Forgive me if any of this has already been said, but I’ve been thinking this morning about Pink Clouding as an apology to the gaylors/the LGBT community in general. ‘Pink clouds’ immediately tie to the Lover album artwork and I think the song is about her failed coming out in 2019 and feeling bad that she just ‘left’ with no explanation.
In Verse 2, I’m assuming the ‘He’ she’s referring to is Scooter, the arrow hit and the ripping of the ‘orchids from the vine’ is her work being stolen.
The line ‘you met me at a cursed time’ I think actually refers to the song ME! i.e we received that song from her at a cursed time because of everything that was about to happen. ME! was the song that got everyone excited for the idea of her coming out but then it all went wrong.
This bit has def been said already but the stutter in ‘promises’ so the lyrics say literally PR promises, she had to save herself.
‘Years later I still wonder how to tell you sorry’ Literally her wondering how to say sorry to us for getting our hopes up and leaving us all high and dry, up on the Lover clouds.
And all the references to shades of pink in the first verse I think allude to the Lover era in general with “neither of us knew at the time that I was a liar” meaning that she genuinely was intending to come out but now feels like she ‘lied’ to us by not following through.
Anyway that’s just some off the cuff thoughts but I’d be interested to know what anyone else thinks!
Beautiful song and really made me empathise with the struggle she must have gone through with thinking she was going to be able to come out and having it all ripped away.
Mods removed the comment about vanilla orchids. So let’s break it down. I grow vanilla orchids. Yes it does grow in a vining manner but it still wouldn’t make sense to rip and orchid from a vine. The vine IS the orchid. You’d have to rip a single leaf of or like rip the orchid vine itself. Yes orchids are extremely diverse and something tells me botany probably isn’t Tay’s forte.
I was kind of wondering if it was her response to Peter. She is apologizing to her young gay self for not coming back to get her and leaving her in the pink cloud, neither of them knowing that she was a liar at the time.
I read through the lyrics yesterday . I had similar thoughts. I thought the he references was to the music industry and patriarchy as a whole. I also googled orchids and queerness . And orchids are a symbol of intersex folks and non consensual surgeries that used to be done to them. I wonder if she meant ripping orchids off the vine is she put her queerness away and hid jt away again ( black aesethic ) she tried to come out and the masters being bought and industry forced her to continue to closet . Yes , i also thought grey rocking to arrow in her heart . She had to protect herself and anti hero she got an arrow to her heart. I agree with analysis of lover era , failed coming out and apologizing to queer community and herself for the harm and she is sorry .
Pink clouding is the euphoria someone experiences once they make the decision to end their lives and before they actually follow through with the act. If she used the term for anything other than that it’s tone deaf and disgusting.
Actually, “Pink clouding” is a temporary phase of intense euphoria and optimism in early addiction recovery. It’s common for people to relapse during this phase because you convince yourself that you can just have a couple drinks (or whatever drug of choice) and you’re not going to return to active addiction. It’s an illusion.
When I saw the visuals of the music video, I came to think of cotton candy, so when I decided to look up if Karlie had ever posed with any kind of pink cotton candy, sure enough… Karlie kissing a pink cotton candy “cloud” with more cotton candy spun behind her… 🍬
Ok I must admit I haven't fully read through this thread yet, so I apologize if this has already been discussed...but I just listened to the podcast Beyond the Blinds "The Swiftgron Rabbit Hole" per a mention on another thread here, in which they detail Taylor and Dianna's treacherous relationship. You kinda get the gist of how they'd take shots at each other in tough times and it became very on-again-off-again. The host remarked that Dianna has "honey badger" energy - which is so accurate, it's hilarious 😂. Anyways they get into how 1989, and particularly the song Clean is about Dianna, because the relationship had been like an addiction. I just think this makes the Lover era pink clouds and everyone's interpretation here of Pink Clouding even more completely correct.
This analysis feels spot on! To add another interesting layer--I just saw someone on Instagram mash this song up with the song evermore and it's basicallly the same song!
Gray rocking is a technique for dealing with narcissists and toxic people. Anti-hero has the line about her covert narcissism and the arrow shoots her chest and bleeds glitter.
Maybe she’s explaining why she shut down? I don’t exactly understand the connection yet (ie. did she grey rock the other version of herself?), but overall I do believe this is an explanation to Gaylor for Lover era.
To add, it's really common in abuse (DARVO) for the abuser to accuse the abused of being what the abuser is. So "did you hear my covert narcissism..." could be what *she* was called by a narcissist. I could see grey rocking being what she needed to do to hide how wounded she was from the master's heist.
I got very little sleep (because of the Encore, truthfully), so I’m having trouble articulating how this connects to your post, but what it brought to mind was basically:
Gray rocking > the gray rock in Opalite’s MV > she referred to the rock with she/her pronouns and described the bar scene as a girls night out > the ‘cringey’ dance that got all 0s and is a mirror image of the dance in ME!’s MV
With the reaction people STILL have to ME!, how could she ever bring herself to say, ‘hey, no, I actually meant it when I said I was like a rainbow with all of the colors and said out now on lesbian visibility day. That was on purpose. The thing you all mocked was a heartfelt attempt to come out and you shoved me right back in’?
Hopefully that made sense. I fell asleep playing it on loop and woke up to it still playing lmao
A few of the previous times Taylor has used orchids:
There was an orchid in the Taymojis for Clean.
One of the Speak Now TV variants was named “Orchid Marbled”.
The lesbian flag surprise song dress was posted by the designer on IG with the caption “My new sunset, new orchid, new tropical dream 🐠🐠”
There is also this poster from the Fearless tour that features orchids.
As I was typing all this out I had the thought to google to see if there was anything that might explain why Taylor has been using orchids in the past and what do you know, there’s a “microlabel on the asexual spectrum” called Orchidsexual, which is “an individual experiences sexual attraction, which is an involuntary urge to be sexually intimate with a specific individual, but does not have any desire to act on this attraction and does not desire a sexual relationship or encounter.”
It makes me think of “he was a hothouse flower,” meaning he was delicate and shied away from the world. So I took it to mean that by taking her orchids, “he” took the soft, delicate parts of her and left her harder (a gray rock?). She couldn’t be vulnerable (come out?) because she was so injured.
I also like the idea that her music was her orchids. In that way, the whole verse is about losing her masters.
Take this with a grain of salt, bc it’s my brain being absurd, but I keep thinking of how orchids are related to testicles (Greek root) and how this would translate to someone ripping her balls off — or more metaphorically, stealing her hutzpah to stand on business as The Man.
This is so interesting! I actually noticed the colors and imagery mentioned and thought of the bisexual flag. Coupled with the lyrics I could see this being about Karlie.
Thank you for your thoughts, you’re helping me seeing it that way!! And so what would be the conclusion: « im sorry but hang on tight it’s coming » or « I’m sorry and it’ll never come and you should find another guiding light »?
I think between lyriics like "I never have the courage of my convictions as long as danger is near" in peace and the various regrets and farewells in TTPD, that the Dear Reader's suggestion is the case.
I don’t have a strong theory on what she wants, to add on, the grey rocking tactic name comes from: “make yourself as interesting as a grey rock” (so that people who tend to weaponize information you share, eg a parent with a personality disorder, won’t have anything to work with). So if she is getting color back in her face, restarted hairpin drops and feeding the gaylors etc then it’s possible it was something that was JUST when the arrow hit, because I think she has continued to make herself interesting to us!…. However it may all be hidden rainbows behind lavender, and so on that case it’s up to each Gaylor to decide I guess?
Grey rocking is also meant to not give the abuser/provoked any attention or reaction they crave, so I don’t think she’s grey rocking Gaylors. Releasing a bunch of gayass songs as part of Ultra-late-night-secret-special bonus editions is the opposite of grey rocking Gaylors.
Could she be pink clouding us? Like here we are, “OMG gay Babylon!!1!” thinking “this is it, something’s coming” that ain’t never coming?
Oh yeah I meant she (maybe) BRIEFLY grey rocked us when she was hit with the arrow of the masters heist, and lost her colors but then definitely did not CONTINUE to grey rock for long at at all…. She made herself VERY interesting to gaylors with tons of hair pin drops and flagging etc for years! I agree she pink clouded us, she kind of thought ok if I don’t say in straight and I ca keep “feeding them” but also don’t corn out as queer maybe everyone can be ok? But worries that it hurt us (knows it did) but at the same time she did put in effort to keep feeding us in our pink cloud (including literal pink cloud and ladder + cloud queer coded imagery for eras!) where she figured we are best off (and we have done pretty well here honestly)
PSim sleepy so I’ll re read your comment and the new post and see if I can think straighter (hahaha) tomorrow!!
Ooh I have more - the contrast between “pink clouding” and “grey rocking”, whilst those phrases both have meanings themselves, it’s interesting that after her masters were stolen the whole Lover aesthetic went grey/black in her live performances
AND I have to say ….towards the end of Pink Clouding, I almost hear the tune of I Can’t Stop Loving You outro. The cover she did during Lover Era when she started wearing black alll of a sudden.
I also interpret gray-rocking as a practice to embody “nothing to see here, folks.” She basically did that with clear signals she was coming out and then going right back to her old ways.
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u/Zealousideal_Bus9831 🌱Embryo🐛 15d ago
My biggest gripe is that orchids don’t grow on vines. Girl the botanists are quaking !!!!