One thing that I think everyone can appreciate about Taylor Swift no matter if you like her voice or not is the depth and beauty of her lyrics. From her debut album to the snippets of lyrics we have from Tortured Poets Department so far she is undeniably a great lyricist. It's impossible to encapsulate her discography in just a few lyrics but here is my favorite from each album.
Debut/Taylor Swift
“You could have helped if you had wanted to but no one notices until it’s too late to do anything.”
-The Outside
A fun fact about this song is that it was actually written by Taylor Swift when she was only twelve. She wrote this song about how lonely she felt as a middle schooler and how she adapted to the new grade. After she had written in it, twelve year old Taylor wrote in her diary, "I don't know if it'll go anywhere, but it made me feel better." Over twenty years later millions of people have heard it!
Fearless
“And I love you for giving me your eyes. Staying back and watching me shine”
- The Best Day
To be honest, I am a bit biased towards the best day because it is my Mom and Dads favorite Taylor Swift song! This song is about Taylor Swift's parents (mainly her mom) and how grateful she is to have grown up with them. I love this song because it reminds me of how lucky I am to have my parents!
Speak Now
“It's alright just wait and see, your string of lights are still bright to me.”
-Innocent
Speak Now was Taylor Swift's first completely self written album. Taylor says each song on the album is a letter to a specific person. This made it so hard to choose a song because honestly all of them are great! I think that this song and this lyric in particular is so pretty!
Red
“And maybe we got lost in translation. Maybe I asked for too much. But maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up. Running scared, I was there. I remember it All Too Well.”
-All Too Well Ten Minute Version
Red is an amazingly written album and a personal favorite of mine. All the songs are great but I find myself always coming back to maybe the most well known one. All Too Well Ten Minute Version. All Too Well Ten Minute Version or ATWTMVTVFTVSGARILPS as Taylor Swift fans often abbreviate it, is the extended version of All Too Well on Red stolen version. This was a ten minute vault release and is currently Taylors longest song. The song is more of a story than a song as it follows the relationship of Taylor and her ex boyfriend Jake Gyllenhal. It goes through all the stages of emotions someone goes through during a break up and is in my opinion one of her most well written songs ever.
1989
“When you lost control, red blood white snow, blue dress on a boat your new girl is my clone.”
-Is Itver Now
I picked this quote because I think that it is one of her most iconic lyrics! This line refers to two incidents that happened with Harry Styles. The first one being the snowmobile crash where Harry lost control of the vehicle. This accident is also referred to in "Out of the Woods" where it says “20 stitches in a hospital room” because Styles reportedly got 20 stitches after the accident. The second phrase refers to the infamous 2013 photo of Taylor wearing a blue dress on a boat in the British Virgin Islands. The unconfirmed rumor is that she was stood up by Harry. It is also rumored that they returned from the Caribbean separately. Fun fact, Taylor wears a similar blue dress in the Out of the Woods music video. I think that what's awesome about this lyric is that it really demonstrates where in my opinion Taylor shines the most, which is storytelling.
Reputation
“Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”
-New Years Day
Since I am a huge New Years Day fan, of course I had to pick a lyric from it and of course I picked that lyric! This song is the perfect album closer for Taylor’s sixth studio album and is one of the only slower songs on Reputation. A fun fact is that Taylor played this song on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2017. This lyric in my opinion is so beautiful. When Taylor says this she means that she doesn’t want to lose the people that she loves. I am so excited to here this song when Rep TV comes out!
Lover
“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.”
-The Man
One thing that is super cool about Taylors album Lover is that it is where she starts advocating for the issues she believes in. As talked about in her documentary Ms. Americana, this is when she realizes that she doesn’t have to be perfect in the publics eye and that she has the power to make change. That year she started by encouraging Tennesseans to vote for the liberal governor and then went on to write songs to show her support of different movement, including womens rights. For “The Man,” Taylor said that she was inspired by, what the headlines would be if she was a man. She then followed up by saying “If I had the same accomplishments, same dating history, what would it be like if I was a man?” In another quote by her, she talks about how the standards in the music industry are completely different for men and women.
Folklore
“I'm still a believer but I don't know why. I've never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try”
-Mirrorball
Of course I had to pick my favorite song off my favorite album to be my lyric! If I could pick this whole song I would but this lyric especially sticks out to me. Folklore is a total genre change from Lover. Taylor jokes at her tour that when she imagines Folklore she imagines being a victorian woman in the woods holding a candle stick. Folklore is super cool because she incorporates characters. For example Betty, James, and Augustine in the folklore love triangle but that is a whole different topic I could go on and on about. Mirrorball however has been my favorite Taylor Swift song ever since I first heard it. This song is about being a celebrity but Taylor says she also hopes that other people can relate to it. Folklore in my opinion was one of her best written albums because the lyrics are so relatable to most people. One of my favorite Taylor quotes ever is one she said about the song Mirrorball. In this quote she says, “We have mirrorballs in the middle of a dance floor because they reflect light, they are broken a million times and that's what makes them so shiny, we have people like that in society, too.”
Evermore
“Now you hang from my lips like the Gardens of Babylon. With your boots beneath my bed, forever is the sweetest con.”
-Cowboy Like Me
This lyric was the entire reason why I chose to write this piece. Evermore is an amazingly written album but in a different way from its sister album Folklore. In my opinion, where Folklore is beautifully written for the relatableness of its lyrics, Evermore is well written because you could spend years analyizing it and still would not completely understand the depth of it. This lyric specifically is my favorite out of every single lyric she’s ever written because I didn’t understand it at first. This song is about two con artists who fall in love and don’t know if there love is real or there being conned by one another. On thing that I think is super cool about this song is that people still argue if this is a love song or a tragic song. This lyric refers to the Gardens of Babylon which was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. But uniquely there is no tangible evidence that it ever existed. There are paintings and drawings but no physical proof.When Taylor writes this lyric she means to show that there is no tangible proof that the con artists love ever happened. Maybe they just made it up.
Midnights
“Spilling out to you for free. But darling, darling, please. You wouldn't take my word for it. If you knew who was talking”
-Dear Reader
The songs on midnights have a connection in the sense that, most of them have the theme about what Taylor thinks about when she can’t fall asleep. It’s the overthinking that happens in her head at midnight. One of those songs is Dear Reader. Dear reader is a song that Taylor wrote for the readers or the people who listen to her songs. She wrote it to be an ironic song purposefully contradicting the fact that you can trust her advice in her lyrics. She starts off by advising “Dear reader you don’t have to answer just cause they asked you.” and “The greatest of luxuries is your secrets” but then in the chorus says, “you should find another guiding light” and also “never take advice from someone whos falling apart.” This is an album closer and fits really well with midnights being a self degrading album.
The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD)
“Say it one again with feeling how the death rattle breathing silences as the soul was leaving. The deflation of dreaming. Leaving me bereft and reeling. My beloved ghost and me. Sitting in a tree.
D-Y-I-N-G.”
-How did it end?
If I could I would have chosen this entire song but since I can’t, I decided to just do the entire bridge. Tortured Poets Department came out on April 19th and was immediately my 4th favorite album on the 20th it became my third favorite, on the 21st it became by second favorite and now it is my favorite. Every time Ilisten to is I like it more. I didn’t discover this song immediately but after seeing multiple people call it the best I decided to really listen to it. This song is so sad and when I realized it was the track five on the anthology it made so much sense. It definitely took me a lot of googling to figure out all the words but I interpreted the choruses lyrics as this, “Say it one again with feeling how the death rattle breathing silenced as the soul was leaving.” This refers to the very end of her and Joe’s relationship. She is basically explaining the moment their relationship ended and using someone passing away as the metaphor. “The deflation of our dreaming” means that the invisionment she had for her life vanished as she and Joe broke up. “Leaving me bereft and reeling.” I had to google both of these word but according to Meriam Webster, “bereft” is “suffering the death of a loved on” and reeling is “lose one's balance and stagger or lurch violently.” when she says this line she is saying that the ending of her relationship made her lose balance. “My beloved ghost and me sitting in a tree D-Y-I-N-G” means that what used to be Joe and her in love has turned into a ghost and her. This is my interpretation of this song but it is definitely subjective and I would love to hear other people ideas about what it could mean!
Overall Taylor Swift is a great lyricist. It was definitely hard for me to choose songs and lyrics and there were so many other I could pick!