is from Peter’s perspective.

“North bound I got carried away

As you boarded your train south”

Peter stays in Neverland while Wendy chooses to leave.

The train imagery echoes Wendy’s perspective in cardigan:

“Cause I knew you

Steppin’ on the last train

Marked me like a bloodstain”

“A feather taken by the wind blowing

I’m afflicted by the not knowing”

Peter lives in a carefree way in Neverland, oblivious to Wendy’s whereabouts in the real world.

So when he finally returns to the real world,

he looks in people’s windows in search of Wendy.

Peter is “addicted to the ‘if only’” and “[haunts] all of [Wendy’s] what-ifs”.

Young Peter sees adults having “their friends over to drink nice wine”, hoping grown-up Wendy will look up and meet his eyes one more time.

But little does he know,

she has stopped and tilted her head,

she has stopped waiting for him.

He “tried to change the ending”

but “Peter losing Wendy” has become an inevitable truth.

With the use of the train imagery in the beginning, the poem can be interpreted as

Peter being on board a train and watching the houses pass by,

“attending Christmas parties from outside”,

in search of Wendy’s warmth

but it’s no longer there

because she thinks Peter is “lost to the lost boys chapter of [his] life”.

Sadly, “the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light”.

[lossisyours]

in the winter, in the icy outdoor pool / when you jumped in first, i went in too / i’m with you even if it makes me blue, which takes me back / to the colour we painted your brother’s walls / honey, without the exes, fights and flaws / we wouldn’t be standing here so tall → handcuffed to the spell i was under / for just one hour of sunshine / years of labour, locks, and ceilings / in the shade of how he was feeling

[octaviasdread]

I hereby conduct this tortured poets society album meeting in all of its mania and sorrowful blues as I move from unhinged impressions to unhinged first-listen analysis because I am incapable of saying less.

(and to all the Aimees i’m so sorry but that’s on Kim)

This Anthology is taking me so long to process, but nothing feels like the first jarring moments of I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - the cacophony and flashes of a birthday breakdown bopping to 80s arcade game synth. It's crumbled cake and mascara streaks when Bejewelled is actually a delusional Mirrorball,

and The Secret Garden reference in I Hate It Here, oh god, she’s so me:

I hate it here so I will go to / secret gardens in my mind / people need a key to get to / the only one is mine / i read about it in a book when I was a precocious child

I need to come back to that. But the whirlwind of Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? Plans cancelled. IM THE ONE barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, actually. It's me chained-up in that poor things victorian mourning dress shrieking elegies in my tortured nightingale screams.

She's Grammys Taylor looking at the crowd of her peers rolling their eyes, she's the litany of snide jokes diminishing her success, and the children, sisters, friends, and girlfriends of those who wronged her loudly singing her songs.

so i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street / crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / who’s afraid of little old me

i was tame i was gentle til the circus made me mean / don’t you worry folks we took out all her teeth

ohhh, the throwback to Speak Now and the significance of MEAN. The song and its titular word show how childish language encapsulates that pointless spite and the bone deep hurt mean behaviour breeds - but now she’s a phoenix risen, and they hurl her youth and her downfall back in her face - word for word, surprised face - its the dark side the The Lucky One, of not escaping the cage of fame games.

you lured me and you hurt me and you taught me / you caged me and then you called me crazy

i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / so all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs / i’m always drunk on my own tears isn’t that what they all said?

PUT NARCOTICS IN MY SONG took me out. This album is funny in the most sardonic and absurdly humorous ways,

like the classic cowboy western guitar strings in her crime songs (I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can - pistols drawn), but especially the ones leading into Fresh Out The Slammer. Fucking genius, and to follow on with static sounds at 2:26ish to the house where you still wait up, is exactly the kinda detail I adore.

Naively, I thought Florence was done with me after Florida!!! It's a lyrical meme for single 20 & 30 somethings who moved away from home,

my friends all smell of like weed or little babies / and the city reeks of driving myself crazy / little did you know your home’s really only / a town you’re just a guest in

and the haunting morphs from the ghost of your girlhood into the catalogue of decisions and delusions which get you through adulthood. Yet it feels almost like an interlude within the song when

me and my ghosts we’ve had a hell of a time / yes i’m haunted but i’m feeling fine / all my girls got their lace and their crimes / and your cheating husband disappeared/ well no one asks questions here

appears like an alternative pov for No Body, No Crime with the girls and their ghosts and their pacts made over wine. Every Action has an Equal Reaction. Run away to Florida, or Texas, and lose yourself to lose the heartbreak. Its self-destruction, it's trauma-healing, bonding, and its breaking.

(what a song for an angsty girl collab, problematic girl in hand with problematic girl, lyrically and thematically, maybe the real love story is the friends we make along the way.)

And that wasn't even the last of it. It's Florence 2.0 with B side Cassandra, but instead of Dance Fever, its Taylor’s glorious mythology with all the allusions, parallels, intertextual and lyrical ruining of my mind:

when the first stone’s thrown they’re screaming / when its burn the bitch they’re shrieking / when the truth comes out its quiet

so they killed cassandra first cus she feared the worst / and tried to tell the town / so they filled my cell with snakes i regret to say / do you believe me now?

No apologies anymore. A girl given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, the GOD OF POETRY, is cursed with her prophecy never being believed: Burning all the witches even if you aren't one, indeed. She saw the truth of the Trojan horse, and the Trojans insulted her. Rep snake branding and the current cultural view of KK and Ye. I don't need to say anything else.

i was in the tower weaving nightmares / twisting all my smiles into snarls

the family the pure greed the christian chrous line / bloods thick but nothing like a payroll / bet they never spared a prayer for my soul

I literally played that THREE times before I got over it enough to finish my first listen,

and i’m still thinking about Clara Bow and that Stevie Nicks tambourine we collectively freaked over from the Spotify installation, and all the silent movie speculation from the track title release.

you look like Clara Bow in this light - you look like Stevie Nicks in '75 - you look like Taylor Swift

Three women whose public profession became entangled with their pain. Silver Springs. Boyfriend songs. The jokes. Clara Bow.

Clara feared being left behind by 'talkies.' Miss Americana. The fear of 30 bringing death to a woman's Hollywood/Musical career,

beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more / only when your girlish glow flickers just so / do they let you know?

Three women who beat the odds - three women whose talent, craft, and popularity carried them through.

But there's something more to unpack here with cycles and patterns - of the past endlessly repeating. It's the transient nature of fame and our fleeting view of beauty mapped out in the untouchable, ever-changing, and culturally worshiped moon.

It's a body of physical craters, a natural body we call discovered, and fight to claim. We project emotions and create rituals of worship - you're the new god we're worshipping. Endless stories are told about her, but we can never fully see the moon with human eyes. Eclipses, shadows, - 'half moonshinе, a full eclipse' - half-truths and half-moons:

this town is fake but you're the real thing / breath of fresh air through smoke rings / take the glory, give everything / promise to be dazzling

There's a play on light and a play on words in the repetition of Dazzling, shining so bright so blindingly bright. Who is dazzled? Who is doing the dazzling? There's an instability between Director - Public - Star. It's Hollywood lights, No one in my small town thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan / No one in my small town thought I'd meet these suits in LA.

She beat the 'War Big Machine' - but for me, there's ambivalence and illusion on all sides of the final lyrics, you've got edge, she never did / the future's bright, dazzling.

(and ‘Edge’ is particularly ironic when you consider the songs on this album…)

Moving again into the B Side, it's Taylor's departure from Invisible string, red strings of fate, and golden threads à la the golden chain of fate in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities that strikes me.

First, I thought her writing was a complete departure from the themes of destiny and fate, but then, The Prophecy:

cards on thе table / Mine play out like fools in a fablе

it isn't an absent symbol; it transformed. It's the evermore forest amped to the max. Witches, folklore, fairy-tale and fable - a homeric epic. Its the hero's journey distilled as she opens the song with a move from 'full throttle' adventure, to slowing down 'Hand on the Throttle' to appeal for Supernatural aid at the hero's transformative fall.

and it was written / I got cursed like eve got bitten / a greater woman wouldn't beg / but I looked at the sky and said / please I've been on my knees / change the prophecy

Lover asking Traffic Lights becomes spending my last coin so someone will tell me, and this might be the most slept-on heartbreaking line. Her search for reassurance can't be framed as an arbitrary musing anymore. It can't be dismissed as a mere thought on her drive home, or something triggered throughout the day - its intent. It's a quest for answers, a plea, a last-ditch hope difficult to deny.

and I sound like an infant / feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen/ a greater woman stays cool/ but I howl like a wolf at the moon / and I look unstable /

gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table / a greater woman has faith But even statues crumble if they're made to wait / i'm so afraid I sealed my fate / no sign of soulmates

She's asking for a gift from the Gods, and when the God's won't answer, she plunges straight down from heaven or Olympus into the self seizure of power in witchcraft. And when it fails, she descends further - Spending my last coin so someone will tell me it'll be okay - paying mortal fortune tellers, even if they lie.

The song leans on figures without redemption, on the Eve's, on the women cursed and punished, and those who scream like infants rather than enduring burdens and pain in silence. She's poisoned, infected like Aurora from the wound of the pricked hand with dreams of him. Is this a punishment?

She's infected, cursed like Eve got bitten, [lyric of all time!!!!] but does a monster always do monstrous things? Who is the monster? Who is the folkloric, the literary Mad Woman? Perhaps she's written from the desperate, the scarred, and the wronged.

and the transition into another tale with Peter? As in Peter losing Wendy? Is it an epilogue to the Betty trilogy? or a different use of the metaphor?

and I didn't wanna hang around / we said it was just goodbye for now /said you were gonna grow up / then you were gonna come find me / words from the mouths of babes / promises oceans deep / but never to keep

The triangle is echoed in love's never lost when perspective is earned, reflecting the different povs of Betty, August, and James, and placing Peter as the new conclusion - the shelf life of those fantasies has expired / lost to the lost boys chapter of your life/ the woman who sits by the window/ has turned out the (porch?) light.

Promises wear out. Wendy's window closes, and so does this chapter in her life.

my lost fearless leader / in closets like cedar / preserved from when we were just kids / is it something I did? / the goddess of timing / once found us beguiling

is also - intentionally or not - Narnia coded. Is the storybook collecting dust in her closet? Or is the closet still holding a portal to another fairytale land accessible only in youth, another home you can't return to (and another folklore parallel with mtr, anywhere I want just not home).

Side B is so harmonious with ttpd being the end of a chapter as the anthology moves through all the seven stages (or Taylor playlists) of grief.

The Manuscript, the signing of the autopsy, is the Death of the Author. It's the Roland Barthes realisation of All Too Well reborn in joy and fan culture, the story isn't mine anymore, of the Eras - 'I hope you hear these songs and think of this night' - Tour. She knew what the agony had been for - art. connection. - and its these things that create the hope lost in ttpd's journey through mania, disorientation, loss and despair. It all leads to healing, nothing left but a manuscript.

So many thoughts from listen no.1 and they’ll probably change, but i’m so exhausted from this 31 song rollercoaster that I'm just gonna let this sit. death of the author, I guess.

[kaiyakuro]

I just had the craziest realization while relistening to TTPD, and I HAD to say something...

The two Travis related songs are Track 15 and Track 22.

Taylor has two SONGS TITLED Fifteen and 22!!!

Some of the lyrics in Fifteen:

Well, in your life you'll do things Greater than dating the boy on the football team I didn't know it at fifteen

Now she's gone on and done all those things AND she's dating "the boy on the football team"! And the song is FULL of football references!

Lyrics from 22:

I don't know about you But I'm feeling twenty-two Everything will be alright if You keep me next to you

And Taylor sings about feeling like she's back in High School! She's feeling YOUNG again!

[harrytheehottie]

keep going back to the themes of the song peter… a constant back and forth relationship that ends… you ‘keep the light on’ waiting for them because that’s the nature of your situation… days weeks months years go by but once you see that familiar car round the drive or your phone lights up with a text from them you’re ready and willing to let them back in with promises of ‘getting better for you’ and then one day almost without noticing you build yourself back up to a place where you don’t need that anymore… you still have positive memories and wish them the best but the best doesn’t mean you anymore !!!!!!

[popbloganddropit]

The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift (Part 3)

Apologies for the long delay, I got hit by a holiday and life has been a little busy and sleepless lately. I will try my best to get the finale, Part 4. Out as quickly as possible!

17. The Black Dog- Some of my favorite songs are “You Are In Love” and “Right Where You Left Me,” and I’m still baffled this was left as a bonus track. If I wrote this song (solo!!!), I would never shut up about and put it on every album I could. The Anthology has some really great, interesting stuff, but I just think “The Black Dog” is in a league of its own. The lyrics scratch an itch I didn’t know I had and the drums and echo kicking in on “screaming” every time (except the perfection that is the whispered final one) is so cathartic. This is a quintessential break up song; a perfect balance of confusion, nostalgia, sadness and anger. Tattoo this song on my body and put “I hope it’s shitty in The Black Dog” on my gravestone. 5/5

Best Line: “And hire a priest to come and exorcise my demons, even if I die screaming, and I hope you hear it”.

18. imgonnagetyouback- This track is a little meh for me. There’s some lines that feel like they could have used a second draft, and some of them are in the chorus. “Smash up your bike” just seems very random to me and doesn’t make up for the slightly off rhyme scheme enough. There’s some fun vocal moments; she sounds like she’s having the best time in the bridge, but I can see why this is was left off the main track list. 2.5/5

Best Line: “I, I hear the whispers in your eyes, I'll make you wanna think twice. You'll find that you were never not mine. I'm gonna get you back.”

19. The Albatross- This song is fun to sing along to, despite the message being sad. A little research into the Time of the Ancient Mariner (or explainers from the literary Swifties) might help this song click for you if it hasn’t. There’s also a little Blank Space infused in, a “this is what they’re saying about me, I’ll be that character” energy. “Cross your thoughtless heart, only liquor anoints you” rolls off the tongue far smoother than anything containing the word “anoint” has any right to. 4.5/5

Best Line: “Devils that you know, raise worse hell than a stranger. She's the death you chose, you're in terrible danger.”

20. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus- I love a song with a lot or yearning and boy, did I get a feast here. I also really like the subtle, but beautiful musical background Dessner has given us. Those little flourishes elevate the mood so perfectly. The “Maroon” reference is so interesting. The possibilities of mixed genders in the title. There is much to contemplate here, but you are expertly only left with questions, similar to the narrator. A little like the state of the narrator’s affairs, this song haunts the little crevices of my mind, worming it’s way towards being one of my favorites. 5/5

Best Line: Spotify once described my musical aura as “yearning and wistful” and this entire chorus scratches that itch so well. “If you want to break my cold, cold heart, just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'. If you want to tear my world apart, just say you've always wondered.”

21. How Did It End- another song that might be a career high but is delegated to the middle of the second secret album??? At least it’s technically a Track 5. She really captures the embarrassment of breaking up and everyone finding out and some acting like they care so they can have more fodder for gossip. Meanwhile the protagonist doesn’t really even seem to have the answers to give them, a genius double entendre with both onlookers and the narrator asking the titular question. “Soon they'll go home to their husbands. Smug cause they know they can trust him,” really punches in a break up song. Everyone else has what she doesn’t. There is so much heartbreaking minutiae tucked into this song; it’s a beautiful moment of vulnerability. 5/5

Best Line: Truly a lot of great stuff. I love the minor circus theme sprinkled in throughout the album, including here with, “Come one, come all. It's happening again. The empathetic hunger descends.” But “And so a touch that was my birthright became foreign,” is so good, it makes me physically ill.

22. So High School- a classic Taylor Swift track list move is to whiplash the listener a bit after ripping their heart out with a drastic tone shift and “So High School” continues this time-honored tradition. It is a track full of ear worms and nostalgic soft rock sounds that make it sound like it’s a classic needle drop in a 2000’s rom com. She sounds like she’s having so much fun, and it’s infectious. I wouldn’t return to high school for a million dollars, but this song would have me throwing on a hoodie with the neck cut and rolling the waistband of my Soffe shorts in an instant! 4.5/5

Best Line: “I wanna find you in a crowd just to hide from you,” feels so perfectly high school to me. Honorary mention to “Truth, dare, spin bottles. You know how to ball, I know Aristotle. Brand new, full-throttle. Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” for being so funny. If you think those are dead serious lines meant to be taken at face value, that’s a skill issue.

23. I Hate It Here- Daydreamers will delight at this song’s beautiful imagery. The “Here” in the title can be anywhere. A bad date, a town you’ve outgrown, a bad time in your life. Criticism of the second verse was overblown upon the album release within context of the song, but it is a little clunky. I really love the flowing melody and glowing depictions of where she escapes to, but I don’t need the verses the way I do in many other songs on the album. 3.5/5

Best Line: “I hate it here so I will go to lunar valleys in my mind, when they found a better planet, only the gentle survived.”

24. thanK you aIMee - this is a cheeky little track about rising above the bullies. It’s catchy and fun enough, I think that’s the capitalization in the title is distracting a bit from the point. The song feels like a wink and a nudge while ultimately taking the high road and the title feels like a pointed barb. 3.5/5

Best Line: “But when I count the scars, there's a moment of truth. That there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you.”

Are you an original album or anthology songs stan? Let me know in the comments!!

[mxmtoon]

no more paternity tests on Down Bad just accept it’s about a monsterfucker who fell in love with an alien

[agreyrose]

Also this:

“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”

“Hits Different”

I feel like that meme of the guy with the stuff pinned on the board and all the red lines (insane)

[lipslikethegardensofbabylon]

#ttpd analysis day thirteen - I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

so fun fact, when I first listened to ttpd I hadn't read the prologue (does this make me a bad swiftie? lol) but so when i first heard ICDIWABH i texted one of my friends "this song sounds like mania". i know now that she referred to the relationship itself as the mania but following heartbreak, some people can be purposefully self destructive/harmful, and in that same vein i think some people refuse to process events when they've recently happened and occupy their mind with other things (hello denial stage). so basically that is ICDIWABH in a nutshell

so the lyrics of ICDIWABH are worrisome and extreme (and dare I say, unfortunately painfully relatable). to couple those lyrics with the upbeat, speedy production, the whole song sounds like avant-garde dadaism, basically

Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

lights, camera, bitch, smile, even when you wanna die

I cry a lot but I am so productive, it's an art

I'm miserable! and nobody even knows!

once you get past the satirical production and first verse, there are some parallels to Hits Different (which also has an upbeat production):

I keep finding his things in drawers crucial evidence, I didn't imagine the whole thing/I find the artifacts, cried over a hat

one of the lyrics that stands out to me in ICDIWABH is I can pass this test. it can go a lot of different ways and I think that's why it resonates. it makes me think of TIMT and fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here, Bejeweled did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve, and even Dear John's never impressed by me acing your tests. it could be indicative of the relationship itself being a test (to the public), or the muses partner testing the narrator. given the context of the song, it's likely the narrator saying i can show everyone I'm fine but it wasn't true

[wellisntthatinteresting]

The Tortured Jiara Department #9

I gotta say, as I was preparing to post this song came out of nowhere. But it’s kinda perfect…

🎵Song

Fresh Out The Slammer

💿Track number

7

👫Whose vibes are we picking up on?

Kiara/Jiara season 3 vibes, with Kie being on lockdown in various ways (Singh, parents, Kittyhawk)

💕Lyric loves

“Now, pretty baby, I'm running back home to you / Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to”

“All those nights you kept me going / Swirled you into all of my poems / Now we're at the starting line, I did my time”

“And no matter what I've done, it wouldn't matter anyway / Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake”

✍️Wellisntthatinteresting’s take

Color me surprised that a song with “slammer” in the title isn’t all about JJ. But here we are. The proverbial slammer can be interpreted in the traditional sense (how many times was Kie held against her will in S3 again?🤔). But almost as important, Kiara and JJ are prisoners of their own inner demons and thoughts, which is why the burn in S3 is so painfully slow as actions catch up with thoughts and feelings.

8/10 This one is another slow burner but with more listens, really becomes a solid track. The breathiness in the vocals evokes a sense of longing that I think works really well in the context of Jiara.

[all-at-once-you-are-the-one]

Idk if this is a hot take or not, but IMO loml is one of the most straightforward songs on the album and it actually tells a story in chronological order. Let’s examine:

Who's gonna stop us from waltzing

Back into rekindled flames?

If we know the steps anyway

We embroidered the memories

Of the time I was away

Stitching, "We were just kids, babe"

Yes, I know this very much sounds like it’s about a certain someone but I actually think here she is referring to the breaks between her and Joe that she’s previously alluded to in Hits Different & That’s When TV. She also often describes this relationship as making her feel like a kid in other songs like CIWYW, INTHAF etc.

I said, "I don't mind, it takes time"

I thought I was better safe than starry-eyed

This was the line that really sparked my curiosity. What does she not mind? It seems like she’s changing her mind on something and resigning herself to being stable and settled rather than leaving to find something better. This is the period when we got songs like Lavender Haze. He said he needed more time before marriage and she was like you know what yeah, why do women have to get married anyway?? Can’t we just be together?? Both of them were denying that it was what she truly wanted and he just didn’t.

You and I go from one kiss to gettin married

Still alive, killing time at the cemetery

Never quite buried

In your suit and tie, in the nick of time

You lowdown boy, you stand up guy

Holy Ghost, you told me I'm

The love of your life

You said I'm the love of your life

About a million times

She’s waiting and waiting and waiting for the marriage thing to happen and he just keeps placating her by saying she’s the love of his life. (I can totally just picture him saying “but you’re the love of my life and we’re happy, isn’t that enough?”). She has faith in him because he’s such a good guy with integrity, surely he wouldn’t just lie to her and lead her on. Surely he’ll show up in the nick of time to marry her like he said he would.

Who's gonna tell me the truth

When you blew in with the winds of fate

And told me I reformed you

Here’s what’s his name making his grand entrance!

And all at once, the ink bleeds

He promised her all the same things and then took it away so quickly which released the stopper on all her pent up feelings about being let down in this way. The rest of this verse is pretty clear cut

You talked me under the table

Talking rings and talking cradles

I wish I could un-recall

How we almost had it all

Now it’s about them both! She’s going into detail about the way in which they let her down

Dancing phantoms on the terrace

Are they second-hand embarrassed

That I can't get out of bed?

Cause something counterfeit's dead

It was legendary

It was momentary

It was unnecessary

Should've let it stay buried

This is the saddest part!!! This is also about both of them! What’s his name is obvious, but it’s also about her and Joe. She knew they had issues! She knew he didn’t want what she wanted! That’s why they had their break! Now she feels that when they resumed their relationship it wasn’t real, he just started lying to her and she was also lying to herself, and they should have just broken up for good the first time.

Oh, what a valiant roar

What a bland goodbye

The coward claimed he was a lion

I'm combing through the braids of lies

Again, what’s his name is very obvious here. She’s also upset about her breakup with Joe: she broke up with him remotely! And maybe he just let her! She thought he was brave, that he had integrity, but he lied to her over and over and over again, every time he promised they would have the things she wanted for her future. He was just delaying the inevitable and wasting her time.

If you can get past the Matty of it all and accept the story she’s telling here at face value there is SO MUCH she’s sharing with us here.

[veinsglisten]

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

“your hologram stumbled into my apartment”

”could it be enough to just float in your orbit”

“can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses

cooler in theory but not if you force it to be”

the imagery and such somber mood

🩻🖲️📽️

and the use of the words “scarlet maroon”

both words indicate a red-tinted colour

“scarlet” hints at the sinful nature of the romance

and “maroon” refers to the speaker who is stranded and abandoned

and the speaker is afraid that his impression of her will fade despite her strong reddish colour

if he gets on with his life with somebody else:

“and you have some kids with an internet starlet

will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon

like it never happened”