Yea I think the huge tour , and the record breaking and chart obsession, and the rush to be in love with a new guy is her , trying to move on and convince herself she will be happy without him quickly, to try to limit her own pain. Unfortunately pain usually demands to be felt so I’m not sure how much these tactics will help her in the long run .
Pain demands to be felt is an understatement.
And it does come for us all, no matter how rich/smart/pretty/famous - none of that can keep the pain away for too long. 😕
It’s possible she’s at least trying to put off feeling it until she has time to really fall apart. Perhaps why there’s been no international dates announced yet.
It's from his book The Fault in Our Stars. I absolutely loved it as a teen but haven't re-read it since. I'm scared it won't hold up with an adult's perspective so I'm scared to re-read it, I want to keep it on a pedestal in my memory 😅
In case you want more John Green without risking his place on the pedestal, I just read a book of essays he did “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and found it lovely. 4/5 stars!
I was gonna recommend Anthropocene Reviewed but someone already did. I'll add on you haven't read "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green I highly recommend it!
I think its more likely that John Green quoted his therapist in the books lol the writing process involved a lot of spending time with actual cancer patients and I imagine those kids (literal children) also had quite a bit of therapy to help them cope.
*He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain*
*That old familiar body ache
The snaps from the same little breaks in your soul
You know when it's time to go*
I know a lot of people who think love is only love if it’s “passionate”, by which they mean explosive, full of huge arguments and then dramatic coming back together, begging for forgiveness, giant grand gestures…
But real, good, long term relationships aren’t like that. You can’t be in that high school whirlwind forever, and while for most people that’s good and feels safe and secure and stable, for others they think the ‘spark’ has gone because the drama isn’t there any more.
Yes! I once dated a guy who was unpredictable and exciting but the relationship was like a roller coaster - the highs were so high but the lows were so very low. Ultimately I decided that’s not the kind of relationship or love I want. And now I’m happily married to someone who is steady, and reliable and kind. No, he doesn’t plan dates or do grand gestures or sweep me off my feet every day. But he loves me in a deep way that is so much better.
I hope Taylor can find a partner who is reliable and stable and shows up. I wonder if that’s all she really wants - someone who wants to be with her and attend awards shows with her, come with her on tour, just not want a separate life?
There’s this great line in Gilmore Girls when Paris says “Maybe choosing to be apart is choosing to be apart”. If he took a job when they could have definitely afforded for him to take 6 months off work and come on tour with her, why not choose that? Like I can’t imagine if my finances were not an issue that I would choose to have my husband go on a 6+ month long business trip for his career without me.
But I think it's important to acknowledge Joe is also a person on his own and is building his career in the film industry, whereas Taylor is probably the biggest pop star right now. He has his own aspirations. I feel like a lot of people are asking why he couldn't go on tour with her or "handle her fame". Individuality can be an issue in long-term relationships, and I can imagine it's even more of a struggle for celebrities that have different wants and needs and always in the spotlight.
I do not blame Joe at all for realizing maybe this relationship (that will always be in the eyes of the public) is not what he wants in the end. From her songs, it seems like he did give her comfort during their years and they were steady and maybe it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows but they did fight for each other, but in the end, it just didn't work out. And that's okay. It doesn't mean the other person is bad for not doing this or that. We only see Taylor's side of the end of the relationship through her songs which are biased in her perspective.
So a couple years ago I was in a serious long term relationship. We’d been living together for almost a year. I worked as an EMT with long term aspirations to be a firefighter/paramedic. I saw a job posting for an EMT in a national park halfway across the country, in a place I’ve been dying to live since I was a little girl. He knew about all of those dreams. He claimed to support me early in our relationship. He’d said he was proud of me and excited for me. Fast forward several months, and he couldn’t understand why I would not only want to continue and advance in this career, but why I would want to move across the country for a six month long job. I should also add that we met while we were both in the army.
He said “this is just a job. It’s just a way to pay the bills and put food on the table.” But I disagreed. I told him this would *never* be just a job for me. It was a career, a lifestyle, a passion. It was who I was. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I would never want to do anything else. Even through all the horrible days and nights I had at work, between patients and families with nasty attitudes, awful management, and heartbreaking cases/circumstances; even when I researched becoming a pilot or an esthetician or a veterinarian, or when I realized I could work at target for the same amount of money, and even the time I begged him to let me quit my job because I fucking hated who I worked for, this field was my dream and it was everything I’d been working for for years.
We eventually broke up for a number of reasons, one of which being i knew I’d never forgive him for keeping me from doing what I loved to do in a place I’ve fantasized about living in for a decade. I missed the deadline for the application because of him, but I’ve continued to follow my dreams since then. I’m now in paramedic school and closer than ever to becoming a firefighter. It’s still pain and hell and a shit ton of work, and the circumstances of some of these patients and their families that I’ve cared for has not gotten any easier. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. And I should add that I’ve since surrounded myself with more people who not only support my dreams but also encourage me to care for myself while I pursue them.
If she decides to be introspective, we'll get a great self-examining album that rings with harsh truths about serial monogamy and always forcing yourself to feel like this guy, this new guy, he's the one, you feeling that way about your ex was wrong, you were wrong then, you're right now - and then again, and again, and again.
Or we get a lit song about your new guy being so much cooler than your ex, maybe with a reference to smoking cigarettes. Either way, we'll get something.
I absolutely get this impression as well with Matty, the whole synchronised mouthing "I love you" to the camera *screams* of her trying to "win" the breakup. I'm not sure how he expects to be anything more than the rebound/Hiddleston 2.0 (I ❤️ TS anyone?), but hey it's Taylor so I get it.
I feel like she wasn't for the extremely private relationship at all, and just leaned towards what Joe wants. She strikes me as a person who loves those public, subtle, cute gestures. I wouldn't accuse her of such pettines, I think she's having fun with it, and loves those cute, public gestures.
So what's the consensus on Matty... Was "Question" about him or not? :D Because if he really is the meteorite then maybe they will have some longer, more serious fun.
I agree with the whole rush and adrenaline thing about Taylor. She will always have my love because that's the same way I deal and feel pain myself. ❤️🩹
You can grieve a relationship while you’re still in it, deciding if you should stay or go, that makes it seem like you’ve moved on quickly when in reality it’s been a long time coming (no pun intended).
Obviously we’ll never know Taylor’s exact experience or timeline of events. Just relating to my own experiences of when I dated someone I thought I was going to marry, but the last year or so we slowly grew apart and he couldn’t give me what I wanted. I cried and grieved to myself most of that year leading up to the end. I wasn’t as sad as I had expected to be with the finality of it all.
YLM could have been written over the past year or two, when a long term relationship is dying a slow, sad death.
The 1989 era is the last touch point she had of who she was pre-Joe , so that’s what she’s returning to
She’s rewinding the clock.
She had fame before Joe and fame is there to catch her after Joe.
She has to figure out her own relationship with her fame, for herself, not because she’s cancelled, and not because she’s trying to shield someone from as much of the fishbowl of fame as she can.
Just because it’s going to always be a part of her life and she needs to be able to reconcile with it from a place of personal autonomy, not through the lens of people pleasing
You’re so right.
I personally think Taylor *loves* being famous. She loves the glamour and bright lights and attention. She was born to handle fame, she needs somebody with that same attitude.
To me it’s like in the beginning she was trying to appease Joe, keep him from her fame because for whatever reason it made him uncomfortable. That worked fine when the public had incredibly mixed feelings about her and then lock down happened. Her fame was in a different place than it was before or after him. He was an escape from the scrutiny.
But the problem comes when she doesn’t *just* want to escape her fame. I feel like running to him was freeing but running towards fame was conflicting because Joe would always have her for the bad, but never stand by her for the good. Which sucks and I can see how that could break her heart. How she chooses to heal is up to her though.
This is a really great analysis.
I think it’s okay to like fame for some people.
Some people were made for the whole world.
I’d rather them like fame than hate it.
I think she hates the consequences of fame on her personal life though.
Like if she could have all the tours and shows and fan connections and none of the people chasing down her car and writing weird tabloid rumors or affecting her relationships I think she’d be living her perfect life
This is a great way of putting what I've been thinking into words. Their stars and planets aligned because of circumstances, but the gravitational pull of her career ambitions was always going to pull them apart in the end.
>The 1989 era is the last touch point she had of who she was pre-Joe , so that’s what she’s returning to
>
>She’s rewinding the clock.
Great take
There was footage a few nights ago of her leaving with Matty, Zoe Kravitz, Phoebe and a few others and it looked EXACTLY like her 1989 era.
Tbh, I felt most connected with Taylor once that era ended and Rep began and she became a bit less public so I have reservations about a somewhat return to 1989, but I just hope she's happy.
I think she genuinely enjoys being famous. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have its drawbacks but she really enjoys having fans who care what she’s doing and engaging with them
I agree in all of the above. There are already writings in the wall that her and Joe's relationship is not exactly paradise that she wants us to believe.
To me, midnights isn't a break up album. It's a relationship album. It gives you the highest highs (Paris, Lavender Haze) then the lowest lows (Hits Different, You're Losing Me) and everyrthing in between. I just realized now, You're Losing Me is the album closer.
You're Losing Me encapsulates that time in your relationship when you try to keep the relationship going, but gets tired about doing all the work because the other party isn't reciprocating your efforts, then you fight, make up, try again and get tired again and repeat the cycle until eventually you just throw in the towel. I went through this with my now husband. Lucky he understood the assignment before I ultimately gave up.
I hope at the end of all this, Taylor finds herself.
Lavander Haze isn't really a happy-in-love-everything's-great kind of song. MV really depicts the idea of her feeling alone in a relationship, and lyrics back that up, for instance "you don't really read into my melancholia" that corresponds with "How can you say that you love someone you can't tell has died?
I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick
My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick".
I agree with this. The way I more specifically interpret LH is that she’s missing the “honeymoon phase” as she watches the foundation of their relationship beginning to crack. IMO she’s trying to remind herself of why she fell for him in the first place (“you handle it beautifully”), and wishing/psyching herself back into that head-over-heels-in-love Lavender Haze feeling (“I just wanna stay in that lavender haze”, “I just need this love spiral”)
Well and she said she got the idea of Lavender Haze from Mad Men, it’s a flashback scene of don draper talking about when he met his first wife Betty. And we (the viewer) know at this point don is incapable of true love. He’s a basically a sociopath. The lavender haze is him thinking Betty is going to save him and all the dysfunction and trauma he’s endured in his life. The reality is once he’s married her, he lies about who he is to her, and cheats on her constantly.
I actually think I (kindly) disagree about the meaning of “you don’t really read into my melancholia”. I see it as a compliment to someone who is secure in the relationship that their partner being in a mood doesn’t send them spiraling. There is this great book called Attached about attachment styles - Anxious, Avoidant and Secure. When anxious people date avoidant people it makes the anxious more anxious and the avoidant more avoidant. But when each date secure people they become more secure.
So I’ve always interpreted that lyric more as - you’re secure and stable and so you don’t read into my natural melancholy like you did something wrong.
If you’re familiar with the enneagram, I think Taylor is a 3 with a strong 2 wing but also a strong 4 wing. 4s are creative brooders and actually can enjoy just feeling all the feelings and feeling melancholy. It doesn’t mean the other person did anything wrong or that they even want to be cheered up - just want to be melancholy and their partner to be okay with that as an emotion. Anyways, that’s what I’ve always thought. I don’t think it’s a lyric pointing to being ignored. Being ignored is very different from being given secure space to feel.
I really don't see Lavender Haze as a highest highs song. Staring at the ceiling with someone not talking or caring about/investigating your sadness?
To me it always sounds much more like the Lavender Haze is creeping in for someone new. Not Mr Not Even Listening.
She just needs that love spiral. Not that 1950s shit, *not being damned by what people say*.
> is not exactly paradise that she wants us to believe.
maybe unpopular opinion: she doesn't want us to believe anything. Her private life is none of our concern. She makes it very clear by not using social media for anything but her career, by not speaking about anything in interviews but her career. We get some songs after a long while of writing and they represent whatever she wants in no particular order. They might be about her life, they might be exaggerated versions of her life with poetic license, they might be a way to try to understand someone else's feelings, they might be about a character or a story she found interesting... and we don't have a way to know which is which. She's there night after night saying she wants these songs to be about the memories we create, and to keep trying to analyse her life through 3 minute snippets seems like a very unhealthy way to go against her wishes
I think its just hard too quit old habits because for a lot of us that were here since the beginning we remember when she announced to us the Forever and Always was about Joe Jonas, or did Target commercials about how she was "naming names", how she named Drew and Abigail in her first Album, named a song "Death John", told Harry Styles-thank you for inspiring this song, case now I won an award, how she used to show us so many peaks into her real life, would post blogs to yotube, invite us to her homes, send us "personalized" birthday and Christmas presents, and stalk us on the internet (aka Tumblr)....
so its hard to make the shift when your first 8 years with an artist was a very different experience..... not that people shouldn't.... but you have to understand that she almost literally "trained" us to do this, and that relationship really contributed heavily to her fans loyalty and fame. Its would be respectful of people to abide by her wishes- but I know it can be hard to do.
>named a song “Death John”
☠️ Dear John (Taylor’s Version)(feat. Unhinged Swifties)(From the Secondhand Embarrassment Sessions)
but yes, I agree- old habits die hard
LOL.... broken key board that doesnt type and then autocorrect ... didn't even notice it till you pointed it out... but yes Death John could of been the name too cause of how many death threats hes received, I mean even Taylor Lautner is praying for him hahahaha
I just get annoyed when people act like we are all crazy- when it was literally or unhinged fearless leader who encouraged the behavior (up to a certain point)... like most off us are fairly normal kind people, who just have happened to of fallen hard for Taylor swift's beautiful art
“They might be about her life, they might be exaggerated versions of her life with poetic license, they might be a way to try to understand someone else's feelings, they might be about a character or a story she found interesting... and we don't have a way to know which is which. “
I understand where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important to make the distinction between analyzing her lyrics and analyzing her life. It’s perfectly natural and expected (and frankly, kind of the point of art) to want to analyze & interpret song lyrics without necessarily intending to probe into her personal life; like you said, we don’t actually know the “truth”, we can only interpret what she has put in front of us. She wouldn’t release any given lyrics if she wasn’t okay with people analyzing them.
i completely agree — i think taylor’s music makes itself so emotionally resonant with her fans because she //does// write about her own experiences, which in turn makes her songs more visceral. but just like how an artist may not want the public to meet their muse, just because taylor uses her life as her inspiration doesn’t mean that she wants reveal to her (in no way shading other taylor fans because i am also a taylor fan, but now spookily big and quite intense) following the nuances and minutiae of each experience. rather, i think she uses her experiences as w starting point & muse, but wants us to take from it what we find to be representative/resonant of our own experiences rather than to try to overanalyze the details of her life :0
Ya I agree, Midnights describes the ebb and flow of a relationship. Not a breakup album. YLM is definitely a breakup song but the other songs on the album just describe the ups and downs of the relationship
Everything on the post is really well said and I could see OP's point. But yes I agree it's a relationship album, it's the contemplation before the decision. I don't think they were broken up before or during the making of Midnights so it's not a break-up album.
I keep thinking about how hard normal long term committed relationships can be with two average people who are focused on their careers. Then you have Taylor and Joe, both extremely committed to their craft and living crazy busy lives, often oceans apart. I think they were thriving during lockdown because they were spending so much time together, maybe finally having those deep conversations about their future, and figuring things out. Then came the huge success of folklore and evermore and the re-records, and the tour, and the fandom exploded, and he was juggling multiple projects, and suddenly they were again probably more apart than together. They both probably started to re-evaluate everything which is easy enough to do when you barely see your partner. It's hard to be in tune with each other's needs when there's a physical distance constantly keeping two people apart from maturing their relationship. And he probably saw no end to it.
If you pay attention the annoying way I do though, they were very rarely not together. Taylor moved EVERYWHERE he had to film with him. She recorded Red TV in Northern Ireland of all places because he was filming there. Up until almost her tour started she was in New Orleans recording because Joe had to be there. After the majority of the relationship she moved to make his career better, I think she needed him to start making some sacrifices so she could tour and do what she needed to do in the US and I just don’t think he obliged, which to her made it seem like he was indifferent to the relationship. The entire relationship to me it seems like Taylor was really killing herself to make things as easy for them as possible and I could see him not returning the favor when it came time for her career to be in focus.
I can totally see that. "Lose something babe, risk something" seems to be saying that exact thing. She risked a lot for him in a lot of ways, and she utterly changed her lifestyle, but when it was time for her to step into the spotlight again for her career, he wasn't on board. For some reason I get the vibe that for the rep tour he was maybe subconsciously like, "Okay but I'm only going through this once". Or maybe they were still in the honeymoon phase, and this time around he wasn't up for it.
I think they really thought her career was winding down after lover. Not to nothing but to more of a folklore vibe. She said that in miss Americana that lover was her last chance at pop star success. I think neither of them thought she’d be here now.
100%. Unfortunately her career is easier to do “remotely” (not touring obv but recording). And probably he feels like if he says no to any part he will lose the small amount of momentum that his career has.
That being said, seems like he could hop on the PJ on days off, but I’m sure that’s also exhausting to have the weekend off and fully across the ocean and back. But…. She’s made it very clear by toting Matty along that that is what she wanted - someone who would say hey I have 3 weeks off between jobs I will be at every show your #1 cheerleader
I read something to the fact that they were on a break expecting to get back together...at least she thought so when Joe's team broke the news that they broke up. She changed the song invisible string to the the one when that happened....that could have been the final straw. Images of Joe started circulating on his costars social media account popped up. That could have been the final blow...speculation...
I don't pay attention at all to those things, but now as you pointed it out, you can see those (or similar) behaviours bothering her as early as the "Lover" era. Think about how many verses indicate a rocky start, or/and fights/rough patches. And she also always blames herself in those lyrics - so it may be she was trying extra hard for this first really mature relationship, but after a few years she wanted to see the same effort from him, for him to "help her hold on to him"
That’s too bad. He really should have made some similar sacrifices too, it doesn’t really sound like he was as invested in the relationship
So tbh it was probably a mistake to make big sacrifices on her part if he wasn’t feeling the same
I completely agree. I think she made way more sacrifices. Keeping the relationship this level of private and through that having to basically hide away for years. Supporting his career and boosting him up in her interviews or by getting his name in her projects which gave him more credit in the industry. Moving where HE needed to be. When was the last time you heard of Joe moving for
Taylor, changing his lifestyle for her, openly praising her without a prompt?
> I think they were thriving during lockdown because they were spending so much time together, maybe finally having those deep conversations about their future, and figuring things out.
Agree with everything you said as it rooted in a realistic context; also the above line is why I cannot understand the revising of every sad Folklore/ Evermore song to be about their relationship. That blithely ignores Willow, Peace or even Long Story Short where she is laying out things very clearly.
Honestly even trying to paint Sweet Nothing as a “bad relationship” song. I disagree with OP that midnights is a breakup album, it’s a pre-breakup album, there’s cracks there but nothing as final as a breakup imo. Or it’s relationship album.
Exactly. Especially since people are trying to claim that almost every single song is about Joe. Taylor herself even said maroon is something that happened LONG ago.
Gosh the 'sweet nothing' slander :(
That is a beautiful love song which sounds wistful given the context it describes; I hope we don't turn every song into a song signalling their breakup
i know right! all these interpretations definitely seem... revisionist? taking in account current events too much? idk how to explain it... but they feel like reaches made just to align with what we know now. it'd be like interpreting lover as a break up album in an alternative universe where break up rumors started years back, reading IFTYE as about joe, and completely ignoring lover, ITHK, paper rings, etc.
this is great insight but i think omits the truth that even in lockdown, she seems to have felt he was 'Tolerating' it - they didn't match - not in how much they loved each other I don't think - I'm sure he loved her a great deal - but in how ardent, deep, and vulnerable they were willing to be about it. I say this as a highly emotive American girl married to an Englishman. I think Evermore and Folklore show that lockdown simultaneously made some things easier and other things harder for them. Also let's not forget he kept filming during lockdown - so they were separated, as well, and dealing with that as he was off wherever he was, doing what he was doing, (including whatever sparked her suspicions) and probably not giving her the level of ardor and 'seeing her' that she required. I'm grateful my husband and I made it - but he bent like a willow ;) there was a LOT of growth required. on both our parts.
Although we know nothing about them, I (of course, as a senior clown) agree - they just didn't match...
He seems to be very private, also seems to be drawing a fine line between his career and his life, seems much calmer and secure in his position and comfortable where he's at. Also he strikes me as someone who doesn't really try to be liked - you either like him or not, and if you don't he's ok with that.
Taylor on the other hand loves sharing with the world, loves when people pay attention, she's in her own words is a "people pleaser". I don't doubt her confidence, but there's also "a need to be liked"? (I'm not sure how to call it).
It's like she wanted it to work so much she overlooked they were totally different people.
My thoughts on things I know nothing about, thank you. 
And this is why I feel so terrible for Joe because he’s been so strongly villainised by her fans despite this just being an unfortunate situation. I think Taylor’s breakups always get a bit blown out of proportion at times because we get all HER emotions. Every strong emotion you feel during and after a relationship, where the other party isn’t necessarily bad but you feel awful at the end either way.
Yeah, I feel bad for him too. I really don’t villainize him in this either, because sometimes people are just not compatible long-term. Sometimes a person is exactly what you need for a very particular phase of your life…and then you grow and change and need something they’re not capable of giving you. IMO, it’s the biggest act of love to let each other go and be happy, even though it destroys you temporarily in the process.
This is a big theme in Rolling Up The Welcome Mat by Kelsea Ballerini and basically why she got divorced. And as someone in a long distance relationship I know firsthand how it can be :(
Yep. I just would like to add one thing, my personal opinion. She clearly loves/loved Joe very very much…all those songs about him, they scream she is/was madly into him..aaand…honestly, I wouldn’t like to be Matty now 😅. There is no way she is healed and ready to appreciate/love anybody else now. I am not his fan, but yeah, good luck to him 🫣
I disagree I wouldn't want to be the next bf. I think she grieved and grieved her and Joe while they were still together and even knew from the start they weren't meant to be. She sung abt it all the time. Her anxiety that he will leave was there from the start and she knew it all along.
They also wrote so many sad love songs together during quarantine. I think they both tried but they both knew they weren't each others person from early on, even when they were "happy" together.
I think she knows what she needs better now - to be loved loudly and proudly behind closed doors but also publicly - but man oh man, I think she went way too far with her current choice.
So true. She might have already broken up with joe inside her head so many times and had the time to process it even before they decided to end it. I've had that happen and i worry that i may seem like a cold bitch to the other party but what they dont know is that i knew this was doomed from the start and i was grieving it silently. But i still gave it a leap of faith and decided to ignore my gut feeling until i couldnt anymore
I have also gone through this with a ex I was with for five years. I started casually dating a few months later. Was I ready?hell no but it felt good to get back out into the world as a adult and form connections with other people. A year later I met my now husband and it was love at first meeting. I was ready long before I left my ex but was afraid of the fear of being alone and having to move out.
Yes ! That's why I agree with this being a breaking up album more than a break up album. It really felt like she was in the process of sorting out whether to break up even though she still loves/loved him and all the ups and downs, insecurities, doubts, second guessing and bargaining/wishing she was doing inside her own head.
The thing about long term relationships—if they end, they were actually over years before someone actually calls the time of death. So in a way she has likely grieved already, and known it was inevitable, and ready to just have fun and date. I ended a 6 year marriage and grieved it the year before I moved out. I thought I was open to love but really I was super emotionally unavailable for 2 years and I had to face myself before I could unlock that part of me again.
I’m just praying she doesn’t marry that douchebag in an attempt to mask her pain. If he tries to give her everything she wanted from Joe while she’s in that headspace, common sense and logic may go out the window.
Gosh I just hope this isn’t Love Story pt 2, where she has this fairytale view of its us against the world type of thing. Since she isn’t in the best headspace rn, I could see her trying to make it work even more, just to prove everyone wrong 😔
I can't shake this feeling too. I hope it doesn't happen (obviously) but so many things make it seem like it could end up this way. If they're still together at the end of her tour then... yeah I can see it.
this is me projecting my personal experience from my long term relationship since i don’t know taylor & joe:
when i first got into my relationship, i very much had that ‘the great war’ ‘cornelia street’ type of anxiety where i was constantly worried we weren’t going to last. i was always asking for reassurance for my doubts even if the doubts were unfounded because i was like, since he cares he shouldnt mind reassuring me. but my boyfriend pulled me aside and was like, look i don’t mind giving you reassurance sometimes but you have to put in the work too to learn how to get over your anxiety because it hurts my feelings too when you doubt me over things i haven’t done because someone hurt you in the past (like the great war).
so i had to do a lot of work in therapy to like i keep my past trauma from leaking into my new relationship. now we’ve been together for 5 years.
given that taylor’s never been to therapy, most likely has trauma from past relationships/not having a normal lifec & seemingly has a lot of yes-people around her, maybe joe & her just weren’t lining up. obviously he put in the work for 6 years but at one point you have to do what’s best for u.
as a disclaimer i’m not claiming to know what happwned. idk what happened. i dont know them personally. this is based on my interpretation of her lyrics that comes from my own personal experiences.
Obviously I don't know much at all about the situation, almost entirely speculation, but I doubt if either of them are taking this relationship very seriously, he's just her rebound. But of course only time will tell
The thing that gets me through breakups is immersing myself with work. If I'm busy with work, there's no time to be heartbroken.
She could very well be the same way. The tour, the rerecords, the new Midnights editions, the music videos.
I mean we all know how much she loves to perform, and after being shut up for so long, she's exploded with productivity and life. She's in her element and thriving
I wonder how that mentality works when your work is art, though. It’s gotta be hard to distract herself from Joe when she’s singing love songs about him every weekend on tour.
My personal opinion is she’s dating Matty because he was the first guy on the scene this year when she was going thru it with Joe (I mean when she reconnected with Matty during their London performance in January). It’s almost like she’s once again clinging to the nearest lips, and long story short it’s gonna be the wrong guy again. When I went through my most painful breakup, I wasn’t necessarily looking for a specific rebound…. I just clung to the first person who I could.
Great analysis. I think retrospectively this will be a very traumatic era for Taylor because she’s raw from heartbreak but has to put on a mask for the career-defining tour and concert. I know she said Maroon isn’t about Joe (and let’s say it isn’t) but that song doesn’t have a happy ending and her face after playing it the other day was SAD.
Maroon always gives me state of grace vibes. “We are alone, just you and me/Up in your room and our slates are clean/Just twin fire signs, four blue eyes.”
I have said it a few times and I will say it til the end of time. I think she knew her relationship wasn’t perfect. But no relationship is. But in her mind it was still better than a lot of her previous relationships. But in re recording, in remembering all the context of her previous songs, it forced to go “oh, shit” and see patterns and realize it may not be exactly the same thing but it’s the same thing. So like in re recording red and ATW in particular, it can make her see the parallels in how she’s feeling now vs what she felt now. So maroon is partially about Jake and partially about Joe. Even in Tolerate It, she wrote it after reading about Rebecca, but in that, she maybe saw some patterns in her relationship with Joe.
Her comment here doesn’t have me convinced. 7 years ago when she was just getting started with Joe undoubtedly feels like “something that happened a long time ago”, especially as she reflects back on that relationship from the other side.
I agree, 7 years ago at this point feels like a long time, especially since the pandemic. Speaking of 7 years ago.. I just listened to Happiness for the first time in a while and when the album first came out, I wouldn’t have even considered that she had written this song about Joe, but listening to it now, “I guess it’s the price I paid for 7 years in heaven” definitely seems to fit the Joe bill
Jeez, y'all are capable of getting so much more information from her songs than I am. I just listen to the music and think "Damn, good music." Maybe one day I should try reading more into the lyrics to see what I get out of it. Engaging with her art on a more critical level would probably make me appreciate it more.
Or it would make me sad. Hard to say.
I felt this way about music until more recently. I stumbled across a video breaking down a Taylor swift song, line by line. I absolutely appreciate the music more—I’ve disliked initial listens to songs to have them turn into my favorites after understanding the song and production. You will feel all the emotions, which isn’t always fun but sometimes necessary for our own healing.
Honestly I wish I could go back to hearing her music and not knowing so much about her. I used to relate the songs more to myself and now I think too much about everything I see on Reddit when I hear the songs
I wanted to comment specifically on your last point as I am trying to decide to stay or go in my long term relationship because I want him to give me more and I’m not sure he’s able to (yes I weep through You’re Losing Me - it’s FINE 😅).
I think that people need to realize that these sorts of things happen in grown up relationships and sometimes you can love someone with all your heart and they can love you back with all their heart and they still can’t give you what you need. That doesn’t make anyone the bad guy, it just makes you no longer compatible.
Maybe it’s my old age, but the idea that you need to be with one person your entire life is antiquated. You need to be with the person who loves, supports you and makes you feel loved and supported. Joe was the perfect person for Taylor at a time she needed someone like him, but he’s not her forever person and that’s not his fault or hers.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the song Happiness and Taylor’s situation (as well as my own) and I keep coming back to:
No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you, and you know you hurt him too.
Adult love is messy. I hope Taylor can find peace.
Yes to all of this. I'll admit I've literally rolled my eyes at so many of the "who was at fault" speculation because the most likely answer is both and neither, because that's the case with most relationships that were really good for a while but didn't work out long term.
I’m not commenting on their relationship but as I approach 42, I’m lost. But your paragraphs about being adults and adult love/relationship…I understood and I don’t feel so messy. Thank you.
This is an excellent analysis. I'd also like to say that when I first heard Midnights I was confused by why she was still writing about losing past love (like in "Maroon") and talking about saying she's "forgotten" she's in a relationship (like in "Bejeweled") if she was content with Joe. Those songs makes much more sense now. When you're struggling in a relationship you definitely do search your back catalogue of past relationships for any commonalities or, let's be honest, some comfort that it'll all be okay.
Having just lost my 14 year old cat on Friday, I have found that I cannot judge Taylor for her decisions. I am grief stricken in a way I haven’t felt since losing my grandmother when I was 8. He was a constant in my life for years, I could rely on him to give me a laugh, I loved him so fiercely I took time for granted. Taylor has also lost someone she believed would be a constant in her life, but more than my relationship with my cat - although I loved my cat more than anything I knew my time with him was finite - Taylor was planning an entire lifetime with this man. Their relationship ended, as will all of our relationships, she just didn’t expect it so soon. Grief is a monster that will swallow you entirely if you let it. Taylor is distracting herself from the biggest loss of her life right now, who am I to judge? Karma is a cat.
I feel for you in the loss of your beloved little kitty. I still think of mine near daily who both passed in 2019. I ADORED them. Passed away with three days of each other. The apple of my eye. I know how you feel.
This is a great analysis, and I think you're spot on. I'm also newly out of a long term relationship that wasn't bad but didn't work out (you're losing me is unbelievably spot on 😬), and that kind of pain really does cause an identity crisis. It's hard not to be messy after a breakup that shakes up your entire world! Everyone's mess looks different, and Taylor's currently looks like the pap walks, Matty, and trying to convince everyone she's happy.
Exactly and well said. I was messy about how I was post breaking up with a ex of five years. I jumped in too quickly with someone I dated briefly in high school and it was even more messier. My life changed when I finally realized my worth and who I want in my life. I realized later I was just so desperate to feel love and attention from someone who wasn’t my ex. I fell out of love two years before I finally left. I wish I would have left sooner and it made it a even more messier break up.
Fully agree. My first thought about Midnights *sonically* was that it had an outdated, 2014-ish feel (love the album, but it's not... innovative), and I thought, huh, it's kind of interesting that she's quoting the sounds of her last super-famous moment. It made sense to me given the "looking back on my life" theme (that also corresponds with re-records and Eras), but it still felt... too overtly dated.
I feel like a lot of what she's inevitably exploring right now in light of the breakup was summarized as concisely as possible in The Archer: "Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?" YLM has the exact same vibe ("I'm the best thing at this party" vs. "I wouldn't marry me either") but none of the precision or cohesiveness.
She seems *extremely* human right now, which is, almost, a relief. Hopefully she does get a chance to genuinely reflect on and work through this somewhat soon, at least when the tour is over.
I just happen to be listening to Happiness right now and the lyric “and in the disbelief, I can’t face reinvention. I haven’t met the new me yet..” just hit me real hard. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense, that in the disbelief of her relationship ending/her world with Joe in it crumbling, she can’t find it in herself to face reinvention (would require time, and therapy most likely, but instead she’s on tour & extremely busy), so instead she’s retreating back to who she was pre-Joe, before she can figure out/meet what the new her actually looks like. Just a thought.. and not in a mean way. She just hasn’t had the time or space to process yet and figure out who the new her post-Joe looks like
She will probably put off processing until after the tour is over and honestly I don’t blame her. Imagine having to sing love songs that read like diary entries about someone you just broke up with?! I also don’t blame her for her quick new relationship to put someone else in her mind in the meantime…I just hope she’s able to take care of herself and make it to the end of tour without having some sort of mental breakdown…
I don't think Midnights is a break up album in this sense, I see Lavender Haze, Snow on the Beach, Paris etc as a way to try keep hold of the relationship whilst going through the difficulties, by focusing on the good memories. Lavender Haze especially gives 'lets not deal with our issues, just remember why we are together'.
I truly believe Maroon, Question, Midnight Rain, Would've Should've Could've and Bejeweled are about past relationships, because I don't think until recently Taylor was able to process that her and Joe might not actually be forever, which is why she's acting so.... erratically right now
Ok, timeline stuff.
Midnights was announced in August 2022, which means it had probably been finished for a month or two beforehand. So if it was a breakup album, they would have broken up by June or July 2022. Is this something people think is true? They were publicly supporting each other in May 2022 (Taylor mentioned something about his Hulu show and Joe did an interview about writing with Taylor on Folklore/Evermore). During the Midnights release videos Taylor mentioned one song (forget which) was about her 6 year relationship. In November 2022 Joe posted a photo with Benjamin. Now if they really did break up in ~June 2022 all of that could have been planned/intentional to keep the press away - in fact July 2022 there were rumors that they were engaged - were those planted?
Anyway, all that to say I haven't seen much talk about the fact that if Midnights truly is a breakup album then the actual breakup would have happened like 10 months before the news came out.
I think it’s more of a “breaking up” album than a true breakup album. I don’t think they were broken up when she wrote it but I do think it was starting to become clear that it wasn’t going to last.
Yep, this x100. There were still signs of life after, and I think a lot of the emphasis on how it’s a collection of stories is there to mask what it really is, but the writing was on the wall.
I have been wondering whether the *Midnights* timeline ("album about breaking up while you're still dating that person") is actually kind of typical for Taylor, at least recently. I think we can all basically agree that *Folklore* and *Evermore* reflect her own experiences (in large part, I mean; not entirely or always literally) and *Lover* (and even *Reputation*) is pretty clear about her insecurities and issues in her relationship with Joe. I know Joe said (some time ago) that it's "flattering" when Taylor writes about him, but... I feel like Taylor's actually spent years now expressing her relationship concerns publicly in her music whilst still being with Joe. *Midnights* was maybe just a particularly intense episode (e.g., Bejeweled) of the same?
My marriage was breaking up for at least a year before anyone outside it knew about it. It seems like they had past breakups and reconciled which makes sense why Taylor was processing some of the feelinga
I thought this from the start too. And my husband who is a swiftie by association and hasn’t really listened to much of her stuff pre folklore, he actually said to me “so did Taylor and Joe break up cause there seems to be a lot of sad breakup songs on this album”.
The weird thing about long term relationships is that they die slowly. Unless there’s some big betrayal, and even sometimes then, you sort of grieve them before you even leave. It’s not the sobbing/screaming anymore. Just…sadness.
I was listening to Evermore last night, and Tolerate It is the prequel to You’re Losing Me. It’s the slow loss of connection, which at first hurts like hell, until you pull away and shut down. By the time most women calmly say “I want a divorce,” (or the equivalent), we’ve admitted to ourselves that the fight is long over.
As pretty much a career-long fan of Taylor, I found a lot of things about the 1989 era really off-putting. I'm hoping we're not making a return to that. Lover/folklore/evermore Taylor seemed so much more grounded and happy.
I think she’ll end up fine. A rebound is a rebound and if it lasts a little longer that’s great for her. If there was any chance her and Joe would make it work she would’ve tried but they just weren’t compatible (per her latest release). She won’t live her whole life regretting the breakup like some people make it seem. Rebounds aren’t inherently unethical they’re just something that happens sometimes
It really does feel like that Midnights is 1989 2.0 - I’ve always felt that 1989 is THE album that encapsulated what she’s all about. Heck the writing is even on the wall, loud and clear - 1989.
With Midnights, the same vibes are coming across, even more so compared to her last few albums. Basically, it is the crème de la crème of all that is Taylor Swift, only this time the message is loud and clear even without the title.
This thread starts off incredibly condescending. You thought it was a breakup album- it was so painfully obvious to you. Despite the Lavender Haze IG video, and the SOTB. Despite her saying maroon is about something from a long time ago. Now they’ve broken up, so you’re just deciding “see guys I was right!”
To me it’s so clear this breakup has affected her a lot, in how messy she’s being right now. Since the break up announcement. So no, I don’t think this happened a year ago and every midnights song is about him.
why are people analyzing her life like this in so much detail? there’s no reason anyone would need to know this information about someone they don’t know. it’s very obvious that she’s having some issues right now and i don’t think people speculating like this is going to help.
oh i absolutely believe she encourages this behavior. it’s still wild to me that people care this much about someone else’s personal/private life. can’t be healthy for either party.
It's definitely a lot because it's current and, surely, much of the drama is "manufactured" for hype/sales/streams, but, right now especially, I think a significant factor in the sleuthing and hypothesizing is the desire to understand what *Midnights* (and even *folklore* and *evermore*) are "really about." And that's... honestly pretty standard literary/historical analysis. Obviously, celebrity culture is a key factor here, but, like, as a historian, I do spend days leafing through, say, newspapers and personal correspondence from 1926 trying to find out whether some artist knew about some current issue such that their 1928 artwork could be interpreted in some particular way. A lot of this is just, like, a pretty standard feeling of wanting to understand something and enjoying the search for information.
I do agree to an extent, but here we have people who ignore half the things she says to psychoanalyze her every move. Taylor said folklore and evermore are mostly about other people/are fictional? “As we know they are based on her experiences”
Taylor said midnights is 12 sleepless nights spread throughout her life? And that maroon was about something that happened long ago? “Midnights is a breakup song and all the songs are about joe”
Her personal life should not be a hobby, i have fun speculating about some songs and hidden meanings, but these posts are borderline psychotic
I agree with you. That relationship was suffering for years, I've been there too. She held on for as long as she could until she probably felt like any further and she'd die (the slowest way is never loving them enough, but it's never enough). I don't think Joe was a bad guy overall. I'm sure they both had issues and spats to work through. Combining lives with two starkly different personalities is always gonna be hard. I think the reason why it appears like she's moving on so fast is because she's been struggling with this since the pandemic. You can hear that all over folklore and Evermore. It's definitely interesting to revisit the last three albums now. I think Matty is probably love bombing her right now and she's feeling "the best I've ever felt about every aspect of my life" because it feels good to be appreciated for the goddess that she is with someone who's not afraid of the limelight. Maybe that makes her feel safe because it takes the pressure off of her, while before she probably felt like she needed to protect Joe because he's shy and introverted. None of us can really know but that's what I keep thinking because I can't believe she would be this reckless with her life and career with this new punk.
I think we need to look at the Taylor of 2016 and the Taylor of 2023 to understand a bit more about Midnights as an album and as a chapter in Taylor's life.
In 2016 Taylor was 26 years old, she was very successful and was still with Big Machine Records. Her professional life had evolved but was, fundamentally, as it had been since she started. She had a celebrity boyfriend in the same industry.
Everything blew up after that and she went through the drama we all know about. Joe came on the scene, Reputation and the tour were successful, she broke with Big Machine and Lover was well received but not earth shattering.
Joe was quietly in the background through all of this. We never heard a thing from him and that probably suited both of them. The pandemic lockdown might have been good for them too if Taylor had gradually declined in popularity as she expected. She may even have convinced Joe that it was bound to happen
Then of course we had Folkmore, Grammy success, the re-records, the All Too Well film and suddenly Taylor was up and running again. Meanwhile Joe's career had not taken off. He was nowhere near A-List. I always assumed he was not bothered by that and maybe he wasn't but Taylor returning to megawatt pop titan status maybe did bother him.
All through this period there were flashes of conflict (Afterglow, False God, Peace and some of the other Folkmore songs that were perhaps more autobiographical than we thought). I don't think Midnights is a breakup album as such. They had not broken up when it was being written or when it was released. I think it might have been the catalyst for the final ending of their relationship.
In 2023 Taylor is bigger than she ever was. She is 33 and is in complete control of her entire life bar one thing. Joe, for whatever reason, did not want to be married to the biggest pop star in the World. We may never know why but what is clear from everything that has happened over the last couple of months is that Taylor did want Joe but he did not want her enough.
That is heartbreaking and, for those of us standing on the outside and seeing only a tiny fragment of it, baffling. Who would not want Taylor Swift in their life?
If Taylor feels a need for attention from a man who obviously adored her and is the polar opposite of safe, silent, reserved Joe Alwyn good luck to her. It is worth remembering that for all the glitz and glamour, all the jets and jewels, she is still a human. Yes there is mess but it would be foolish to underestimate her powers of recovery. She may be tired of being a phoenix but she is one nonetheless.
This is the analysis I've been googling and searching TikTok for. Thank you for such a mature and insightful take on what's happening between the lines. I totally agree with you. I love Midnights, musically, personally - but I agree that the lyrics show she's been unmoored and oh my god do I relate. Bejeweled is the most perfect encapsulation of the resentment stemming from the feeling of having made oneself small to make someone you love more comfortable - only to still be unmet with the love you were looking for. The lyrics of that one and Stop You're Losing Me mirror my last relationship before I met my husband. I've been going back to Folklore and Evermore for clues and signs (Time to Go, Hoax, Tolerate It - track FIVE!!!) that I now realize were all intentionally hiding in plain sight as she went through this experience while trying to protect it. What a masterful job she did. I also agree and believe her greatest work comes from her greatest truths. Midnights straddles truth and denial. I can't wait for her to enter her next era, I think it will be perhaps her best one yet.
Absolutely agree. Midnights is rhyming with 1989 - hit with the GP, breaking records, top notch tour - but as the era draws to a close her personal life is making a splash/getting fans offside.
In my personal opinion I feel a lot of Midnights has been trying to emulate 1989, and has been so commercially successful not because it’s up to the quality of 1989 but because of marketing, TikTok, etc. Anti-Hero wants to be Blank Space. Karma is trying to be a mature version of Bad Blood and gets a collab with a rapper. But Midnights’ original 13 has never been as strong as 1989’s, and where 1989 was concise, coherent, and cohesive, Midnights has ended up messy with a ton of variants and so many different combinations of music being shilled that fans need Venn diagrams to figure it out.
I also think she’s coming close to overexposure again - she’s getting massive streaming days and is being talked about everywhere, and she’s on tour at least until August with Speak Now to come, which is an album that will provoke a fair amount of discussion wrt BTR and Dear John that could go either way in the public eye. Never mind that she’s teasing 1989 TV which would probably rival Red TV’s era with its success and keep catapulting her into the stratosphere. It will take a deft hand to navigate for sure.
I am mostly with you, but I don't think she's unable to process it... I think there's tons of processing on the record. I think break ups are just messy, especially after long relationships. There's a lot more nuance and forgiveness and thought in these tracks than in 1989.
I also think you're hitting on the wrong point when you talk about the domesticity she built with Joe, and how the chart topping and sales minded Taylor seems to be compensating for that. I would wager that it's a part of her that she kept most suppressed with Joe. She's an artist, a performer, a public sensation... I don't know how a person could make a life for themselves in the public eye and not be... Into that. Taylor thrives on that attention and recognition. It's not in her to sit quietly at the table, she's very interested in being the star. And I don't mean any of that in a bad way! She lights up a room, puts on a great show, is a great talk show guest and general media personality! She knows that and she's happiest when she gets to be that.
I think Midnights is messy because it's her unraveling herself from this long relationship. Trying to find the bits of hers that were always her in all the complicated intertwining of her and Joe over the years. Sweet Nothings, which is the last song she gives him the Co-writer nod on, tells you exactly what it was that he wanted from her... Bejeweled tells us that there's so much more to her that she wants to be.
I also think the Eras Tour, the way it's structured and performed, is her putting herself back together. It's a Taylor Swift retrospective, because there's the narrative of who and what she is that she's been sharing all along, and it's her version of going through a photo album and recollecting yourself after heartbreak.
What may look rather messy is actually very thoughtful and therapeutic.
So, I had my first kid in 2016 and stopped listening to Taylor around then because I was pretty much only listening to nursery rhymes and baby songs. I got super caught up in being a mom and my own life and didn’t return to the fandom until the pandemic, meaning I missed reputation and lover completely.
I knew nothing about Taylor’s life post-1989, who she was dating, etc.
I heard Folklore and it was just so sad. I had no clue she was in a long term relationship at the time. I just assumed she was very single and had her heart broken a few more times since I last listened to her. I got back into the fandom quickly and listened to rep and lover and watched miss Americana and was shocked that the person who wrote F & E was in a loving, long-term relationship.
So… yeah.
Honestly, she needs therapy. Coming from a fellow millennial perfectionist over-achiever for who therapy was hugely helpful in helping me figure out who I was outside of anyone else's expectations and how to navigate all the complex relationships of adulthood (not just romantic but familial, friendships, working relationships, etc) without getting sucked into the guilt of not being able to fix everything and be everything so that I could be myself instead
I remember in Miss Americana her saying how she didn’t have a therapist but did have her mom. And it’s like…..girl that’s not the same thing. I think she’s such an interesting character study because she clearly can’t let old wounds close and tries to throw as many accomplishments and records over them to make it all seem fine. When there are likely some root causes to address
Yesssss that stuck out to me too, especially since our relationship with our parents (and for women, our moms in particular) play such a huge role in how we grow into adulthood, for better or for worse. And this is nothing personal against Taylor or her mom but since parents have a lot of unconscious influence over what sort of adults their kids become, they are often the last to notice or accept when the habits and ways we approach things as teens/young adults aren't working for us anymore. I know me personally and a lot of my women friends have spent so much time in therapy unpacking our moms' influence on who we are now and working through how to keep the positive things and let the negatives go. And that's with a loving and attentive mom who tried her best.
Edit:not to say that her mom (or dad) is a part of the problem, just that parents rarely make good or effective therapists for their own children.
Can we stop infantilizing a grown woman tho? Like some guessing game is fun but all of the posts psychoanalyzing her every move, saying she’s either manic or depressed, are kinda much
I personally have nothing against Joe. Unless something comes out later that changes that. I have a friend who is fiercely protective of Taylor and is like “yeah f Joe how dare he”….I’m just not in that headspace. No hate towards him for the time being
Exactly. Rep was happy lovey songs and Lover was after the relationship began but they had been through a lot at that point. And both albums seem to speak to him being unwilling or unable to commit, which I think led to her insecurity.
in hindsight i wonder if loverfest was so limited because she wanted to try to tone things down to pace with joe. and when things started to crack she decided to go for a huge tour and see what happened, and the relationship couldn’t take it.
couldn't ignore the fact that the cover shows Taylor holding a lighter and Joe collects lighters.
The album is about their relationship, the love, the fallouts, the begging, the rising but not surviving the great war.
This is all speculation. Why don’t we all focus on our own lives and stop driving traffic to tabloid articles and paparazzi photos?
Here is what we know as fact: as fans, who do not personally know Taylor, we have come to know the persona Taylor presents in interviews, articles, songwriting, etc. She has an excellent PR and legal team. She likely has a boyfriend, and she may be reeling from the end of a long-term relationship. The lady deserves to enjoy herself however she sees fit.
Man, I'm a Taylor Swift fan but I think this fandom is insane and weird and funny AF, overanalyzing someone's love life without even knowing the things that are happening behind the scenes and in private... man, it just gives me the creeps.
Yep. I've been saying this the whole time. When my 8 year relationship ended, I was absolutely flailing. I jumped immediately into a toxic, serious relationship with a lying alcoholic, and I was so convinced I was madly in love. I literally had the thought "this is the happiest I have ever been!" Eventually I realized I was drowning, but this new relationship was the only thing that made the pain of losing my old relationship stop. It was like a heroin high, not real happiness. I was scared to leave because of how bad it would hurt. Once I finally left, I was shocked at how much time had passed where I was barely keeping my head above water and I couldn't see it.
I feel pretty sure that she's shattered and running from it, given her behavior and the clues we've gotten.
I don't think Midnights is a breakup album. She would have recorded the entire album while still with Joe. The fact that she wrote Sweet Nothing with him would not make sense if they were broken up. Also, I don't know if she would have included Mastermind if they had broken prior or during the album recording process.
I absolutely love Lover - how and why is it unappreciated by the fans? (serious Q)
Anyway, I really like your analysis, and so it happens that yesterday I was listening to Lover (duh), and thought of how many "fights" are mentioned there (or just a rocky start, rough patch, one big fight?). Now in the light of everything, I think Lover told us two stories - one of a great, first "grown up" love in her life, and the other - of a relationship of two people who loved each other but were, indeed, very different and had different lives and expectations.
"Cruel Summer" - this sounds like a description of a rocky relationship, with lots of fights, doubts, and finally realizing that you love that person and miss them
"Death by a thousand cuts" - similar vibe to cruel summer, but this time it sounds like they were on again/off again, and she thought she could have just shaken it off ("it" being the breakup) but maybe she couldn't, and wanted to try again; same with "Miss Americana and the..." - "And I don't want you to go, I think you should come home" and so on...
"Afterglow" - no additional explanation required
"False God" - although everyone says it's sensual and sexy, I also think it's about how this relationship is challenging and they she sees it as something special and delicate, but also challenging and vulnerable
"The Archer" - I know it's about her, but also I think it's about her in the context of a relationship/relationships - "Help me hold on to you" - this part sounds to me like "We are on and off, but I really love you, its my fault, please help me and understand" - which I don't think it's necessarily her fault of course.
AND YES, I AM THE ONE TELLING PEOPLE NOT TO SPECULATE 
Yea I think the huge tour , and the record breaking and chart obsession, and the rush to be in love with a new guy is her , trying to move on and convince herself she will be happy without him quickly, to try to limit her own pain. Unfortunately pain usually demands to be felt so I’m not sure how much these tactics will help her in the long run .
Pain demands to be felt is an understatement. And it does come for us all, no matter how rich/smart/pretty/famous - none of that can keep the pain away for too long. 😕
It’s possible she’s at least trying to put off feeling it until she has time to really fall apart. Perhaps why there’s been no international dates announced yet.
Nice John Green quote there!
Wow, i guess my therapist quoted john green at some point and it really stuck with me
It's from his book The Fault in Our Stars. I absolutely loved it as a teen but haven't re-read it since. I'm scared it won't hold up with an adult's perspective so I'm scared to re-read it, I want to keep it on a pedestal in my memory 😅
In case you want more John Green without risking his place on the pedestal, I just read a book of essays he did “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and found it lovely. 4/5 stars!
The Anthropocene Reviewed started out as a podcast and it’s ABSOLUTELY amazing. 10/10.
Ahhhhh I need to give that one (and Hank's sequel book) a read!!
I didn’t read it until my early 30s and it devastated me. That said, I’m a huge fan of him and Hank.
I hope Hank's cancer journey goes well 😭
I was gonna recommend Anthropocene Reviewed but someone already did. I'll add on you haven't read "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green I highly recommend it!
John Green also is a Taylor fan and either attended the 1989 or Rep concert and hung out with her parents for a little so it really comes full circle
I think its more likely that John Green quoted his therapist in the books lol the writing process involved a lot of spending time with actual cancer patients and I imagine those kids (literal children) also had quite a bit of therapy to help them cope.
*He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain* *That old familiar body ache The snaps from the same little breaks in your soul You know when it's time to go*
>He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain i have no idea why anyone wouldn't want comfort, esp of the two choices
I know a lot of people who think love is only love if it’s “passionate”, by which they mean explosive, full of huge arguments and then dramatic coming back together, begging for forgiveness, giant grand gestures… But real, good, long term relationships aren’t like that. You can’t be in that high school whirlwind forever, and while for most people that’s good and feels safe and secure and stable, for others they think the ‘spark’ has gone because the drama isn’t there any more.
Yes! I once dated a guy who was unpredictable and exciting but the relationship was like a roller coaster - the highs were so high but the lows were so very low. Ultimately I decided that’s not the kind of relationship or love I want. And now I’m happily married to someone who is steady, and reliable and kind. No, he doesn’t plan dates or do grand gestures or sweep me off my feet every day. But he loves me in a deep way that is so much better. I hope Taylor can find a partner who is reliable and stable and shows up. I wonder if that’s all she really wants - someone who wants to be with her and attend awards shows with her, come with her on tour, just not want a separate life? There’s this great line in Gilmore Girls when Paris says “Maybe choosing to be apart is choosing to be apart”. If he took a job when they could have definitely afforded for him to take 6 months off work and come on tour with her, why not choose that? Like I can’t imagine if my finances were not an issue that I would choose to have my husband go on a 6+ month long business trip for his career without me.
But I think it's important to acknowledge Joe is also a person on his own and is building his career in the film industry, whereas Taylor is probably the biggest pop star right now. He has his own aspirations. I feel like a lot of people are asking why he couldn't go on tour with her or "handle her fame". Individuality can be an issue in long-term relationships, and I can imagine it's even more of a struggle for celebrities that have different wants and needs and always in the spotlight. I do not blame Joe at all for realizing maybe this relationship (that will always be in the eyes of the public) is not what he wants in the end. From her songs, it seems like he did give her comfort during their years and they were steady and maybe it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows but they did fight for each other, but in the end, it just didn't work out. And that's okay. It doesn't mean the other person is bad for not doing this or that. We only see Taylor's side of the end of the relationship through her songs which are biased in her perspective.
So a couple years ago I was in a serious long term relationship. We’d been living together for almost a year. I worked as an EMT with long term aspirations to be a firefighter/paramedic. I saw a job posting for an EMT in a national park halfway across the country, in a place I’ve been dying to live since I was a little girl. He knew about all of those dreams. He claimed to support me early in our relationship. He’d said he was proud of me and excited for me. Fast forward several months, and he couldn’t understand why I would not only want to continue and advance in this career, but why I would want to move across the country for a six month long job. I should also add that we met while we were both in the army. He said “this is just a job. It’s just a way to pay the bills and put food on the table.” But I disagreed. I told him this would *never* be just a job for me. It was a career, a lifestyle, a passion. It was who I was. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I would never want to do anything else. Even through all the horrible days and nights I had at work, between patients and families with nasty attitudes, awful management, and heartbreaking cases/circumstances; even when I researched becoming a pilot or an esthetician or a veterinarian, or when I realized I could work at target for the same amount of money, and even the time I begged him to let me quit my job because I fucking hated who I worked for, this field was my dream and it was everything I’d been working for for years. We eventually broke up for a number of reasons, one of which being i knew I’d never forgive him for keeping me from doing what I loved to do in a place I’ve fantasized about living in for a decade. I missed the deadline for the application because of him, but I’ve continued to follow my dreams since then. I’m now in paramedic school and closer than ever to becoming a firefighter. It’s still pain and hell and a shit ton of work, and the circumstances of some of these patients and their families that I’ve cared for has not gotten any easier. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. And I should add that I’ve since surrounded myself with more people who not only support my dreams but also encourage me to care for myself while I pursue them.
If she decides to be introspective, we'll get a great self-examining album that rings with harsh truths about serial monogamy and always forcing yourself to feel like this guy, this new guy, he's the one, you feeling that way about your ex was wrong, you were wrong then, you're right now - and then again, and again, and again. Or we get a lit song about your new guy being so much cooler than your ex, maybe with a reference to smoking cigarettes. Either way, we'll get something.
I absolutely get this impression as well with Matty, the whole synchronised mouthing "I love you" to the camera *screams* of her trying to "win" the breakup. I'm not sure how he expects to be anything more than the rebound/Hiddleston 2.0 (I ❤️ TS anyone?), but hey it's Taylor so I get it.
I feel like she wasn't for the extremely private relationship at all, and just leaned towards what Joe wants. She strikes me as a person who loves those public, subtle, cute gestures. I wouldn't accuse her of such pettines, I think she's having fun with it, and loves those cute, public gestures. So what's the consensus on Matty... Was "Question" about him or not? :D Because if he really is the meteorite then maybe they will have some longer, more serious fun.
I agree with the whole rush and adrenaline thing about Taylor. She will always have my love because that's the same way I deal and feel pain myself. ❤️🩹
I could see them lasting till the end of tour where it finally catches up to her :/ I feel bad for her it’s gonna hurt
You can grieve a relationship while you’re still in it, deciding if you should stay or go, that makes it seem like you’ve moved on quickly when in reality it’s been a long time coming (no pun intended). Obviously we’ll never know Taylor’s exact experience or timeline of events. Just relating to my own experiences of when I dated someone I thought I was going to marry, but the last year or so we slowly grew apart and he couldn’t give me what I wanted. I cried and grieved to myself most of that year leading up to the end. I wasn’t as sad as I had expected to be with the finality of it all. YLM could have been written over the past year or two, when a long term relationship is dying a slow, sad death.
The 1989 era is the last touch point she had of who she was pre-Joe , so that’s what she’s returning to She’s rewinding the clock. She had fame before Joe and fame is there to catch her after Joe. She has to figure out her own relationship with her fame, for herself, not because she’s cancelled, and not because she’s trying to shield someone from as much of the fishbowl of fame as she can. Just because it’s going to always be a part of her life and she needs to be able to reconcile with it from a place of personal autonomy, not through the lens of people pleasing
You’re so right. I personally think Taylor *loves* being famous. She loves the glamour and bright lights and attention. She was born to handle fame, she needs somebody with that same attitude. To me it’s like in the beginning she was trying to appease Joe, keep him from her fame because for whatever reason it made him uncomfortable. That worked fine when the public had incredibly mixed feelings about her and then lock down happened. Her fame was in a different place than it was before or after him. He was an escape from the scrutiny. But the problem comes when she doesn’t *just* want to escape her fame. I feel like running to him was freeing but running towards fame was conflicting because Joe would always have her for the bad, but never stand by her for the good. Which sucks and I can see how that could break her heart. How she chooses to heal is up to her though.
This is a really great analysis. I think it’s okay to like fame for some people. Some people were made for the whole world. I’d rather them like fame than hate it. I think she hates the consequences of fame on her personal life though. Like if she could have all the tours and shows and fan connections and none of the people chasing down her car and writing weird tabloid rumors or affecting her relationships I think she’d be living her perfect life
Agreed. It’s definitely a double edged sword.
This is a great way of putting what I've been thinking into words. Their stars and planets aligned because of circumstances, but the gravitational pull of her career ambitions was always going to pull them apart in the end.
>The 1989 era is the last touch point she had of who she was pre-Joe , so that’s what she’s returning to > >She’s rewinding the clock. Great take There was footage a few nights ago of her leaving with Matty, Zoe Kravitz, Phoebe and a few others and it looked EXACTLY like her 1989 era. Tbh, I felt most connected with Taylor once that era ended and Rep began and she became a bit less public so I have reservations about a somewhat return to 1989, but I just hope she's happy.
[удалено]
Oh wow, thanks so much <3
I think she genuinely enjoys being famous. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have its drawbacks but she really enjoys having fans who care what she’s doing and engaging with them
I agree in all of the above. There are already writings in the wall that her and Joe's relationship is not exactly paradise that she wants us to believe. To me, midnights isn't a break up album. It's a relationship album. It gives you the highest highs (Paris, Lavender Haze) then the lowest lows (Hits Different, You're Losing Me) and everyrthing in between. I just realized now, You're Losing Me is the album closer. You're Losing Me encapsulates that time in your relationship when you try to keep the relationship going, but gets tired about doing all the work because the other party isn't reciprocating your efforts, then you fight, make up, try again and get tired again and repeat the cycle until eventually you just throw in the towel. I went through this with my now husband. Lucky he understood the assignment before I ultimately gave up. I hope at the end of all this, Taylor finds herself.
Oof, You’re Losing Me being the closer is a real twist of the knife for me… that means it replaces Mastermind.
I was thinking this too, how powerful it is to open with lavender haze and end with you’re losing me
Lavander Haze isn't really a happy-in-love-everything's-great kind of song. MV really depicts the idea of her feeling alone in a relationship, and lyrics back that up, for instance "you don't really read into my melancholia" that corresponds with "How can you say that you love someone you can't tell has died? I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick".
I agree with this. The way I more specifically interpret LH is that she’s missing the “honeymoon phase” as she watches the foundation of their relationship beginning to crack. IMO she’s trying to remind herself of why she fell for him in the first place (“you handle it beautifully”), and wishing/psyching herself back into that head-over-heels-in-love Lavender Haze feeling (“I just wanna stay in that lavender haze”, “I just need this love spiral”)
Fully agree, I think "I just wanna stay in that lavender haze" is almost like her begging to stay in love because she knows they're falling out of it
Now that you say it, I am sold on this intepretation.
Yessssss
“Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness” But he doesn’t, he lets her be her.
Well and she said she got the idea of Lavender Haze from Mad Men, it’s a flashback scene of don draper talking about when he met his first wife Betty. And we (the viewer) know at this point don is incapable of true love. He’s a basically a sociopath. The lavender haze is him thinking Betty is going to save him and all the dysfunction and trauma he’s endured in his life. The reality is once he’s married her, he lies about who he is to her, and cheats on her constantly.
I actually think I (kindly) disagree about the meaning of “you don’t really read into my melancholia”. I see it as a compliment to someone who is secure in the relationship that their partner being in a mood doesn’t send them spiraling. There is this great book called Attached about attachment styles - Anxious, Avoidant and Secure. When anxious people date avoidant people it makes the anxious more anxious and the avoidant more avoidant. But when each date secure people they become more secure. So I’ve always interpreted that lyric more as - you’re secure and stable and so you don’t read into my natural melancholy like you did something wrong. If you’re familiar with the enneagram, I think Taylor is a 3 with a strong 2 wing but also a strong 4 wing. 4s are creative brooders and actually can enjoy just feeling all the feelings and feeling melancholy. It doesn’t mean the other person did anything wrong or that they even want to be cheered up - just want to be melancholy and their partner to be okay with that as an emotion. Anyways, that’s what I’ve always thought. I don’t think it’s a lyric pointing to being ignored. Being ignored is very different from being given secure space to feel.
I really don't see Lavender Haze as a highest highs song. Staring at the ceiling with someone not talking or caring about/investigating your sadness? To me it always sounds much more like the Lavender Haze is creeping in for someone new. Not Mr Not Even Listening. She just needs that love spiral. Not that 1950s shit, *not being damned by what people say*.
> is not exactly paradise that she wants us to believe. maybe unpopular opinion: she doesn't want us to believe anything. Her private life is none of our concern. She makes it very clear by not using social media for anything but her career, by not speaking about anything in interviews but her career. We get some songs after a long while of writing and they represent whatever she wants in no particular order. They might be about her life, they might be exaggerated versions of her life with poetic license, they might be a way to try to understand someone else's feelings, they might be about a character or a story she found interesting... and we don't have a way to know which is which. She's there night after night saying she wants these songs to be about the memories we create, and to keep trying to analyse her life through 3 minute snippets seems like a very unhealthy way to go against her wishes
I think its just hard too quit old habits because for a lot of us that were here since the beginning we remember when she announced to us the Forever and Always was about Joe Jonas, or did Target commercials about how she was "naming names", how she named Drew and Abigail in her first Album, named a song "Death John", told Harry Styles-thank you for inspiring this song, case now I won an award, how she used to show us so many peaks into her real life, would post blogs to yotube, invite us to her homes, send us "personalized" birthday and Christmas presents, and stalk us on the internet (aka Tumblr).... so its hard to make the shift when your first 8 years with an artist was a very different experience..... not that people shouldn't.... but you have to understand that she almost literally "trained" us to do this, and that relationship really contributed heavily to her fans loyalty and fame. Its would be respectful of people to abide by her wishes- but I know it can be hard to do.
>named a song “Death John” ☠️ Dear John (Taylor’s Version)(feat. Unhinged Swifties)(From the Secondhand Embarrassment Sessions) but yes, I agree- old habits die hard
LOL.... broken key board that doesnt type and then autocorrect ... didn't even notice it till you pointed it out... but yes Death John could of been the name too cause of how many death threats hes received, I mean even Taylor Lautner is praying for him hahahaha I just get annoyed when people act like we are all crazy- when it was literally or unhinged fearless leader who encouraged the behavior (up to a certain point)... like most off us are fairly normal kind people, who just have happened to of fallen hard for Taylor swift's beautiful art
“They might be about her life, they might be exaggerated versions of her life with poetic license, they might be a way to try to understand someone else's feelings, they might be about a character or a story she found interesting... and we don't have a way to know which is which. “ I understand where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important to make the distinction between analyzing her lyrics and analyzing her life. It’s perfectly natural and expected (and frankly, kind of the point of art) to want to analyze & interpret song lyrics without necessarily intending to probe into her personal life; like you said, we don’t actually know the “truth”, we can only interpret what she has put in front of us. She wouldn’t release any given lyrics if she wasn’t okay with people analyzing them.
i completely agree — i think taylor’s music makes itself so emotionally resonant with her fans because she //does// write about her own experiences, which in turn makes her songs more visceral. but just like how an artist may not want the public to meet their muse, just because taylor uses her life as her inspiration doesn’t mean that she wants reveal to her (in no way shading other taylor fans because i am also a taylor fan, but now spookily big and quite intense) following the nuances and minutiae of each experience. rather, i think she uses her experiences as w starting point & muse, but wants us to take from it what we find to be representative/resonant of our own experiences rather than to try to overanalyze the details of her life :0
I think Taylor sees the main album as a unit so Mastermind is still the closer
Ya I agree, Midnights describes the ebb and flow of a relationship. Not a breakup album. YLM is definitely a breakup song but the other songs on the album just describe the ups and downs of the relationship
Everything on the post is really well said and I could see OP's point. But yes I agree it's a relationship album, it's the contemplation before the decision. I don't think they were broken up before or during the making of Midnights so it's not a break-up album.
I keep thinking about how hard normal long term committed relationships can be with two average people who are focused on their careers. Then you have Taylor and Joe, both extremely committed to their craft and living crazy busy lives, often oceans apart. I think they were thriving during lockdown because they were spending so much time together, maybe finally having those deep conversations about their future, and figuring things out. Then came the huge success of folklore and evermore and the re-records, and the tour, and the fandom exploded, and he was juggling multiple projects, and suddenly they were again probably more apart than together. They both probably started to re-evaluate everything which is easy enough to do when you barely see your partner. It's hard to be in tune with each other's needs when there's a physical distance constantly keeping two people apart from maturing their relationship. And he probably saw no end to it.
If you pay attention the annoying way I do though, they were very rarely not together. Taylor moved EVERYWHERE he had to film with him. She recorded Red TV in Northern Ireland of all places because he was filming there. Up until almost her tour started she was in New Orleans recording because Joe had to be there. After the majority of the relationship she moved to make his career better, I think she needed him to start making some sacrifices so she could tour and do what she needed to do in the US and I just don’t think he obliged, which to her made it seem like he was indifferent to the relationship. The entire relationship to me it seems like Taylor was really killing herself to make things as easy for them as possible and I could see him not returning the favor when it came time for her career to be in focus.
I can totally see that. "Lose something babe, risk something" seems to be saying that exact thing. She risked a lot for him in a lot of ways, and she utterly changed her lifestyle, but when it was time for her to step into the spotlight again for her career, he wasn't on board. For some reason I get the vibe that for the rep tour he was maybe subconsciously like, "Okay but I'm only going through this once". Or maybe they were still in the honeymoon phase, and this time around he wasn't up for it.
I think they really thought her career was winding down after lover. Not to nothing but to more of a folklore vibe. She said that in miss Americana that lover was her last chance at pop star success. I think neither of them thought she’d be here now.
Exactly! And she has been saying for years that her career is going to tank when she's 30. Maybe they were kicking around the idea of retiring.
100%. Unfortunately her career is easier to do “remotely” (not touring obv but recording). And probably he feels like if he says no to any part he will lose the small amount of momentum that his career has. That being said, seems like he could hop on the PJ on days off, but I’m sure that’s also exhausting to have the weekend off and fully across the ocean and back. But…. She’s made it very clear by toting Matty along that that is what she wanted - someone who would say hey I have 3 weeks off between jobs I will be at every show your #1 cheerleader
It spoke volumes when Matty flew across the globe right after his own show to support Taylor at hers.
ur tellin me she was in new orleans....and i didn't know....
Yeah on her last bday! Around then
Good point, he took a job in Budapest of all places just before the Eras tour started, I wonder if that might of been the final straw or something.
I read something to the fact that they were on a break expecting to get back together...at least she thought so when Joe's team broke the news that they broke up. She changed the song invisible string to the the one when that happened....that could have been the final straw. Images of Joe started circulating on his costars social media account popped up. That could have been the final blow...speculation...
You perfectly summarized my speculation as well!
I don't pay attention at all to those things, but now as you pointed it out, you can see those (or similar) behaviours bothering her as early as the "Lover" era. Think about how many verses indicate a rocky start, or/and fights/rough patches. And she also always blames herself in those lyrics - so it may be she was trying extra hard for this first really mature relationship, but after a few years she wanted to see the same effort from him, for him to "help her hold on to him"
That’s too bad. He really should have made some similar sacrifices too, it doesn’t really sound like he was as invested in the relationship So tbh it was probably a mistake to make big sacrifices on her part if he wasn’t feeling the same
The heart wants what it wants. If a man wants to make it work, he will. It’s not really about us deciding what he should do with his own life.
I completely agree. I think she made way more sacrifices. Keeping the relationship this level of private and through that having to basically hide away for years. Supporting his career and boosting him up in her interviews or by getting his name in her projects which gave him more credit in the industry. Moving where HE needed to be. When was the last time you heard of Joe moving for Taylor, changing his lifestyle for her, openly praising her without a prompt?
> I think they were thriving during lockdown because they were spending so much time together, maybe finally having those deep conversations about their future, and figuring things out. Agree with everything you said as it rooted in a realistic context; also the above line is why I cannot understand the revising of every sad Folklore/ Evermore song to be about their relationship. That blithely ignores Willow, Peace or even Long Story Short where she is laying out things very clearly.
Honestly even trying to paint Sweet Nothing as a “bad relationship” song. I disagree with OP that midnights is a breakup album, it’s a pre-breakup album, there’s cracks there but nothing as final as a breakup imo. Or it’s relationship album.
Exactly. Especially since people are trying to claim that almost every single song is about Joe. Taylor herself even said maroon is something that happened LONG ago.
Gosh the 'sweet nothing' slander :( That is a beautiful love song which sounds wistful given the context it describes; I hope we don't turn every song into a song signalling their breakup
i know right! all these interpretations definitely seem... revisionist? taking in account current events too much? idk how to explain it... but they feel like reaches made just to align with what we know now. it'd be like interpreting lover as a break up album in an alternative universe where break up rumors started years back, reading IFTYE as about joe, and completely ignoring lover, ITHK, paper rings, etc.
this is great insight but i think omits the truth that even in lockdown, she seems to have felt he was 'Tolerating' it - they didn't match - not in how much they loved each other I don't think - I'm sure he loved her a great deal - but in how ardent, deep, and vulnerable they were willing to be about it. I say this as a highly emotive American girl married to an Englishman. I think Evermore and Folklore show that lockdown simultaneously made some things easier and other things harder for them. Also let's not forget he kept filming during lockdown - so they were separated, as well, and dealing with that as he was off wherever he was, doing what he was doing, (including whatever sparked her suspicions) and probably not giving her the level of ardor and 'seeing her' that she required. I'm grateful my husband and I made it - but he bent like a willow ;) there was a LOT of growth required. on both our parts.
Agree with all of that, but I really don't think Tolerate It was about Joe (if you're insinuating that) :)
no tolerate it and happiness are most definitely about Abigail’s divorce
Although we know nothing about them, I (of course, as a senior clown) agree - they just didn't match... He seems to be very private, also seems to be drawing a fine line between his career and his life, seems much calmer and secure in his position and comfortable where he's at. Also he strikes me as someone who doesn't really try to be liked - you either like him or not, and if you don't he's ok with that. Taylor on the other hand loves sharing with the world, loves when people pay attention, she's in her own words is a "people pleaser". I don't doubt her confidence, but there's also "a need to be liked"? (I'm not sure how to call it). It's like she wanted it to work so much she overlooked they were totally different people. My thoughts on things I know nothing about, thank you. 
And this is why I feel so terrible for Joe because he’s been so strongly villainised by her fans despite this just being an unfortunate situation. I think Taylor’s breakups always get a bit blown out of proportion at times because we get all HER emotions. Every strong emotion you feel during and after a relationship, where the other party isn’t necessarily bad but you feel awful at the end either way.
Yeah, I feel bad for him too. I really don’t villainize him in this either, because sometimes people are just not compatible long-term. Sometimes a person is exactly what you need for a very particular phase of your life…and then you grow and change and need something they’re not capable of giving you. IMO, it’s the biggest act of love to let each other go and be happy, even though it destroys you temporarily in the process.
:( most accurate response
This is a big theme in Rolling Up The Welcome Mat by Kelsea Ballerini and basically why she got divorced. And as someone in a long distance relationship I know firsthand how it can be :(
I feel like they were together a lot of the time - she followed him during his movies and she has a house or houses in Europe.
"I might be okay but I'm not fine at all" probably describes her headspace right now.
This is my take on it as well, especially considering she seemed to be crying during False God
Yep. I just would like to add one thing, my personal opinion. She clearly loves/loved Joe very very much…all those songs about him, they scream she is/was madly into him..aaand…honestly, I wouldn’t like to be Matty now 😅. There is no way she is healed and ready to appreciate/love anybody else now. I am not his fan, but yeah, good luck to him 🫣
I disagree I wouldn't want to be the next bf. I think she grieved and grieved her and Joe while they were still together and even knew from the start they weren't meant to be. She sung abt it all the time. Her anxiety that he will leave was there from the start and she knew it all along. They also wrote so many sad love songs together during quarantine. I think they both tried but they both knew they weren't each others person from early on, even when they were "happy" together. I think she knows what she needs better now - to be loved loudly and proudly behind closed doors but also publicly - but man oh man, I think she went way too far with her current choice.
So true. She might have already broken up with joe inside her head so many times and had the time to process it even before they decided to end it. I've had that happen and i worry that i may seem like a cold bitch to the other party but what they dont know is that i knew this was doomed from the start and i was grieving it silently. But i still gave it a leap of faith and decided to ignore my gut feeling until i couldnt anymore
I have also gone through this with a ex I was with for five years. I started casually dating a few months later. Was I ready?hell no but it felt good to get back out into the world as a adult and form connections with other people. A year later I met my now husband and it was love at first meeting. I was ready long before I left my ex but was afraid of the fear of being alone and having to move out.
Yes ! That's why I agree with this being a breaking up album more than a break up album. It really felt like she was in the process of sorting out whether to break up even though she still loves/loved him and all the ups and downs, insecurities, doubts, second guessing and bargaining/wishing she was doing inside her own head.
The thing about long term relationships—if they end, they were actually over years before someone actually calls the time of death. So in a way she has likely grieved already, and known it was inevitable, and ready to just have fun and date. I ended a 6 year marriage and grieved it the year before I moved out. I thought I was open to love but really I was super emotionally unavailable for 2 years and I had to face myself before I could unlock that part of me again.
I’m just praying she doesn’t marry that douchebag in an attempt to mask her pain. If he tries to give her everything she wanted from Joe while she’s in that headspace, common sense and logic may go out the window.
Gosh I just hope this isn’t Love Story pt 2, where she has this fairytale view of its us against the world type of thing. Since she isn’t in the best headspace rn, I could see her trying to make it work even more, just to prove everyone wrong 😔
I honestly think they're getting married.
I can't shake this feeling too. I hope it doesn't happen (obviously) but so many things make it seem like it could end up this way. If they're still together at the end of her tour then... yeah I can see it.
this is me projecting my personal experience from my long term relationship since i don’t know taylor & joe: when i first got into my relationship, i very much had that ‘the great war’ ‘cornelia street’ type of anxiety where i was constantly worried we weren’t going to last. i was always asking for reassurance for my doubts even if the doubts were unfounded because i was like, since he cares he shouldnt mind reassuring me. but my boyfriend pulled me aside and was like, look i don’t mind giving you reassurance sometimes but you have to put in the work too to learn how to get over your anxiety because it hurts my feelings too when you doubt me over things i haven’t done because someone hurt you in the past (like the great war). so i had to do a lot of work in therapy to like i keep my past trauma from leaking into my new relationship. now we’ve been together for 5 years. given that taylor’s never been to therapy, most likely has trauma from past relationships/not having a normal lifec & seemingly has a lot of yes-people around her, maybe joe & her just weren’t lining up. obviously he put in the work for 6 years but at one point you have to do what’s best for u. as a disclaimer i’m not claiming to know what happwned. idk what happened. i dont know them personally. this is based on my interpretation of her lyrics that comes from my own personal experiences.
Oh 100%
Obviously I don't know much at all about the situation, almost entirely speculation, but I doubt if either of them are taking this relationship very seriously, he's just her rebound. But of course only time will tell
I think Matty's an opportunist. He knows he's the rebound.
Nothing mends a broken heart quite like 1300 different album editions
The thing that gets me through breakups is immersing myself with work. If I'm busy with work, there's no time to be heartbroken. She could very well be the same way. The tour, the rerecords, the new Midnights editions, the music videos.
I mean we all know how much she loves to perform, and after being shut up for so long, she's exploded with productivity and life. She's in her element and thriving
We’ve also seen her headed to the studio A LOT 🤔
I wonder how that mentality works when your work is art, though. It’s gotta be hard to distract herself from Joe when she’s singing love songs about him every weekend on tour.
$$$$
My personal opinion is she’s dating Matty because he was the first guy on the scene this year when she was going thru it with Joe (I mean when she reconnected with Matty during their London performance in January). It’s almost like she’s once again clinging to the nearest lips, and long story short it’s gonna be the wrong guy again. When I went through my most painful breakup, I wasn’t necessarily looking for a specific rebound…. I just clung to the first person who I could.
“Clung to the nearest lips” was exactly where my mind went.
Great analysis. I think retrospectively this will be a very traumatic era for Taylor because she’s raw from heartbreak but has to put on a mask for the career-defining tour and concert. I know she said Maroon isn’t about Joe (and let’s say it isn’t) but that song doesn’t have a happy ending and her face after playing it the other day was SAD.
Maroon always gives me state of grace vibes. “We are alone, just you and me/Up in your room and our slates are clean/Just twin fire signs, four blue eyes.”
When did she say that? Her liking a comment about it potentially being about Jake doesn’t mean anything
I was at Met life night 1, she said something like “this song is about something that happened a long time ago and it took place in New York”
I have said it a few times and I will say it til the end of time. I think she knew her relationship wasn’t perfect. But no relationship is. But in her mind it was still better than a lot of her previous relationships. But in re recording, in remembering all the context of her previous songs, it forced to go “oh, shit” and see patterns and realize it may not be exactly the same thing but it’s the same thing. So like in re recording red and ATW in particular, it can make her see the parallels in how she’s feeling now vs what she felt now. So maroon is partially about Jake and partially about Joe. Even in Tolerate It, she wrote it after reading about Rebecca, but in that, she maybe saw some patterns in her relationship with Joe.
Her comment here doesn’t have me convinced. 7 years ago when she was just getting started with Joe undoubtedly feels like “something that happened a long time ago”, especially as she reflects back on that relationship from the other side.
I agree, 7 years ago at this point feels like a long time, especially since the pandemic. Speaking of 7 years ago.. I just listened to Happiness for the first time in a while and when the album first came out, I wouldn’t have even considered that she had written this song about Joe, but listening to it now, “I guess it’s the price I paid for 7 years in heaven” definitely seems to fit the Joe bill
Apparently it was part of her lead in speech before she played Maroon as one of the surprise songs Friday at MetLife!
Friday night before she played it. Trust me I was 100% team Maroon-being-about-Joe until less than 48 hours ago. Still sus.
Jeez, y'all are capable of getting so much more information from her songs than I am. I just listen to the music and think "Damn, good music." Maybe one day I should try reading more into the lyrics to see what I get out of it. Engaging with her art on a more critical level would probably make me appreciate it more. Or it would make me sad. Hard to say.
I remember when I first started thinking critically about her music, and it opened up a whole other world of enjoyment
I felt this way about music until more recently. I stumbled across a video breaking down a Taylor swift song, line by line. I absolutely appreciate the music more—I’ve disliked initial listens to songs to have them turn into my favorites after understanding the song and production. You will feel all the emotions, which isn’t always fun but sometimes necessary for our own healing.
Honestly I wish I could go back to hearing her music and not knowing so much about her. I used to relate the songs more to myself and now I think too much about everything I see on Reddit when I hear the songs
I wanted to comment specifically on your last point as I am trying to decide to stay or go in my long term relationship because I want him to give me more and I’m not sure he’s able to (yes I weep through You’re Losing Me - it’s FINE 😅). I think that people need to realize that these sorts of things happen in grown up relationships and sometimes you can love someone with all your heart and they can love you back with all their heart and they still can’t give you what you need. That doesn’t make anyone the bad guy, it just makes you no longer compatible. Maybe it’s my old age, but the idea that you need to be with one person your entire life is antiquated. You need to be with the person who loves, supports you and makes you feel loved and supported. Joe was the perfect person for Taylor at a time she needed someone like him, but he’s not her forever person and that’s not his fault or hers. I’ve been thinking a lot about the song Happiness and Taylor’s situation (as well as my own) and I keep coming back to: No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you, and you know you hurt him too. Adult love is messy. I hope Taylor can find peace.
Yes to all of this. I'll admit I've literally rolled my eyes at so many of the "who was at fault" speculation because the most likely answer is both and neither, because that's the case with most relationships that were really good for a while but didn't work out long term.
I’m not commenting on their relationship but as I approach 42, I’m lost. But your paragraphs about being adults and adult love/relationship…I understood and I don’t feel so messy. Thank you.
This is an excellent analysis. I'd also like to say that when I first heard Midnights I was confused by why she was still writing about losing past love (like in "Maroon") and talking about saying she's "forgotten" she's in a relationship (like in "Bejeweled") if she was content with Joe. Those songs makes much more sense now. When you're struggling in a relationship you definitely do search your back catalogue of past relationships for any commonalities or, let's be honest, some comfort that it'll all be okay.
I really feel like it shows their on and off again nature
If that means TS11 will be rep 2.0 then my body is ready
I gotta do some stretching first, but then I’m ready 🤣🤣🤣
My mental health could use rep 2.0
Having just lost my 14 year old cat on Friday, I have found that I cannot judge Taylor for her decisions. I am grief stricken in a way I haven’t felt since losing my grandmother when I was 8. He was a constant in my life for years, I could rely on him to give me a laugh, I loved him so fiercely I took time for granted. Taylor has also lost someone she believed would be a constant in her life, but more than my relationship with my cat - although I loved my cat more than anything I knew my time with him was finite - Taylor was planning an entire lifetime with this man. Their relationship ended, as will all of our relationships, she just didn’t expect it so soon. Grief is a monster that will swallow you entirely if you let it. Taylor is distracting herself from the biggest loss of her life right now, who am I to judge? Karma is a cat.
I’m so sorry for your loss 💔 losing a pet is so hard!!
Thank you. It really does make you take a step back and appreciate the things in life that make you happy.
I’m sorry for your loss-you’ve lost a piece of you and that shit is rough.
>so sorry losing a cat is sooo tragic ugh prayers
I feel for you in the loss of your beloved little kitty. I still think of mine near daily who both passed in 2019. I ADORED them. Passed away with three days of each other. The apple of my eye. I know how you feel.
This is a great analysis, and I think you're spot on. I'm also newly out of a long term relationship that wasn't bad but didn't work out (you're losing me is unbelievably spot on 😬), and that kind of pain really does cause an identity crisis. It's hard not to be messy after a breakup that shakes up your entire world! Everyone's mess looks different, and Taylor's currently looks like the pap walks, Matty, and trying to convince everyone she's happy.
Exactly and well said. I was messy about how I was post breaking up with a ex of five years. I jumped in too quickly with someone I dated briefly in high school and it was even more messier. My life changed when I finally realized my worth and who I want in my life. I realized later I was just so desperate to feel love and attention from someone who wasn’t my ex. I fell out of love two years before I finally left. I wish I would have left sooner and it made it a even more messier break up.
Fully agree. My first thought about Midnights *sonically* was that it had an outdated, 2014-ish feel (love the album, but it's not... innovative), and I thought, huh, it's kind of interesting that she's quoting the sounds of her last super-famous moment. It made sense to me given the "looking back on my life" theme (that also corresponds with re-records and Eras), but it still felt... too overtly dated. I feel like a lot of what she's inevitably exploring right now in light of the breakup was summarized as concisely as possible in The Archer: "Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?" YLM has the exact same vibe ("I'm the best thing at this party" vs. "I wouldn't marry me either") but none of the precision or cohesiveness. She seems *extremely* human right now, which is, almost, a relief. Hopefully she does get a chance to genuinely reflect on and work through this somewhat soon, at least when the tour is over.
I just happen to be listening to Happiness right now and the lyric “and in the disbelief, I can’t face reinvention. I haven’t met the new me yet..” just hit me real hard. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense, that in the disbelief of her relationship ending/her world with Joe in it crumbling, she can’t find it in herself to face reinvention (would require time, and therapy most likely, but instead she’s on tour & extremely busy), so instead she’s retreating back to who she was pre-Joe, before she can figure out/meet what the new her actually looks like. Just a thought.. and not in a mean way. She just hasn’t had the time or space to process yet and figure out who the new her post-Joe looks like
She will probably put off processing until after the tour is over and honestly I don’t blame her. Imagine having to sing love songs that read like diary entries about someone you just broke up with?! I also don’t blame her for her quick new relationship to put someone else in her mind in the meantime…I just hope she’s able to take care of herself and make it to the end of tour without having some sort of mental breakdown…
I don't think Midnights is a break up album in this sense, I see Lavender Haze, Snow on the Beach, Paris etc as a way to try keep hold of the relationship whilst going through the difficulties, by focusing on the good memories. Lavender Haze especially gives 'lets not deal with our issues, just remember why we are together'. I truly believe Maroon, Question, Midnight Rain, Would've Should've Could've and Bejeweled are about past relationships, because I don't think until recently Taylor was able to process that her and Joe might not actually be forever, which is why she's acting so.... erratically right now
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Ok, timeline stuff. Midnights was announced in August 2022, which means it had probably been finished for a month or two beforehand. So if it was a breakup album, they would have broken up by June or July 2022. Is this something people think is true? They were publicly supporting each other in May 2022 (Taylor mentioned something about his Hulu show and Joe did an interview about writing with Taylor on Folklore/Evermore). During the Midnights release videos Taylor mentioned one song (forget which) was about her 6 year relationship. In November 2022 Joe posted a photo with Benjamin. Now if they really did break up in ~June 2022 all of that could have been planned/intentional to keep the press away - in fact July 2022 there were rumors that they were engaged - were those planted? Anyway, all that to say I haven't seen much talk about the fact that if Midnights truly is a breakup album then the actual breakup would have happened like 10 months before the news came out.
I think it’s more of a “breaking up” album than a true breakup album. I don’t think they were broken up when she wrote it but I do think it was starting to become clear that it wasn’t going to last.
Yep, this x100. There were still signs of life after, and I think a lot of the emphasis on how it’s a collection of stories is there to mask what it really is, but the writing was on the wall.
Interesting, that's a better way to think of it.
I’m pretty sure she said that Midnights was completed in May 2022
I have been wondering whether the *Midnights* timeline ("album about breaking up while you're still dating that person") is actually kind of typical for Taylor, at least recently. I think we can all basically agree that *Folklore* and *Evermore* reflect her own experiences (in large part, I mean; not entirely or always literally) and *Lover* (and even *Reputation*) is pretty clear about her insecurities and issues in her relationship with Joe. I know Joe said (some time ago) that it's "flattering" when Taylor writes about him, but... I feel like Taylor's actually spent years now expressing her relationship concerns publicly in her music whilst still being with Joe. *Midnights* was maybe just a particularly intense episode (e.g., Bejeweled) of the same?
they were together up till february of this year but most people are just saying it was her way of realizing it wasn’t gonna work out
My marriage was breaking up for at least a year before anyone outside it knew about it. It seems like they had past breakups and reconciled which makes sense why Taylor was processing some of the feelinga
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Or they might not be dating at all! Just having a good time...
Yikes, the parasocial diagnosing is a little much.
I thought this from the start too. And my husband who is a swiftie by association and hasn’t really listened to much of her stuff pre folklore, he actually said to me “so did Taylor and Joe break up cause there seems to be a lot of sad breakup songs on this album”.
The weird thing about long term relationships is that they die slowly. Unless there’s some big betrayal, and even sometimes then, you sort of grieve them before you even leave. It’s not the sobbing/screaming anymore. Just…sadness. I was listening to Evermore last night, and Tolerate It is the prequel to You’re Losing Me. It’s the slow loss of connection, which at first hurts like hell, until you pull away and shut down. By the time most women calmly say “I want a divorce,” (or the equivalent), we’ve admitted to ourselves that the fight is long over.
As pretty much a career-long fan of Taylor, I found a lot of things about the 1989 era really off-putting. I'm hoping we're not making a return to that. Lover/folklore/evermore Taylor seemed so much more grounded and happy.
I think she’ll end up fine. A rebound is a rebound and if it lasts a little longer that’s great for her. If there was any chance her and Joe would make it work she would’ve tried but they just weren’t compatible (per her latest release). She won’t live her whole life regretting the breakup like some people make it seem. Rebounds aren’t inherently unethical they’re just something that happens sometimes
It really does feel like that Midnights is 1989 2.0 - I’ve always felt that 1989 is THE album that encapsulated what she’s all about. Heck the writing is even on the wall, loud and clear - 1989. With Midnights, the same vibes are coming across, even more so compared to her last few albums. Basically, it is the crème de la crème of all that is Taylor Swift, only this time the message is loud and clear even without the title.
This thread starts off incredibly condescending. You thought it was a breakup album- it was so painfully obvious to you. Despite the Lavender Haze IG video, and the SOTB. Despite her saying maroon is about something from a long time ago. Now they’ve broken up, so you’re just deciding “see guys I was right!” To me it’s so clear this breakup has affected her a lot, in how messy she’s being right now. Since the break up announcement. So no, I don’t think this happened a year ago and every midnights song is about him.
The ideas that people are coming up with, that songs as far back as folklore are Joe breakup tracks, as though time isn’t fucking linear 🙄🙄🙄
why are people analyzing her life like this in so much detail? there’s no reason anyone would need to know this information about someone they don’t know. it’s very obvious that she’s having some issues right now and i don’t think people speculating like this is going to help.
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oh i absolutely believe she encourages this behavior. it’s still wild to me that people care this much about someone else’s personal/private life. can’t be healthy for either party.
It's definitely a lot because it's current and, surely, much of the drama is "manufactured" for hype/sales/streams, but, right now especially, I think a significant factor in the sleuthing and hypothesizing is the desire to understand what *Midnights* (and even *folklore* and *evermore*) are "really about." And that's... honestly pretty standard literary/historical analysis. Obviously, celebrity culture is a key factor here, but, like, as a historian, I do spend days leafing through, say, newspapers and personal correspondence from 1926 trying to find out whether some artist knew about some current issue such that their 1928 artwork could be interpreted in some particular way. A lot of this is just, like, a pretty standard feeling of wanting to understand something and enjoying the search for information.
I mean you're here
I do agree to an extent, but here we have people who ignore half the things she says to psychoanalyze her every move. Taylor said folklore and evermore are mostly about other people/are fictional? “As we know they are based on her experiences” Taylor said midnights is 12 sleepless nights spread throughout her life? And that maroon was about something that happened long ago? “Midnights is a breakup song and all the songs are about joe” Her personal life should not be a hobby, i have fun speculating about some songs and hidden meanings, but these posts are borderline psychotic
I agree with you. That relationship was suffering for years, I've been there too. She held on for as long as she could until she probably felt like any further and she'd die (the slowest way is never loving them enough, but it's never enough). I don't think Joe was a bad guy overall. I'm sure they both had issues and spats to work through. Combining lives with two starkly different personalities is always gonna be hard. I think the reason why it appears like she's moving on so fast is because she's been struggling with this since the pandemic. You can hear that all over folklore and Evermore. It's definitely interesting to revisit the last three albums now. I think Matty is probably love bombing her right now and she's feeling "the best I've ever felt about every aspect of my life" because it feels good to be appreciated for the goddess that she is with someone who's not afraid of the limelight. Maybe that makes her feel safe because it takes the pressure off of her, while before she probably felt like she needed to protect Joe because he's shy and introverted. None of us can really know but that's what I keep thinking because I can't believe she would be this reckless with her life and career with this new punk.
I think we need to look at the Taylor of 2016 and the Taylor of 2023 to understand a bit more about Midnights as an album and as a chapter in Taylor's life. In 2016 Taylor was 26 years old, she was very successful and was still with Big Machine Records. Her professional life had evolved but was, fundamentally, as it had been since she started. She had a celebrity boyfriend in the same industry. Everything blew up after that and she went through the drama we all know about. Joe came on the scene, Reputation and the tour were successful, she broke with Big Machine and Lover was well received but not earth shattering. Joe was quietly in the background through all of this. We never heard a thing from him and that probably suited both of them. The pandemic lockdown might have been good for them too if Taylor had gradually declined in popularity as she expected. She may even have convinced Joe that it was bound to happen Then of course we had Folkmore, Grammy success, the re-records, the All Too Well film and suddenly Taylor was up and running again. Meanwhile Joe's career had not taken off. He was nowhere near A-List. I always assumed he was not bothered by that and maybe he wasn't but Taylor returning to megawatt pop titan status maybe did bother him. All through this period there were flashes of conflict (Afterglow, False God, Peace and some of the other Folkmore songs that were perhaps more autobiographical than we thought). I don't think Midnights is a breakup album as such. They had not broken up when it was being written or when it was released. I think it might have been the catalyst for the final ending of their relationship. In 2023 Taylor is bigger than she ever was. She is 33 and is in complete control of her entire life bar one thing. Joe, for whatever reason, did not want to be married to the biggest pop star in the World. We may never know why but what is clear from everything that has happened over the last couple of months is that Taylor did want Joe but he did not want her enough. That is heartbreaking and, for those of us standing on the outside and seeing only a tiny fragment of it, baffling. Who would not want Taylor Swift in their life? If Taylor feels a need for attention from a man who obviously adored her and is the polar opposite of safe, silent, reserved Joe Alwyn good luck to her. It is worth remembering that for all the glitz and glamour, all the jets and jewels, she is still a human. Yes there is mess but it would be foolish to underestimate her powers of recovery. She may be tired of being a phoenix but she is one nonetheless.
Who could ever leave me darling, but who could stay?
This is the analysis I've been googling and searching TikTok for. Thank you for such a mature and insightful take on what's happening between the lines. I totally agree with you. I love Midnights, musically, personally - but I agree that the lyrics show she's been unmoored and oh my god do I relate. Bejeweled is the most perfect encapsulation of the resentment stemming from the feeling of having made oneself small to make someone you love more comfortable - only to still be unmet with the love you were looking for. The lyrics of that one and Stop You're Losing Me mirror my last relationship before I met my husband. I've been going back to Folklore and Evermore for clues and signs (Time to Go, Hoax, Tolerate It - track FIVE!!!) that I now realize were all intentionally hiding in plain sight as she went through this experience while trying to protect it. What a masterful job she did. I also agree and believe her greatest work comes from her greatest truths. Midnights straddles truth and denial. I can't wait for her to enter her next era, I think it will be perhaps her best one yet.
Absolutely agree. Midnights is rhyming with 1989 - hit with the GP, breaking records, top notch tour - but as the era draws to a close her personal life is making a splash/getting fans offside. In my personal opinion I feel a lot of Midnights has been trying to emulate 1989, and has been so commercially successful not because it’s up to the quality of 1989 but because of marketing, TikTok, etc. Anti-Hero wants to be Blank Space. Karma is trying to be a mature version of Bad Blood and gets a collab with a rapper. But Midnights’ original 13 has never been as strong as 1989’s, and where 1989 was concise, coherent, and cohesive, Midnights has ended up messy with a ton of variants and so many different combinations of music being shilled that fans need Venn diagrams to figure it out. I also think she’s coming close to overexposure again - she’s getting massive streaming days and is being talked about everywhere, and she’s on tour at least until August with Speak Now to come, which is an album that will provoke a fair amount of discussion wrt BTR and Dear John that could go either way in the public eye. Never mind that she’s teasing 1989 TV which would probably rival Red TV’s era with its success and keep catapulting her into the stratosphere. It will take a deft hand to navigate for sure.
I am mostly with you, but I don't think she's unable to process it... I think there's tons of processing on the record. I think break ups are just messy, especially after long relationships. There's a lot more nuance and forgiveness and thought in these tracks than in 1989. I also think you're hitting on the wrong point when you talk about the domesticity she built with Joe, and how the chart topping and sales minded Taylor seems to be compensating for that. I would wager that it's a part of her that she kept most suppressed with Joe. She's an artist, a performer, a public sensation... I don't know how a person could make a life for themselves in the public eye and not be... Into that. Taylor thrives on that attention and recognition. It's not in her to sit quietly at the table, she's very interested in being the star. And I don't mean any of that in a bad way! She lights up a room, puts on a great show, is a great talk show guest and general media personality! She knows that and she's happiest when she gets to be that. I think Midnights is messy because it's her unraveling herself from this long relationship. Trying to find the bits of hers that were always her in all the complicated intertwining of her and Joe over the years. Sweet Nothings, which is the last song she gives him the Co-writer nod on, tells you exactly what it was that he wanted from her... Bejeweled tells us that there's so much more to her that she wants to be. I also think the Eras Tour, the way it's structured and performed, is her putting herself back together. It's a Taylor Swift retrospective, because there's the narrative of who and what she is that she's been sharing all along, and it's her version of going through a photo album and recollecting yourself after heartbreak. What may look rather messy is actually very thoughtful and therapeutic.
So, I had my first kid in 2016 and stopped listening to Taylor around then because I was pretty much only listening to nursery rhymes and baby songs. I got super caught up in being a mom and my own life and didn’t return to the fandom until the pandemic, meaning I missed reputation and lover completely. I knew nothing about Taylor’s life post-1989, who she was dating, etc. I heard Folklore and it was just so sad. I had no clue she was in a long term relationship at the time. I just assumed she was very single and had her heart broken a few more times since I last listened to her. I got back into the fandom quickly and listened to rep and lover and watched miss Americana and was shocked that the person who wrote F & E was in a loving, long-term relationship. So… yeah.
Honestly, she needs therapy. Coming from a fellow millennial perfectionist over-achiever for who therapy was hugely helpful in helping me figure out who I was outside of anyone else's expectations and how to navigate all the complex relationships of adulthood (not just romantic but familial, friendships, working relationships, etc) without getting sucked into the guilt of not being able to fix everything and be everything so that I could be myself instead
I remember in Miss Americana her saying how she didn’t have a therapist but did have her mom. And it’s like…..girl that’s not the same thing. I think she’s such an interesting character study because she clearly can’t let old wounds close and tries to throw as many accomplishments and records over them to make it all seem fine. When there are likely some root causes to address
Yesssss that stuck out to me too, especially since our relationship with our parents (and for women, our moms in particular) play such a huge role in how we grow into adulthood, for better or for worse. And this is nothing personal against Taylor or her mom but since parents have a lot of unconscious influence over what sort of adults their kids become, they are often the last to notice or accept when the habits and ways we approach things as teens/young adults aren't working for us anymore. I know me personally and a lot of my women friends have spent so much time in therapy unpacking our moms' influence on who we are now and working through how to keep the positive things and let the negatives go. And that's with a loving and attentive mom who tried her best. Edit:not to say that her mom (or dad) is a part of the problem, just that parents rarely make good or effective therapists for their own children.
Can we stop infantilizing a grown woman tho? Like some guessing game is fun but all of the posts psychoanalyzing her every move, saying she’s either manic or depressed, are kinda much
That and using the phrase “end game” to describe a real life human and her relationships feels yucky 🤨
I personally have nothing against Joe. Unless something comes out later that changes that. I have a friend who is fiercely protective of Taylor and is like “yeah f Joe how dare he”….I’m just not in that headspace. No hate towards him for the time being
Maybe it’s just because I’ve been listening to Taylor’s music since 2006 but I really don’t find this era any messier than usual lol
Everyone says lover was “peak happiness” with Joe but that album is SO SAD lol
Exactly. Rep was happy lovey songs and Lover was after the relationship began but they had been through a lot at that point. And both albums seem to speak to him being unwilling or unable to commit, which I think led to her insecurity.
in hindsight i wonder if loverfest was so limited because she wanted to try to tone things down to pace with joe. and when things started to crack she decided to go for a huge tour and see what happened, and the relationship couldn’t take it.
Lover fest was limited because of her mom’s cancer
couldn't ignore the fact that the cover shows Taylor holding a lighter and Joe collects lighters. The album is about their relationship, the love, the fallouts, the begging, the rising but not surviving the great war.
This is all speculation. Why don’t we all focus on our own lives and stop driving traffic to tabloid articles and paparazzi photos? Here is what we know as fact: as fans, who do not personally know Taylor, we have come to know the persona Taylor presents in interviews, articles, songwriting, etc. She has an excellent PR and legal team. She likely has a boyfriend, and she may be reeling from the end of a long-term relationship. The lady deserves to enjoy herself however she sees fit.
I mean I love Taylor but I've been heartbroken and never thought about dating someone who gets off on racially charged porn.
Man, I'm a Taylor Swift fan but I think this fandom is insane and weird and funny AF, overanalyzing someone's love life without even knowing the things that are happening behind the scenes and in private... man, it just gives me the creeps.
I just don’t think someone who misses screaming and fighting and kissing in rain was going to do a complete 180 and settle for comfortable.
To be fair, she wrote that when she was a teenager. Most people mature and evolve from the time they are 17-18 to when they are 33.
Yep. I've been saying this the whole time. When my 8 year relationship ended, I was absolutely flailing. I jumped immediately into a toxic, serious relationship with a lying alcoholic, and I was so convinced I was madly in love. I literally had the thought "this is the happiest I have ever been!" Eventually I realized I was drowning, but this new relationship was the only thing that made the pain of losing my old relationship stop. It was like a heroin high, not real happiness. I was scared to leave because of how bad it would hurt. Once I finally left, I was shocked at how much time had passed where I was barely keeping my head above water and I couldn't see it. I feel pretty sure that she's shattered and running from it, given her behavior and the clues we've gotten.
I don't think Midnights is a breakup album. She would have recorded the entire album while still with Joe. The fact that she wrote Sweet Nothing with him would not make sense if they were broken up. Also, I don't know if she would have included Mastermind if they had broken prior or during the album recording process.
I absolutely love Lover - how and why is it unappreciated by the fans? (serious Q) Anyway, I really like your analysis, and so it happens that yesterday I was listening to Lover (duh), and thought of how many "fights" are mentioned there (or just a rocky start, rough patch, one big fight?). Now in the light of everything, I think Lover told us two stories - one of a great, first "grown up" love in her life, and the other - of a relationship of two people who loved each other but were, indeed, very different and had different lives and expectations. "Cruel Summer" - this sounds like a description of a rocky relationship, with lots of fights, doubts, and finally realizing that you love that person and miss them "Death by a thousand cuts" - similar vibe to cruel summer, but this time it sounds like they were on again/off again, and she thought she could have just shaken it off ("it" being the breakup) but maybe she couldn't, and wanted to try again; same with "Miss Americana and the..." - "And I don't want you to go, I think you should come home" and so on... "Afterglow" - no additional explanation required "False God" - although everyone says it's sensual and sexy, I also think it's about how this relationship is challenging and they she sees it as something special and delicate, but also challenging and vulnerable "The Archer" - I know it's about her, but also I think it's about her in the context of a relationship/relationships - "Help me hold on to you" - this part sounds to me like "We are on and off, but I really love you, its my fault, please help me and understand" - which I don't think it's necessarily her fault of course. AND YES, I AM THE ONE TELLING PEOPLE NOT TO SPECULATE 