#youremyachillesheelllll

[treacherous-crooked-love]

State of Grace by Taylor Swift, a lyrical analysis

An intro

One of my favourite songs from Taylor!! I just love the line "So you were never a saint, and I loved in shades of wrong, we learn to live with the pain, mosaic broken hearts!" I like how the song sets the tone of Red with the lyric "Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right." This song is hopeful, and encapsulates the feeling of a new love, yet with a warning message.

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"Traffic lights" is an imagery that is used by Taylor throughout the album and also later on in Lover.

In Holy Ground, she writes "Took off faster then a green light, go!" and in All Too Well, "You almost ran the red cuz you were looking over at me."

Later on, in Death by a Thousand Cuts, she sings "I ask the traffic lights if it'll be alright and they said-

In DBATC, Taylor says that she looked to the traffic lights for reassurance, as a sign that everything was going to be alright.

In State of Grace, I believe that traffic lights set the scene for the song, especially with the strong drum beats as the introduction. It paints a fast-paced, electric scene of a city, perhaps reflecting upon her hectic lifestyle, further highlighted in "and all we know is touch and go."

"We are alone with our changing minds" also reflects upon the fickle nature of affection.

Taylor further reflects upon the fragile nature of love in "We fall in love till it hurts or bleeds or fades in time" which is a lyric parallel to Begin Again, ("...thinking all love ever does is break, burn and end").

In the chorus, she addresses the subject of the song, her lover at this instant. She reflects upon how their love has taken her by surprise and affected her in a way that she'll "never be the same".

The armour that she puts on after past forays into love drops when she is with this person. Their presence is so huge and electric that it seems that the room erupts, "like a cannonball".

Referring to "Up in your room and our slates are clean", "Slate" basically means blackboard, so to have clean slates could mean that their stories, narratives are rewritten and changed by each other.

"Just twin fire signs, four blue eyes" could mean that at the time, it seemed that they were compatible for each other due to the fact that they had so much so much in common, down to their horoscopes and eye colour. This probably gave her a sign that it could be something different from the past.

It also means that at that moment, nothing mattered to her more than that person--she was wholly absorbed by his presence.

MY FAVORITE VERSE!!!!!

In this verse, she acknowledges their flaws when it comes to love-all the grey areas and in-betweens. He was never the best when it comes to being a lover, and neither was she.

Their hearts had been broken before, as she sings in "Mosaic broken hearts"--Hearts that had been broken and shattered into pieces but pulled back together again to form a mosaic.

Yet, she and her lover "lives with the pain" and carry on with their love, diving into it fearlessly and recklessly.

And we come to the title of the song, "State of Grace" which refers to a state of goodness and peace. This is somehow in contrast with the next line "This is the worthwhile fight."

She often refers to love as a battle, as can be seen in her later song "The Great War" and "Afterglow". In the Great War, she sings about a conflict during a relationship, "I vowed I would always be yours if we survived the Great War" and in Afterglow, "Fighting with a true love is boxing with no gloves". (I've always found Afterglow and The Great War similar in terms of subject matter)

Additionally, in "I Wish You Would" she sings "I wish we could go back and remember what we were fighting for" she refers to love as being something that had to be fought for; it clearly wasn't something easy.

Yet, she refers to this challenge as "worthwhile" as it was something that she cherished and at the time wanted to last.

She also references some Greek mythology in the next few lines, "Hands of fate"--perhaps referring to the Fates?

The fates are 3 divinities in Greek Mythology representing the inescapable destiny of life. Interestingly, the concept of fate and destiny appears in her later song, "Invisible String"---"All along there was some invisible string tying you to me." (next mashup on the eras tour maybe? 👀)

She thinks of this love as something fated, supposed to happen to her. (Although this is juxtaposed by the line, "I never saw you coming") At the end of it, even though she was surprised at how he has affected her, she believes that their love is meant to be.

Another reference to events in Greek Mythology is "You're my achilles heel" --She refers to him as her weakness, a source of her vulnerability. This is also a callback to her previous lyric "You come around and the armour falls". She can be vulnerable when she's with him.

Interestingly, with the battle concept, having no armour and referring to him as her "achilles heel" makes her more susceptible to being wounded in the ruthless game of love.

Despite this, she is earnest in her belief that this love is "the golden age of something good and right and real".

This reflects upon the earnest hoping that a relationship (in its early stage) would last and become stronger. 🥹

I love Taylor's writing in this song, and how her later songs seem to reference this song. This really does set the tone for Red, in its vulnerable hope, clearly written to indicate the start of a relationship.

dISCLAIMER!

these are just my intepretations, not meant to be a portrayal of Taylor's personal life and feelings!