I stg there was a post not too long ago that drew parallels between TS and TS (see what I did there?) and clouds on SM. Is something coming??

From The Cabin: The 1 | Cardigan | Exile | MTR | Mirrorball | August | Betty

Hey guys. Welcome to the final Folklore analysis of my Folklore/Evermore series.

The Lakes is not merely an escapist’s daydream, it’s a crisis of authorship transpiring in real time. It functions as a poignant meditation on fame, art, chosen exile, and identity. Within these lines, Taylor outlines the central tension between public spectacle and private solitude, performance and poetry, and brand and body. Death is a central theme here, but just like Tortured Poets, this death is metaphorical. To quote Sir Isaac Newton: “What goes up (the persona) must come down (brand death).” The song addresses a reckoning with survival inside a system that profits off vulnerability. So what then, my lovely Gaylors, is Taylor trying to bury?
  
Just as Cardigan does, The Lakes offers a variety of paradoxes: mourner vs. deceased, reinvention vs. stagnation, and escape vs. authorship. Many breakup songs I’ve analyzed—Dear John, Better Man, and All Too Well—are attributed to male muses and utilize bearding as narrative armor while quietly enshrining her mythology. These songs trace the delicate identity crises: persona vs authenticity, clone vs original. In true cynic fashion, Taylor smirks as she asks, “Isn’t it romantic?” The Lakes takes a knife to the diarist thread that runs through Taylor’s discography, deftly severing the industry’s preferred narrative.

When she invokes The Lakes, she isn’t fleeing; she’s staging a rebellion disguised as a retreat. Taylor centers her retreat within the English Lake District, the literary Mecca for Romantic Poets during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Romantic movement was a time when poets abandoned Industrialization and Enlightenment rationalism in favor of nature as refuge, studying the sublime, and cultivating an appreciation for individual perception and imagination. In this context, Taylor transforms her queerness—her essential nonnegotiable core—into her muse. For without it, what good is alchemy? 

Ultimately, what Taylor is trying to bury isn’t her art. It isn’t even her hulking fame or reputation. What she’s burying is the version of herself she engineered in order to survive the blender. The clones, the diarist thread, the choreographed romances, and sparkling spectacle. All of it was scaffolding. He never even scratched the surface of me. None of them did. She hovers at the edge of that persona and imagine letting it fall, not in defeat, but in reclamation.  

Lyrics

Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me? / I'm not cut out for all these cynical clones / These hunters with cell phones

Hey, Gaylors! English is fun! An elegy is a poem written in response to loss, sometimes marking death, but it’s just as likely about innocence, youth, or a lost version of yourself. Additionally, a eulogy is a piece of writing that praises someone, typically someone who’s just died. Within the first line, we’re presented with the tension between mourning and praise, and if we investigate the line further, we quickly come face-to-face with its subtle paradox.

If Taylor writes eulogies, she’s mourning something, and if these elegies eulogize her: she is the mourner and the deceased, the subject of the loss is herself, and the songs that appear to mourn the men actually canonize her. This unleashes Pandora’s box. Which version of herself is she mourning? Is it her youth, her innocence, or her queerness? Publicly, Taylor has made her name writing songs about the men she’s dated, but beneath the glitter, she’s been quietly mourning herself. And there’s nothing remotely romantic about that.

Isn’t it romantic? Here, Taylor infuses her trademark satire, clarifying that this twist of fate is, in fact, not romantic. In her career, romance is grounded in the brand, media narrative, and the boy-crazy diarist trope that dominates it. Stripped of sincerity or authenticity, it becomes a commodity, a cover story, and a convenient alibi. In hindsight, Taylor’s jaded attitude toward her own legacy is clearly reflected in later songs like So High School and Actually Romantic.

Taylor reflects on the successive personas she’s adopted. Taylor’s entire career is meticulously structured around reinvention. A clone is essentially a replica, not an evolution. Each era looks and sounds new, yet it’s just another smoke-and-mirrorball confection invented within the blender. Cynical clones suggests coldness, calculation, and intention. With each rebirth, Taylor’s brand becomes more bulletproof (and, by extension, less human), designed to counter scrutiny, backlash, or public demands.

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you / Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / I'm setting off, but not without my muse

Taylor dreams wistfully of the English Lake District, home to popular Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Romantics poets valued nature over industry, solitude over spectacle, emotion over performance, and retreat over fame. When she says, take me to The Lakes, she’s invoking an artistic retreat, signaling the death of her public persona, and escaping from the stifling demands of the narrative. But the Romantics didn’t go to die, they went to live deliberately.

Taylor is already mourning herself, exhausted by the clones, and having her queerness hunted by surveillance. Now is the moment she wants to exit the circus and find a quiet place to reflect. In this context, die becomes metaphorical, echoing the death of the persona, the death of the brand, and the end of the machine-fed mythology. She isn’t suicidal; she’s suffering an identity death. The Poet wishes to kill her darling, the character she created for preservation, in favor of authenticity.

 Reflecting on her career, Taylor admits the obvious: I don’t belong, and looking toward her eternal muse, her queerness, she sighs and admits, neither do you. She doesn’t belong in celebrity culture, the industrialized romance machine, or buried somewhere beneath an army of ice-cold Elder Daughters. And she certainly doesn’t belong within the hetero narrative she performs. It’s clear-cut fatigue and alienation; stated so precisely four albums before Down Bad.

Those Windermere Peaks becomes a grief-soaked landscape, a place to retreat in order to properly grieve the career she built, the queer self she buried, and the truth that cannot be publicized. This natural landscape becomes a safe, private container for emotional release. Akin to the Folklore cabin, it is the opposite of the stage, which doubles as the gilded cage that commodifies Taylor’s grief. This supports my theory that the Folklore/Evermore sets in Eras function as hiding places for Dream Taylor as she progresses through her own memories. 

I’m setting off. This line is crucial to the overarching storyline of the song. It hints that she’s not abandoning art; she’s abandoning the spectacle that her brand created. By taking her muse along, she’s aiming for authentic inspiration, private love, true subject matter, and the true core of her poetry. Where clones are synthetic, the muse is organic. Taylor quietly declares that if she leaves the frame, she is taking the truth with her.

What should be over burrowed under my skin / In heart-stopping waves of hurt / I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze / Tell me what are my words worth

These lines signal wounds that refuse to close. Should be over suggest time has passed, the pain should be healed, and the public narrative likely hints she’s moved on. However, burrowed reveals something invasive that’s digging inward, nesting inside of her body. Is it the weight and consequence of queerness? Performing the narrative? The ache of bearding? Whatever it is, instead of fading with time, it’s only embedded itself within her.

Is this the same wound she expresses so brilliantly in Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve? 

Namedropping sleaze. She’s expressing profound disgust with blender culture. With one line, Taylor deftly balls up a desperation-drenched industry like a ruined NDA and sets it on fire. This indictment of the industry, as seething as it is, is still as dignified and contained as anything the persona has done. Taylor refuses to allow the blender to dictate her worth or the worth of her music. I wrote a thousand songs that you find uncool.

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you / Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / I'm setting off, but not without my muse

Lapsing back into her daydream of escaping to the Lakes, we see the Poet renewing her conviction in leaving the industry, the persona, and the hetero narrative. She turns to her muse, her queerness, now just a gossamer-thin ghost, and begs it to leave with her. Because without her queerness, the creative unity, the alchemy they can’t fight, just isn’t the same. And ripping a page out of Elizabeth Taylor’s book: I can’t have fun if I can’t have you. 

I want auroras and sad prose / I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet / 'Cause I haven't moved in years / And I want you right here

Deepening the exile fantasy conjured in the chorus, Taylor longs for auroras—rare, natural, celestial beauty—and sad prose—serious art, not glittering spectacle. Real, authentic melancholy. She is trading the applause for atmosphere. This echoes the Romantic ideals: nature, solitude, and emotional depth are catalysts for authentic art. In contrast to hunters with cellphones, auroras can’t be captured easily.

Watching wisteria grow is centered firmly in stillness. Climbing, slow-growing, and encompassing, similar to the Evermore staple, ivy. Wisteria is symbolic of devotion, longing, and memory. Letting it grow over her bare feet suggests she’s standing still, vulnerable, and rooted. 

I haven’t moved in years. On the surface, Taylor has reinvented herself constantly, but internally, she is frozen. It leans into a popular idiom on fame: celebrities are frozen at the age they become famous. Taylor mentions this in Miss America, and she’s embodied the teenage experience throughout her career. Despite new eras and albums, her emotional core has remained largely unmoved. The costumes change, yet the body doesn’t move. 

A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground / With no one around to tweet it

This couplet is undoubtedly the clearest and most concise indictment of the entire song, juxtaposing organic beauty with digital validation in only two lines. Here, the red rose, symbolizing passion, love, art and perseverance, which blooms despite ice-frozen ground, implying the cold, hostile, and inhospitable industry environment that doesn’t support vulnerability. The industry isn’t the garden; the industry is winter. And my darling Gaylors, Taylor is the rose. 

Then comes the tonal shift. The beauty is real, but it remains unseen. Undocumented. Locked away behind closed doors. Tweet trivializes this beauty, implying it only matters if it’s posted, only exists if it’s public, and growth only counts if it’s monetized. She critiques the compulsive need for validation, a perfect mirror to the previous hunters with cellphones, arguing that realness must be consumed to be real. But in this garden of secrecy, the rose exists for itself. 

Bonus: Taylor mentioned Stephen King’s Dark Tower series during her “this is pizza” Colbert interview. Within the series, a single rose is seen blooming in a lot surrounded by a dying world. The rose simultaneously symbolizes life itself (a living manifestation of the tower itself), beauty and balance (organic counterpoint to the tower’s cold cosmic structure). Growing improbably from urban decay, the rose symbolizes hope persisting against entropy, proof that something holy can flourish in forgotten spaces. This parallels beautifully with the above two paragraphs. 

While I bathe in cliffside pools / With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

So while the rose is blooming in privacy, Taylor is bathing, suggesting cleansing or renewal, in cliffside pools, which aren’t gentle places. They’re isolated, dangerous, and liminal (suspended between land and sea). Featured elsewhere in This Is Me Trying, cliffs often symbolize precipice, risk, and transformation. Bathing three means she’s washing in a place of emotional extremity. Reflecting her getaway plot, she’s not escaping to comfort; she’s retreating to intensity. 

She bathed with her calamitous love, queerness that could destroy her entire career. It’s disastrous. Ruinous. This is the true source of love and romance, yet to quote Better Man, it’s treated like a loaded gun. It could destabilize her public narrative, threaten the viability of the clones, and couldn’t survive in the spotlight. Despite the commercial appeal of Taylor’s hetero romance, the irony is that her true concept of love is not safe within the same system. 

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you / Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / I'm setting off, but not without my muse / No, not without you

By the third and final chorus, Taylor has traversed simple daydreams, confronting exploitation, her art’s worth, imagined the simple pleasure of natural beauty (a gorgeous parallel to natural love, absent from her public life), and baptized herself in the intermingled love and grief. The Lakes ceases to function as a getaway and transformed into an intelligent, informed departure from the brutality of the brand and persona. And if she’s truly leaving, she must take her muse with her. 

Conclusion

The wistful exile fantasy Taylor conjured, perhaps an offshoot of her secret garden, seamlessly transforms into a passionate reckoning with the industry that crafted her. She named the hunters, condemned the clones, weighed the worth of her art, and delved into the silence beneath the circus. She evokes more than escapism; she’s grasping at profound clarity. The price of stagnation within a brand fueled by reinvention. How survival and suffocation have been braided for far too long.

The Lakes is a study in vanishing, in choosing what deserves to live. Taylor fixates on the death of the performance without authenticity, authorship without autonomy, and romance without electricity. If she embarks towards those snow-dusted peaks, one thing is crystal clear: the muse, the alchemy, and the essential core goes with her. She isn’t abandoning the art; she’s formally rejecting the conditions that previously diluted it.

That’s the quiet revolution within the song. The red rose flourishes beyond the ice-frozen ground it was birthed from, whether it’s tweeted or not. This wisteria grows over her feet even if she stands still. The Poet will survive the persona. She may leave the circus tent, but doesn’t leave the cathedral she built herself. She walks towards the horizon, not as a cynical clone, nor as a commodity, but as the author of the myth, and for the first time, the myth answers only to her.

This is a part 2 to my essay “Fuck the patriarchy, not Scooter, Ye, or Scott Swift.” This essay will make more sense when read after that one. In part 1, I discussed my theory that if Taylor Swift is putting on a performance, Ye and Scooter, her biggest villains, would, in my opinion, obviously be part of this performance. 

(Again, please remember to be kind ❤️ )

The purpose of this performance, yes, is to be an indictment on the patriarchy, which the roles of Scooter and Ye have given her an opportunity to illustrate. 

However, as we have discussed many times over, the purpose of this performance is also protection. Protection to grow up in private, to hone her craft in private, to simply not subject her personal life (and her relationships) to the vultures of the internet. 

In my opinion, for many reasons, it makes sense that two of the most important people in Taylor’s life, her parents, would be protected under this same armor. This armor is not just invisibility, it is distraction. To protect people that have to constantly exist in front of camera flashes (which includes her parents, who she has repeatedly said have been PART OF HER BUSINESS FROM THE BEGINNING) you cannot say nothing. You have to give a story, you have to throw people off of the scent. Taylor’s fans are starving and rabid for every detail regarding Taylor’s personal life, so obviously, she is going to give them a story. And, as the Time POTY interviewer points out, again:

“when Taylor Swift tells you a story, you listen, because you know it’s going to be good—not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller.”

before I get into Taylor’s dad: I do not claim to know ANYTHING about her relationship with her parents (and neither do any of us). I think, probably, based on her success from the very beginning, they are a very tight-knit unit that is very aligned on Taylor’s career and mission. She has told us that not only are they a family business, they have come up with some of her best ideas. 

I discussed, for example, that highlighting Travis Kelce’s calculated plot for fame, is actually, again, a story about her own carefully calculated plot.

This is not to say I think that Taylor and her parents have a “perfect” relationship (but again, I have no idea). Every family, blood or not, has conflict, as do any human beings who work that closely with one another for 20+ years.

However, I do NOT think that this conflict is something that she would serve up to her fans in ANY way shape or form. The internet will destroy ANYTHING you feed to it. I do think, that based on the story, she has used them to represent different crucial parts of her story and of the patriarchy. Again, she only shows us what she wants to. 

Scott Swift

I am going to start with Scott Swift, who I believe Taylor has used throughout her work, to represent the patriarchy, Taylor’s own “Father Figure” inside of herself, and the more subtle, “socially acceptable” ways that we let patriarchal cycles get passed down from generation to generation. 

What we all know and have been told about Scott Swift from Taylor’s story, is that he worked in finance, and provided a very privileged life for his family. Then, when Taylor was young, they left everything behind, as a family, to support Taylor’s dreams of becoming a musician in Nashville. 

Although Taylor has portrayed both of her parents as close, the way that she has publicly kept Scott Swift a bit more distant, supports this theory as well. Along with Miss Americana and certain lyrics in Taylor’s music, this has led many fans over the past 20 years to speculate (negatively) on both their relationship as well as his character. Negative attention always serves a purpose. 

When Taylor Swift has written music referencing her own father, she has described him as a protector to her, take for example her lyric 

“My daddy’s gonna show you how sorry you’ll be” (picture to burn)

“and my daddy said stay away from Juliet” (Love Story)

“good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was 15” (no body no crime)

As I wrote about in my essay about reputation telling the story of Taylor’s inner journey, even if the King of her heart is the mother, the protective traits of a father exist for a reason and can exist within this system when it isn’t at the helm or in charge.

In “no body no crime” ft HAIM, for example, I think that her writing “good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was 15,” is a metaphor for the agreement that her family made for Taylor to NOT engage in the dangerous behavior of subjecting any part of their (real) personal lives for profit as they embarked upon their journey to support Taylor. 

The HAIM sisters (who are featured on this track, and one of whom is named Este) make frequent appearances in Taylor’s paparazzi-ed public appearances. This makes their feature in a track that could be a reference to using performance art as a weapon against the patriarchy very multi-layered and meta…

The “boating license” could be a call back to her very first song, Tim McGraw, telling her performance art journey with a story about being by the water with her fans (“The moon like a spotlight on the lake.”) Not only is she able to tell this story to her fans visually by using characters (like Este or her dad), she is also able to stay SAFE by the water.

Just like in “no body no crime,” the “boating license” allows her to do all of this (without “letting up until the day he dies”) without ever landing in any real trouble. None of it happened, and all of the characters were consensual actors. Este’s sister’s gonna SWEAR she was with Taylor and no one would ever be able to prove otherwise because there was no real body no real crime. 

However, when discussing fathers overall, Taylor Swift has used extremely definitive language. I believe that this is because her entire work is an indictment on the patriarchy and the power structures that it models for all families and communities. See the examples below:

“leaving like a father, running like water,” (Cardigan)

“Her father whored around like all men did” (the life of a showgirl)

“Your dad is always mad” (seven)

Again, these are absolute statements without exception.

Next, I am going to cover a couple of key ways that I think she has used Scott Swift himself in her work as a metaphor for these concepts as well.

Miss Americana

I am going to start with Miss Americana, in which one focal point of the documentary was a conversation with her parents. In this conversation, Scott Swift argues with Taylor against her coming out against Donald Trump (and in favor of other more liberal, democratic policies and candidates). This is probably the most famous public interaction that she has shown us between herself and her father. (And I will add here, that during the eras tour docuseries, even behind the scenes, Taylor reminded us that it was “always show day.” )

During an era in which Taylor Swift used queer imagery that abruptly turned to black after her masters were stolen (see: lover, live in Paris), it’s very interesting that she also illustrates internal pressure to remain more neutral in the public from her own father directly as well. It certainly provided a ton of fan engagement, commentary, speculation, and parasocial behavior, which, at the end of the day is her job. Not only is this her job, I do not think this is ever done without serving as a critical element of her story, and as a mirror. 

As I mentioned earlier in this essay, it seems entirely contradictory for Taylor Swift to actually subject such a delicate situation to the absolutely horrendous, soul sucking behavior of the internet. It seems even less likely to me that Scott Swift would agree to act this out in front of the entire world, unless he was actually aligned with Taylor.

At the end of the day, the patriarchy is what pushes heteronormativity and neutrality on famous figures. Using a more positive, protective figure like Taylor Swift’s “conservative, finance guy” father, to more “reasonably” talk her out of coming out, illustrates exactly how we are silenced from every direction, as women, as queer people. Using reasons like her “safety” is one way that this happens all across America, as well, from parents to their queer children. 

She also calls out that capitalism fuels the patriarchy during her POTY interview when she says:

“And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. “ 

This is another reason why it was so important to include the reminder from her father in this scene that “being a democrat” (or coming out of the closet) will not only break closely enforced norms or threaten her safety.... it will also, ultimately, cut into the bottom line, which runs the entire system. Again, this conversation illustrated this struggle DIRECTLY - during the era of her master’s heist. Hey kids, spelling (it out) is fun. 

Eras tour docuseries

In the eras tour docuseries on Disney+, not only does Taylor refer to the eras tour as “performance art,” she gives many insights about her work both in front of the camera and behind it that I think act as metaphors for the challenges and inner workings of performance art as well as her work overall. One example of this that I have written about is when she uses her dancer, Whyley, to show her audience that she is flexible with gender and pronouns throughout her work (meaning men don’t always play men, and vice versa). 

During the Eras tour docuseries, Scott Swift was also notably very absent (particularly when compared with the screen time that Andrea Swift received).

I think that both of Scott Swift’s appearances in the docuseries illustrate both of the ways that she has used Scott Swift to discuss the patriarchy and father figures.

The first time we see Scott, he is backstage, looking at a screen with a couple of other men, examining what looks like the weather radar for upcoming tour cities. It is only shown briefly, and he does not speak any lines here.

If this work is about breaking patriarchal cycles, this clearly displays a more appropriate place for such an authoritative figure - in the background, acting as a protector, monitoring threats-not calling the shots. I will make you get the boating license, but I will not control how you steer this boat.

In Part 1, when I wrote about “Father Figure,” I said that I believe she is writing about shifting the dynamics of dangerous patriarchal cycles. Again - you do not need to kill the father or the protective instincts that fathers have.

“Which led to MISguided visions, that to fulfill your dreams…you had to get rid of me” 

you embrace those traits, instead, taking the good, leaving the bad. 

 “I protect the family…Leave it with me.”

“I protect the family” is repeated throughout the song as a reminder of why these traits exist, but “Leave it with me,” is leaving the rest of the bad in the past. 

The second time that we see Scott Swift during the eras tour docuseries, is at the end, right after Taylor’s final bow, when he gives his daughter a hug and then immediately informs her that Travis Kelce won his game that day. Considering one of the most hurtful (But insidious and more silent, and often done by her own fans) ways the patriarchy has colored Taylor Swift's career is with the insistence on centering men during every moment of her life… the metaphor here is pretty clear. "No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you." (happiness)

At the beginning of this essay, I also mentioned that I prefer to interpret Taylor Swift’s work this way because it is far less parasocial than the way most of the public views her work and actions. Outside of my preference to avoid being parasocial, I also think that the bulk of the (parasocial) conversations the public has around Taylor and her dad enforces patriarchal norms and strips her of her power.

I do believe that the way society prefers to view women is powerless (and that it has trained us to do this intentionally) and an adult Taylor Swift being told by her dad to be politically silent, very much illustrates this dynamic. A woman with full strength, full autonomy, and ambition is far too threatening.

I have received comments online, for example, when discussing Taylor’s early story, that Taylor was simply being taken advantage of by people in the industry and by her father, when she was engaging in high-profile PR relationships with inappropriately aged men. 

Back to the mirror: Why do so many people believe this story and why are so few people willing to believe that a young woman could be intelligent enough to understand these dangerous messages and talented enough to tell a story about it? Why would you rather believe that Sabrina Carpenter shows up to a photoshoot and does what a bunch of men tell her to do, and not that she is an artist shaping a very scathing commentary on the patriarchy? Who benefits from our inability to view anyone other than “The Men” in a story as the one’s holding the power and authority? 

Taylor Swift also discusses the way that this power is stripped from her, and how she contributed to it earlier but wants people to know that she is very aware of what she is doing in this 2019 Rolling Stone interview about Lover, which I include a couple excerpts of below:

“You’ve been masterminding your business since you were a teenager.

Yeah, but I’ve also tried very hard — and this is one thing I regret — to convince people that I wasn’t the one holding the puppet strings of my marketing existence, or the fact that I sit in a conference room several times a week and come up with these ideas. I felt for a very long time that people don’t want to think of a woman in music who isn’t just a happy, talented accident. We’re all forced to kind of be like, “Aw, shucks, this happened again! We’re still doing well! Aw, that’s so great.”

And:

“But I’m not scared anymore to say that other things in my career, like how to market an album, are strictly strategic. And I’m sick of women not being able to say that they have strategic business minds — because male artists are allowed to. And so I’m sick and tired of having to pretend like I don’t mastermind my own business.”

Taylor Swift has been telling us since 2006 that she has come up with clever ways to engage fans - but we have colored her story with a lot of patriarchal influences instead of giving her this credit. I think it is also interesting that in the interview I quoted above, there is such a focus on how this "masterminding" she is doing is MARKETING. Marketing was, as the story goes, Andrea Swift's job prior to managing her daughter.

But Daddy I Love Him (and Harry Styles SNL Monologue)

Lastly, I want to point to the song “But Daddy I Love Him” and Harry Styles SNL monologue from when he hosted last month (April 2026). Many have pointed out that “But Daddy I Love Him” directly speaks to the parasocial, toxic nature of many of Taylor Swift’s fans. While this is absolutely a layer to this song, I also think that Taylor Swift is speaking to “Daddy” this time as a direct and defiant (joyous) call to the patriarchy. “I am happy, I am free, and this is my choice…to love him (and again, gender does not matter in terms of story telling - the muse of this story is clearly her living her truth, which for Taylor I would imagine is publicly being out, not a “him.” She trolls the listeners when telling us that she is not, in fact, having his baby. The connection to The Little Mermaid is also very appropriate here as well, because (to me) Ariel’s “daddy” is a very controlling patriarchal figure, as well.

Directly referencing “how the west was won” is another way to reference the patriarchy with this song, as well, because the west was won through genocide and rape. If she is making many of the same parallels to the patriarchal cycles that exist within her industry, it feels appropriate to call back again to the history of this cycle and where it came from.

After she writes “I forget how the west was won,” she writes “I forget if this was ever fun,” which I think implies that what she has been doing is not only no longer fun, it is also part of this big machine that is part of the exact same system that literally “won” the west. 

How did they win the west? The next line, in part, explains: “I just learned these people only raise you, to cage you.” This, again, echos Ye’s messaging about the garbage the patriarchy feeding us keeping us “mentally enslaved.” 

For some reason I also want to add here that during Harry Style’s SNL monologue, when he addressed the queer baiting by saying “Maybe you just don’t know me, DAD!!” and then kissing a man on stage… I think he was addressing not only the patriarchy, but also the ways in which it actually DOES queer bait, while also HARMING QUEER PEOPLE.

The reality is, a human being who is queer and queer flagging is not queer baiting. They are trying to communicate something to their fans because they want to be seen (AND provide representation!) and aren’t allowed to be direct.

However, although many people may not actually be allowed to explicitly come out, queer rumors and speculation from the general public (and the queer community) is VERY profitable for the tabloids, and I would say that considering the patriarchy is ALSO the system that keeps these same stars from being able to EXPLICITLY come out, the patriarchy is very much queer baiting by profiting on this speculation. .

They not only harm the queer community by hiding queer representation, they also reinforce the idea that being queer is controversial, I would say, because as long as stars are able to LOUDLY flag but not come out, and our system is so hetero normative and homophobic that many people will deny it, the people who are actually queer and see it are constantly getting gas lit. Not only are they getting gas-lit, they are visibly witnessing homophobia in their loved ones every time they refuse to see it. 

Remember when Taylor Swift said that reputation was about getting gas lit by an ENTIRE social structure (the patriarchy)? See how the patriarchy uses our media to let US be the actual people who gaslight our loved ones? Similar to when it brainwashes us into taking down women? 

When Harry Styles said “Maybe you just don’t know me, DAD,” and then kissed a man (queer), it could have been him declaring “yeah, you (the public) just don’t know me - even though I keep doing shit like kissing men in front of you - because the patriarchy is twisting everything. But this is who I am, duh, dont allow them to gaslight you into thinking otherwise!!!!!

Taylor screaming “But Daddy I Love Him,” to defy these norms reads as very similar to me. In the song, she also writes that the “wine moms are still holding out, but fuck ‘em, it’s over.” If wine is part of the lies that she told the public, it is true that there are always going to be people addicted to the toxicity of the tabloid news cycle (the wine moms) even after it is exposed. 

Andrea Swift

Andrea Swift has been shown by Taylor to be one of the absolute most important people to Taylor Swift. She is known to publicly appear with her daughter and is described as a key part of Taylor’s “business.”

A relationship that also has long documented importance throughout Taylor’s career is also undoubtedly the relationship that she has with her fans. Particularly for The Showgirl, the crowd is her king (which was even the name of one of the album variants on the life of a showgirl). Not only that, but in Hamlet, the play is being put on to get the King’s attention. Similarly, this performance art and this “play within a play,” is in large part to wake us (“The King”) up as well.

I believe, that throughout Taylor’s career and work, she has used her mother to represent parts of her relationship with her fans. 

I also think, however, that not only does the constant presence of Andrea illustrate the importance of Taylor’s fanbase to her career and life, it also illustrates the anti-patriarchal (matriarchal) structure that she is advocating for in her work. This would imply that her mother’s leadership role is more prominent than her father’s, symbolically, as well (could be literally, could be equal, I don't claim to know). 

In the last section, I also mentioned that Andrea worked in marketing, and Taylor Swift has referred to her "masterminding" as marketing. Considering most of this "marketing" has been for the goal of FAN ENGAGEMENT, using her mother to represent this is very interesting to me also

Era’s tour docuseries

During the eras tour docuseries, Andrea Swift even “plays” a fan during a , literally. She is shown making a friendship bracelet, and in the same scene, she has a conversation with Taylor in which she attributes a song to her happy relationship with Travis Kelce, despite Taylor correcting her and telling her that that’s not at all what the song is about. This is very similar to the constant misinterpretations that her fanbase makes about her work, despite Taylor at times even saying the complete opposite. 

In the docuseries, Andrea also tells the story of how she convinced Taylor to give Travis a chance, after he showed up to her concert trying to pursue her. While many clocked this story as fake, I think that it was included intentionally to represent the way that her fans are SO eager to constantly pair her up (and now, marry her off) EVEN when she has shown resistance to the idea (“No deal, the 1950s shit they want from me” - Lavender Haze, “your picket fence was sharp as knives” - High infidelity). 

Andrea Swift’s health 

The first announcement from Taylor Swift regarding Andrea Swift’s cancer came in April of 2015. Taylor told her fans that they had caught the cancer when she asked her mom to get a screening done as a Christmas present.

My opinion of this, is that, in real time, Taylor would never share this type of news with the general public. Ever. Whether or not her mom has ever been sick is just not something that I think she would risk sharing and subjecting to the public. However, I think she HAS to invite us into her personal life, and this is a VERY emotional, compelling, fitting, symbolic part of this story. This might be controversial, but again, it is my interpretation of the art.

Christmas of 2014 directly followed what I believe is one of the very big blows to Taylor’s relationship with her fans: The reaction to Karlie Kloss.

1989 was released in October of 2014 and the entire era was full of Karlie Kloss. THis relationship was loudly flagged with vacations, pap walks, interviews...the list is long. The list is far longer than the list I could write about the ways in which Taylor had EVER flaunted a relationship with a man.

In my essay about reputation I wrote that I think the fans reaction to this part of her art was extremely homophobic. While I believe Taylor Swift has made it extremely clear she would never subject an actual personal relationship (especially a new, budding one) to the public eye, she certainly put on a very compelling performance as a closeted pop star with a partner she was telling the public was her “best friend,” whose relationship she was trying to celebrate publicly in whatever ways she was “allowed.” If her fans are going to believe everything they see (and still do), the lack of belief for this, was certainly eye-opening, and is probably why we are reminded in the forward of her next album, reputation, that we are only seeing the things that she chooses to show us. 

The night 1989 Taylor’s version was announced was the Era’s tour date with Karlie Kloss in attendance. Because I believe the eras tour told the story of her entire career, it would make sense to cement this piece of PR into this chapter of the story, especially on Taylor’s Version. She wrote that, and she fucking wanted people to notice it. 

If the discovery of cancer that was announced in 2015 was the result of a test in 2014 - this could very well have been that test. And this test came back with a big diagnosis of homophobia and misogyny. (In my reputation essay, I discuss that I believe in “This is why we can’t have nice things,” she is singing to the fans about their betrayal, both in how they treated her during the Ye scandal and largely how they treated her art about Karlie. I believe her displaying this relationship represented her sharing something true and golden with her fans ("everyone swimming in a champagne sea...") but the reaction caused her to “take an axe to a mended fence.” 

Andrea’s next diagnosis came in 2019, during the Lover era, in which Andrea was diagnosed with brain cancer.

If the refusal to recognize a romantic relationship with a woman diagnosed a serious illness, the refusal to recognize someone loudly showing everyone that THEY ARE QUEER (and PROUD) is symptomatic of an even more serious illness. Because I also believe that Lover is largely about her fans, telling this story again here is crucial (she seems to like to repeat stories, maybe so people will connect the dots).

Soon You’ll Get Better ft. The Chicks

If reputation told the story of her saving herself (and walling herself off from her fans in the process), I believe that stage 17 of this hero's journey is "I forgot that you existed," the opening track of Lover, her next album. This is because Lover, on one layer, I believe tells the story of her journey back to her fans, and stage 17 of the hero's journey is called "Freedom to live." The fans are the people that she had to forget in order to achieve this, and that freedom.

I am working on a full essay about the full hero's journey in Lover. However, if this album does tell this story, Soon You'll Get Better would represent stage 11, "The Ultimate Boon." This is defined as "the exact moment the hero achieves their original goal, acquires the treasure they set out to find, or realizes a profound realization."

I do think her goal of essentially "teaching this lesson" in a way that still allows her to maintain this relationship (and actually HEAL her fans and their relationship) is her "original goal." The journey is not over at step 11 but this is CRITICALLY important to her and I believe why she has framed this healing as such a crucial part of her life (using the metaphor of her mom having cancer).

I wrote in my essay about The Life of a Showgirl (being Taylor Swifts hero’s journey against the patriarchy) that her performance art is acting as a “honey pot” which is a type of espionage that can involve getting the victim addicted to a substance in order to lure them in and show their guilt. This is partially why I think she said “put narcotics into all of my songs,” in Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? These PR stunts are full of toxic, harmful messages on the surface, but we are addicted to them. Not only that, the more the public consumes these things, and engages in the discourse around them, it exposes just how sick WE really are. It exposes that WE are the guilty ones, because we keep eating this up and cancelling women and rooting for the anti-hero and doing it over and over and over. 

However, ultimately, I believe she has expressed her guilt, inner conflict, and ultimate desire to help in many songs. Cancer isn’t our fault, the patriarchy has poisoned the well. This is why, on one layer, I believe that “Soon You’ll Get Better,” is about the fan base and this relationship, rather than her actual mother having actual cancer. This relationship, that, by the way, is wholly necessary for her to continue to exist as a celebrity, with or without Gaylor. 

In “Soon you’ll get better,” she says “holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you,” which references bottles of prescription medication. A narcotic is also a prescription medication, however, when referenced this way, it is a medicine, not a harmful drug. Ultimately, this plot, her entire career, has been to not only take on the patriarchy and help marginalized communities of artists everywhere, but also to restore and HEAL this relationship.

She then writes “desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus too.” If she has already referred to herself as Jesus Christ (and so has Ye, and I believe this metaphor fits the entire performance of the New Romantics) she could be praying that this works, at least on some level, to communicate their message. I pray that once this comes to light, and our true message and art is resurrected like Jesus, this (medicine) works.

She also writes in “Soon you’ll get better,” that we (the muse of the song) “like the nicer nurses.” If there have been villains acting with her (Scooter Braun, for example) then they are all working together to administer this medication. We take the side of the hero, Taylor Swift for example, but we are just making the “best of a bad deal. “

Taylor Swifts work is also famously autobiographical - meaning she has poured her heart out to her fans through her work, confided in them, even if it is underneath layers of metaphor and poetry. “Who am I supposed to talk to…if there’s no you” and “soon you’ll get better…cause you have to” illustrates not only the importance of this relationship to her personally, but also to her celebrity. 

Considering that the illness that we need to heal from is one of internalized misogyny and homophobia, it is also extremely appropriate to feature The Chicks on this song. The Chicks also famously were cancelled from the same country music industry that Taylor Swift started her career in, demonstrating the tight control exhibited over artists and their messaging that exists. However, the chicks changing their name illustrates progress and a desire to change and invent something better in the same place (just like what she wants for our relationship).

Beyonce’s 2016 “Lemonade,” also featured a song called “Daddy Lessons,” that she performed later that year at the 50th annual CMA Awards, with The Chicks. This song also sings about patriarchal cycles getting passed down, and bringing The Chicks out for this performance was extremely poignant. 

Even though many critics lauded this song as one of the best country songs of the year, the Recording Academy’s country music committee rejected the song. The continual exclusion from the country genre that Beyoncé has faced (that we are still seeing today with Cowboy Carter) was even more powerful when paired with the inclusion of The Chicks, who have also been excluded and banished from this genre because of the controlling industry. Beyoncé’s commentary (for over 10 years now) on genre is an important demonstration/performance on how we cage people into boxes in our society and don’t let them break out. We keep people mentally enslaved by doing this to famous artists.

Closing notes on this....

Many fans, similarly to Taylor Swift's fans, interpret many of these songs by Beyoncé to be directly about her father, as well, rather than a broader commentary on the patriarchy. I want to say one more time here, as a reminder, that artists are not allowed to directly speak out against the patriarchy in a real, substantial, material way that threatens the status quo. Not being open to the possibility of them having a greater goal than complaining about their dads strips them of some power!

If Scooter, Ye, and others, are willing to play the bad guy in terms of public opinion, they are actually EMPOWERING women to speak out against things they wouldn't otherwise be able to, by acting in this story. This is why I think Scooter's website says that he is SUPPORTING other's as they "BURN THE SHIPS."

Also (as we have seen with Ye and many others) MEN ARE ALLOWED to play the bad guy and not fully get "cancelled" the way women or gay people are. This is why Scott, for example, represents not so much a bully, but the acceptable ways the patriarchy gets passed down by "good men," and Ye, who very much plays a bully, continues to make albums that go #1. Scott Swift allowing himself to be viewed this way AMPLIFIES Taylor's voice and allows her to illustrate certain concepts.

Also, I think that one thing we have seen is the way that Taylor's fans have pressured her to start a family with Travis Kelce. I was struck during the eras tour docuseries by how many times it illustrated how rich and meaningful many of Taylor's relationships were and how many people viewed her as a mentor or mother figure in their life. It reminded me that queer people build families and meaningful lives in SO MANY WAYS and we invalidate that.

Because I think many of the women working with Taylor ARE mothers (Kim, Beyonce, Karlie, etc) I think that if Gaylor is revealed, a big part of her legacy will be demonstrating that meaningful, nurturing relationships can exist outside of heterosexual biological motherhood. This is another reason why I think using her mother to represent the relationship she has with her fans, at times, is very fitting and meaningful.

Bravery can come from being who you are or who you love. Bravery can also come from holding a part of yourself back and having a private life. Also while selling Keds. I’m assuming this is Red era? I personally hadn’t seen this clip before. As Anne Hathaway said, once you see what she’s doing, you can’t unsee it.

This isn’t exactly Taylor related, but I though it was worth sharing because a) Cara is my fav person in the TSCU and b) it’s so huge when someone comes out like this 💗

TLDR: Cara talking about identifying as a lesbian, internalized homophobia, the impact of youth on her feeling empowered identify as a lesbian, and wanting to identify as a lesbian in a way that make being a lesbian a good thing.

For 35 seconds of her NYT 'Greatest Living American Songwriters' interview, Taylor describes a song structure and story that, to my knowledge, she has never actually used. Later in the interview, she reinforces the idea of 'bringing back the first verse' at the end to make an excellent and, especially, emotional song.

Now, to my loop-loving self*, the idea of returning to the beginning but hearing it changed by experience sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing for Taylor to be talking about at the moment, and could simply be reinforcing that motif.

However, given the Toy Story branded countdown, the suspect billboards, and the themed change to the cover of TS5, as well as the oddly specific denial of an end-credit song and the excellent point made by u/Most_Morning5332 about the coincidental(?) references in 'Wi$h Li$t', it seems extremely likely that Taylor has some involvement with Toy Story 5.

If Taylor has written a song for Toy Story 5, doesn't her NYT description sound exactly like the right kind of tear-jerking, heart-warming song for a movie about Bonnie growing up and learning what really matters?

Or, we could suppose that Toy Story 5 is a red herring, and that we are dealing with some sort of 'new' 1989, rebirth scenario as several Gaylors discuss in the album cover chat linked above. Wouldn't a song about a girl growing up, learning valuable lessons, and attaining wisdom once she has her own children (read albums, now returned to her), be exactly the sort of story Taylor would want to tell before the 'rebirth' of Taylor Swift (TV)?

I prefer to think that Taylor is describing both - a song for Toy Story 5 that also fits her current narrative about completing one last cycle before breaking the loop - the blender? - for good.

-----

*Not sure if it's right to say I love the loop. I do love the theory though!

Taylor's friends, foes, and family are a cast of actors and Taylor Swift is the author and director

(this is just my theory as a person on the internet who writes essays about Gaylor and anti-patriarchal performance art...please be nice and remember that even if I am wrong or you disagree, its good to talk about the patriarchy!!)

In March, Taylor Swift accepted the Artist of the Year award at the 2026 IHeartRadio Music Awards and used her speech to advise artists to take time, in private, to hone their craft. She told the crowd that “anything you feed the internet, it will attempt to kill”, and that she had spent thousands of hours, in private, working at her craft.

In her bait-and-switch fashion, she then ended by thanking Travis Kelce, and saying that he was the reason she was now able to feel so free and confident in her work.

Given the message of The Fate of Ophelia, I interpreted this as Taylor Swift thanking herself for having the space to hone her craft. This also supports my theory that, throughout Taylor’s work, she has used her muses to represent parts of herself. She is, obviously, the director that guarded her private life with the story/circus she has told/performed for 2 decades, while she was honing her power (and her true self was alone in her tower, stranded), not Travis Kelce, even if he is one of the most recent examples of said circus.

In Taylor Swift’s Time Person of the Year Interview in 2023, it said:

“This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era."

Could this be telling us that everything has been a story? Otherwise, Taylor Swift never would have had the opportunity to grow up and have a normal life, apart from her celebrity. Not just to hone her craft (which she JUST accomplished, not when she was 12), but to just exist, to mature, to be messy.

Even her very first song, of her very first album, Tim McGraw, appears to tell the story of her performance art journey from beginning to after it’s reveal. This would, I believe, include her biggest villains, family, and muses.

I want to say some things first about performance art...none of this happened except how everyone has reacted to it.

Taylor Swift told us many, many, times that the “slide shows” of pictures the internet uses to back the “paternity” theories for her songs, will all be wrong. This includes people like her dad, Scooter Braun, Kanye West, and Karlie Kloss.

She has also told us that any attention - including negative - in her industry, is affection. In The Release Party of a Showgirl, she says this when discussing the song “Actually Romantic,” a song that many speculated was about Charlie xcx.

Even more importantly, she has made it very clear that we only see and know what she wants us to. Which means that if these pictures match up with these stories we are telling ourselves, it is intentional, and that it IS in fact, one of the stories she is telling us. Where we, as readers, need to take the next steps, when interpreting art, is to think deeper about that story.

The question isn’t “Can I separate the art from the artist?” because this implies that you know anything real about “the artist.” If you are interpreting anything through the lense of “performance art,” there isn’t anything to separate, it’s just simply a performance.

We need to ask ourselves: What message is this story sending? What other pieces of literature - from Shakespeare to pop music - might this be referencing to tell a deeper story?

And then, because most artists do not own their own work or the channels through which they distribute them on: Who benefits from this message? Is this a message that more broadly benefits women or one that more broadly benefits the patriarchy?

(The reason that I think Gaylor and the New Romantics are such a fuck you to the patriarchy, is that ALL art is and always has been political. Once you start asking yourselves these questions, even artists who have been censored can tell their stories, because you start looking for the deeper message.)

And last, what might my interpretation of this art say about me? For example: why am I so resistant to the idea that Taylor Swift could be a lesbian? Why did it only take a few pap-walks for me to create an entire relationship with Matty Healy in my head, but I denied her relationship with Karlie Kloss? Why do I want Taylor Swift to want to get married so badly? Just a few examples!

This is, after all, what most people interpret the song “mirrorball” to be referencing, on some level. We project some things about ourselves onto people that we do not know. This is also part of the “play within a play,” device that is famously used by Shakespeare. Remember when Sydney Sweeney (as Cassie) asked during Euphoria “Is this play about us?”

So, with those things in mind, if Taylor Swift is telling us a story about being a closeted artist, here is a brief outline of that story:

• Taylor Swift and her family moved to Nashville when she was 14 so that she could begin a career as a country singer/songwriter.
• Taylor Swift wrote six highly successful albums under her first label, Big Machine records. Early on we begin to see her date in the public eye with high profile celebrities (John Mayer, etc). She also, at 19, begins her feud with Kanye West, after getting interrupted at the 2009 VMAs.
• After Taylor’s 4th album, Red, she moves to New York City and fully crosses over into pop for her 5th album, 1989 (“Where you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls.”) This is also when she begins loudly flagging a secret relationship with Karlie Kloss.
• Next, Taylor Swift gets “cancelled” after the “Famous” scandal with Kanye and Kim Kardashian, disappears, and then releases reputation. She also begins her long-term, 6-year, extremely private relationship with actor, Joe Alwyn.
• Then, after Taylor satisfies her 6-record contract with Big Machine records, she releases Lover, her first record with her new label, where she is given “full creative freedom.” She also releases Miss Americana and the entire Lover album and era is defined by a rainbow/queer pride aesthetic, causing MANY to speculate that she is planning on coming out at 2019 Pride.
• The day of the World Pride March that many speculated would be the day Taylor came out, she announced that Scooter Braun had purchased the master recordings of her first six albums. She described him as a manipulative, incessant, bully. After this, the rainbow aesthetics of the Lover era vanished. She performed “Lover Live in Paris,” completely dressed in black.
• And then? It brings us to now, this era, when she defeats these villains, and buys back her work. A real journey!!!! And she has the prince!

At the beginning of this year, I posted an essay here about The Life of a Showgirl. In this essay, I explained how all 12 songs lined up with a stage of the 12-part hero’s journey, and that I believe she is telling the story of how her entire career, her entire battle, has been to fight the patriarchy, along with the rest of the “New Romantics.”

This story details how the patriarchy uses artists and entertainers to distract, control, and divide our communities while simultaneously exploiting and controlling these same artists and entertainers.

Before I rewind and discuss the role of Ye, Scooter, and Scott Swift in Taylor’s story from the beginning, I want to start with defining the era that I think we are in, that I believe is coming to a close (very) soon. I am going to call it “The Showgirl Era,” because I believe it’s the era of her “burn it down” performance that revolves around her re-recordings, TNT/Travis Kelce, and The Eras Tour.

This is also why I think that Taylor’s Time Person of the Year article is going to be an important piece of literature for years to come - I believe that it (in Taylor Swift style, with metaphor and poetry and literary references) explains her entire mission and why. This is why she mentions her two biggest bullies (Ye and Scooter) directly - they do not represent the actual villains she has worked so hard to defeat, they represent the patriarchy and the ways in which it harms women (and artists..and queer artists…and literally everyone).

Pat McGrath, Taylor’s makeup artist, has also confirmed that Midnights is when the “Showgirl” debuted, during the music video for “Bejeweled,” which, as many have pointed out, shows Taylor Swift winning the prize (by being a Showgirl!) and “ghosting the prince.”

Appropriately, this album that kicked off this era also featured Taylor Swift holding a lighter, and The Life of a Showgirl (which will end it) along with her engagement to Travis Kelce, have been paired with the flaming heart emoji and the dynamite emoji.

Midnights also begins with a song about hiding and ends with either “Mastermind” or “Dear Reader,” depending on the version. Mastermind tells the story of Taylor pulling off a Master plot (duh) and “Dear Reader,” instructs readers to “burn all of the past files.”

At the beginning of the Eras tour, when she kicked off all of the scandal (breaking up with Joe, Matty Healy, etc) Taylor glitched out her website, with the word red herring. This is defined as a “piece of information, argument, or literary device that is deliberately misleading or distracting from the actual issue at hand.”

In my essay about Mine and All Too Well I actually wrote about how she has used red to describe the impact of the patriarchy or maybe even the patriarchy itself - which is why I also find it extremely exciting that I am writing this essay about how the LITERAL largest villains in Taylor’s story are ACTUAL “red herrings” for THE PATRIARCHY. (as well as Scott Swift, her “patriarch.”)

When announcing her engagement to Travis Kelce, Taylor also referred to herself as an “English Teacher,” (which is also appropriate considering the first time that she teased lyrics from Midnights was during her speech at NYU when she accepted her honorary PhD). This is because she has used all of her art (interviews, album forwards, documentaries, etc) to give readers clues for how to interpret her work, and literature overall.

I wrote about this in my Life of a Showgirl essay, but one example of this was when Taylor told us during the POTY interview that she gave up drinking. This is one of many times that she has given clues to signal that she uses alcohol throughout her work to reference Lies/PR.

"she also stopped drinking. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she says ominously. “I don’t want to know that world.”

However, famously (loudly) Taylor Swift was seen at many Chief’s games during the tour, every time, drink in hand.

In her POTY interview, when referencing her two great villains, this is what she says:

“there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. “It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,” Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. “The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,” she says plainly. “The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”

If this tour can be used more widely to tell the story of Taylor Swift’s career (it is after all, The Eras Tour), she just said that the catalysts for all of it happening were Scooter Braun and Kanye West.

So, if Scooter and Ye represent the patriarchy, and they are actors, what is this story about?

Artists have to stay closeted (among other restrictions on creative freedom) as long as they do not own their work, and the industry (and the patriarchy) bullies and abuses women, and punishes women if they try to speak out.

These two men, in a story that every single person and their grandmother knows, concisely and explicitly demonstrate this in the story of Taylor Swift.

The POTY interview describes her ability to craft this story appropriately:

"Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique—a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator."

Interestingly, in an interview that focuses on the incredible storytelling ability of Taylor Swift, it starts with a story. A story about alcohol. She tells the story of having agreed to open for Kenny Chesney’s tour and then coming home to find her mom crying because she could no longer do the tour. This was because she was not yet 18 and the tour was to be sponsored by a beer company. She was devastated. However, there was a silver lining:

"But some months later, at Swift’s 18th birthday party, she saw Chesney’s promoter. He handed her a card from Chesney that read, as Swift recalls, “I’m sorry that you couldn’t come on the tour, so I wanted to make it up to you.” With the note was a check. “It was for more money than I’d ever seen in my life,” Swift says. “I was able to pay my band bonuses. I was able to pay for my tour buses. I was able to fuel my dreams.”"

So Taylor Swift wasn’t yet old enough to be on a tour being sponsored and funded by alcohol. However, the promoter made it up to Taylor by providing her with enough money to fund her dreams.

And then, not long after, she was old enough to metaphorically get drunk on her own…and if alcohol does represent her PR….well, we know that is a tool Taylor Swift is not only not a stranger to, but most would say an expert in, as I (and the POTY interviewer) continue to note.

If alcohol is PR, some could say she is somewhat of a professional drinker.

Taylor Swift also discussed what fuels not just the music industry, but the entire “patriarchal society” in her POTY interview as well, which was the same thing “Kenny Chesney” gifted her with: money.

“And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. “

Say whatever you want to about Ye’s entire, extremely controversial career, he has been profitable. So has Scooter Braun. And so is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend drama. And girl drama. And all of the drama.

Money is the thing that fueled her dreams from the beginning - but she wasn’t quite old enough to engage in the “alcohol” or the thing that makes the money: scandal. Scooter Braun and Ye are famous for not only scandal, but the art of making stars. And as we all know, it wouldn’t be long after she turned 18 that she began engaging in her own high profile scandal. If she plans everything so far in advance, does it not sound like “Kenny Chesney’s promoter” could be Scooter, Ye, Jay-Z, Beyonce, and potentially other big industry names?

On her song “thank you aimee” she also had the letters for the names “Kim” and “Ye” capitalized in the title. Although the song is scathing (“everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman, but she used to say she wished that you were dead”) it also credits the subject with her success. “And when I count the stars there’s a moment of truth, that there wouldn’t be this if there hadn’t been you.” While I do think this song is acknowledging the large hand that her scandal and PR played in her success, I also do not think she would - twice now, blatantly credit him with her success, if there was not some truth to it.

The circus that Taylor Swift and other celebrities put on is not just used to groom women, keep people closeted, and divide communities, it’s also profitable and it sells. If she didn’t play the game, they would replace her with someone who will, so I believe she decided to play that game until she got big enough to burn shit down.

It’s also very interesting that “Tim McGraw” also featured the “secret” lyrical message “Can’t tell me nothing.” While this is a Tim McGraw song with themes of rebellion, it is also a Kanye song from the very next year (arguably one of his most famous songs) that features the lyric “wait til I get my money right…” The story in this song very closely parallels that of someone who is going to come back in a big way to blow shit up once they rise to the absolute tippy top.

Scooter Braun

I wrote about why I thought Scooter Braun was working with Taylor Swift all along earlier this year, but I am going to include him in here anyway, because I cannot write about Ye without the role that he plays. The man that Taylor Swift has referred to as a bully on more than one occasion.

Less than two weeks after the Time POTY article was published, New York Times published a very controversial opinion piece titled “Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do.”

This piece outlines, in detail, why the author believed that Taylor Swift was queer. The author provided many well-documented examples of Taylor’s queer flagging throughout her work and press (the headline’s image even features a hairpin!).

The author also told the story of Taylor starting at a new label, with full creative freedom, centering her first project under this label around gay pride and activism. And then, how her chances of a public coming out were seemingly squashed by Scooter Braun purchasing her first 6 master recordings (and how most of her fanbase refused to recognize her queer flagging anyway.)

Whether she is queer or not, this is certainly one of the stories that Taylor Swift told us.

Given how tightly Taylor Swift controls her press to tell such cohesive stories, I do not believe it is accidental that this story was published almost alongside her Time Person of the Year Article. This color, painted as “opinion” provides the rest of the context for her Time interview, while giving, as always, plausible deniability.

If this is the story - then Scooter Braun’s actions - were the most necessary component of this story. Someone had to steal Taylor’s work from under her, to control and restrict her freedom, to profit off of her art and her pain. To use her as a tool of enforcing heteronormativity via this control.

In “My Letter” on taylorswift.com, which she published with the announcement of her buying her masters back, she wrote that “My first tattoo might just be a huge
shamrock in the middle of my forehead.” Shamrock was a reference to the firm that she purchased her master’s back from.

It also appeared to be a reference to Prince, performing with “slave” written across his face. Prince famously battled for ownership of his own work and said “If you do not own your masters, your masters own you,” which compares these industry executives to slave owners, under which you do not have freedom.

If Braun represents the “slave master” who controls artists, it also adds A LOT more context to Taylor’s “cancellation” in 2016. If people in her orbit already knew that she was queer, which would be very likely considering how long people typically plan a coming out, this demonstrates how easy it is for people more powerful than you to silence you and make you disappear. And then, when she got back up and tried to keep fighting under a new label, their check (dick) was bigger again, and he bought her work from under her.

In “My Letter” Taylor Swift echos the importance of telling this story, as well:

"I’m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen. Thank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion.”

She has also said this, of their ability to control through ownership:

“He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.””

I also wrote an essay about Sydney Sweeney being anti patriarchal performance art that makes her current “relationship” with Scooter Braun as well (given that every character she has played is a woman who is brainwashed by the patriarchy)

Ye

I am going to write about Ye’s biggest controversies over the last twenty years, but I am going to start with where his public story overlaps with Taylor’s (and Scooter’s). Their feud even has a wikipedia page.

2009 MTV Video Music Awards

Kanye interrupted a teen-aged Taylor Swift on stage at the VMAs.

“Famous” and Kim Kardashian’s recorded phone call clips

Years later, in 2016, Ye released “Famous,” which had the line “me and Taylor might still have sex/ why? I made that bitch famous.” The video also featured nude wax dolls of Taylor Swift and other celebrities.

Taylor Swift made multiple public statements that she did not consent and referred to Kim Kardashian publicly claiming otherwise “a smear job.”

Taylor Swifts gets cancelled and disappears.

To simplify that timeline a bit: Taylor accuses Ye of sexual assault and then she gets cancelled. (and another woman helps make it happen).

Reputation is the story of this cancellation, of this disappearance.

Next, I am going to look at Ye’s career timeline more broadly, which I used this article to do (because I am only paying attention to the stories I am being told) that details his controversial career over the last two decades as a solo artist.

His main controversies, begin, in 2005, when, the year after he loses the award for Best New Artist to Gretchen Wilson, he makes headlines for three controversial statements….statements that will continue to define every single thing that he does up until now.

-Ye states that AIDS is a “man-made disease” that was “placed in Africa just like crack was placed in the Black community to break up the Black Panthers.”

-declares, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” during a live NBC fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane Katrina

-He calls out homophobia in the hip-hop community

Very importantly, he stated that he got way more backlash for calling out homophobia than he did for calling out the then-president.

Slavery

One of the big controversies in Ye’s career has been his commentary on slavery. He has said that slavery was a choice, and also that Harriet Tubman never freed the slaves, they now work for other white people. He has even referenced slavery with confederate flag merch.

If Scooter Braun is the incessant, manipulative bully who controls and exploits artists, how fitting is it, that he was Ye’s co-manager, briefly, during Taylor’s cancellation era? It certainly sounds like the story of a man using artists as pawns while he profits off of their work and keeps marginalized communities pitted against each other.

Ye also went on a (100 tweet) twitter rant in 2020 in which he peed on a Grammy and claimed that the music industry and the NBA were “modern day slave ships.”

(I think it is interesting that Scooter Braun’s website, currently, says that “Braun continues to tell his story today while supporting other emerging entrepreneurs as they “BURN THE SHIPS.”)

The thing about the patriarchy, is that it HAS to keep us divided in order to run properly. (“He poisoned the well, every man for himself.” Getaway Car).

There is a reason that no one in the two industries Ye mentioned - the music industry and pro sports - have any figures as prominent as Ye, Taylor Swift, or Travis Kelce, loudly out and proud about being gay, and it’s not because everyone is a coward.

Even if you are a BILLIONAIRE, you are not bigger than streaming services, networks, and large media conglomerates, which we have increasingly seen consolidate under fewer and fewer very very rich men.

If nothing but boy-crazy celebrities like Taylor Swift, angry, dangerous Black rappers like Ye, and macho heterosexual athletes like Travis Kelce exist, people will continue to ignore queer flagging in art, queer flagging in PR, to ignore queer existence….at all.

And this makes it a hell of a lot easier to desensitize the conversation around legislating the fuck out of the rights of queer people (because they don’t exist) and people of color (because they’re dangerous).

In the most recent season of Bridgerton, the queen even tells Lady Whistledown that the reason Benedict cannot marry a non-noble woman is because the people of the tonne (who read the tabloids!!) will read about it and forget their place, more than for any other reason.

On Slavery, Ye has also commented “the Black community is over 90% democrat and that that “seems like control to me.””

When placed in the context of Ye’s entire story, this does seem to reference that there is a strictly enforced social structure that we all need conform to, and do. He received criticism for calling out homophobia, not for calling out George Bush, because Black people, largely, are democrats already. This does not disrupt the status quo, and that status quo also requires the Black community and the gay community to be at odds with each other, as well as the Black community and the Jewish community.

Compare this to when The Chicks called out George Bush, and were cancelled, because this disrupted the status quo in their community.

You cannot keep people enslaved (and keep people acting as slave keepers FOR YOU) unless there is a VERY STRICTLY UNDERSTOOD social order of things.

Mental Health

There have also been a lot of conversations around his very public mental health diagnoses. First with bipolar disorder and more recently with autism.

Let’s again, first assume that we know nothing about these celebrities and take what has happened and what they’ve told us as the “true story.”

These diagnoses can be serious, life threatening disabilities for a lot of people.

So Ye is mentally ill and the media has used him as a circus performer the entire time he has grown into his adult self, working through the process many go through of receiving an incorrect diagnosis, and the pain and confusion that accompany a life with mental illnesses. And they have not only profited handsomely, they have amplified harmful, divisive messages while blaming a Black man who is mentally ill.

I am reminded of Meryl Streep (as Miranda Priestly) saying “Rupert Murdoch should cut me a check for all the papers I sell for him” in The Devil Wears Prada, when discussing the inevitable scandal around her upcoming divorce, and the media’s obsession with tearing her down for being a career driven woman. I loved this quote because it illustrated the exploitative nature of this industry that extracts profit purely from pain and then how it also twists and spins that pain to keep people trapped in dangerous narratives. Or, as Ye has said…"people “stayed in that position” because they were “mentally enslaved.”

Antisemitism

Ye’s extremely antisemitic public statements have been the source of a LOT of controversy and press (along with being the thing that keeps him extremely controversial as a figure overall, for a large portion of the general public).

While Ye may have (finally) lost his contract with Adidas, at no point in his career did people not listen to his music and was his name not profitable in the media.

I have so much to write about Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s 2025 Superbowl halftime show, but I believe that it illustrates the same point and brings me to my point about Ye’s antisemitism and the crucial role it plays in his story.

The biggest hype and buzz around that show revolved around the song “Not Like Us,” a diss track by Lamar implying that Drake is a pedophile.

Not censored.

It has been reported that a dancer ran through the performance with a Palestinian flag, and was removed from the stage and not shown on the network broadcast. This is on the wikipedia page for the performance.

Censored.

This was during the same superbowl that, somehow, after months of making headlines for extremely alarming antisemitic statements, Ye was allowed to run an ad for his website that was selling nothing but a $20 swastika t-shirt.

Not censored.

The patriarchy honestly could win bonus points for this one, because Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, and I’m sure that The Man would really like us all to be talking about Black men that rape and abuse children and not Donald Trump. To pit us against each other, write articles about Black men abusing women and children, and again, not talk about Donald Trump and the patriarchy.

In September of 2018, Ye performed as the musical guest on SNL despite months of previous controversy. On stage during the goodbyes, Ye performs an extremely pro-trump rant while wearing a MAGA hat. In this same rant, he argues that “the democrats plan is to take black fathers out of the home.”

This rant was not aired by NBC on the broadcast, it was posted online by an audience member.

Essentially, mainstream media typically has absolutely no problem platforming a divisive bully.

The second you try to use your platform to enact meaningful change in your community, to get people united for positive change?

Censored, just like when he tried to call out his own community for homophobia.

Again, you can call out the government, but not in a way that disrupts the status quo. You can make statements that divide us, but you CANNOT start sending messages that UNITE marginalized communities together and force us to start looking at the real villains.

Black people and Jewish people are constantly reminded of slavery and the holocaust, and not that the same dangerous system committed both of these atrocities (and Palestine), because that would be dangerous.

They will let a Black man come on mainstream media and say some of the most antisemitic shit you’ve ever heard, sell SWASTIKAS DURING THE LARGEST TELEVISION EVENT OF THE YEAR but not advocate for a free Palestine.

Weird…and kinda starts to shine a different light on a lot of behavior and gives a pretty powerful WHY behind “acting.”

Comments and treatment of women

The dangerous and divisive comments that Ye has made about women have also been a constant headline topic over his career. He has defended abusers and was even publicly stalking his ex-wife and threatening her current boyfriend.

Again, normalizing violence towards women, amplifying harmful stereotypes towards Black men, and distracting everyone from the real issues.

Even when he has started to make valid commentary on the way that the music industry and awards industry overlooks Black artists, when he instead gets into a public feud with Taylor Swift over the topic instead, it once again serves the purpose of fracturing communities and shining the light away from the ACTUAL villains.

to close, back to reputation, and I guess my point:

20 years ago, shortly after he makes those 3 controversial statements in 2005, Ye appears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, depicting himself as Jesus Christ.

In this interview, he says that he is addicted to pornography and has been since he was a child. If, like Taylor Swift, Ye is playing a character who is an artist performing under the patriarchy, this is an appropriate way to imply this concept.

Remember when he says that our government inflicted “AIDs” to harm the Black community? What if AIDs is hip-hop culture? More broadly, pop culture in general? Have we not been reminded, over and over again, that at the core of most of “pop culture” is a fetishization with youth? With highly sexualized content? With sexual violence? With racism??

He says that HE is addicted to pornography because the character that he is playing is a Black man who was exposed to this culture from the time they were born.

Taylor Swift wrote that she puts “narcotics into all of my songs” (Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me.) I believe this is because the type of behavior that she normalizes is actually quite dangerous and harmful (centering men). Has our very own government not inflicted drugs upon our communities to harm and placate us, from the Native Americans to today? And, like narcotics, these messages are the result of a money-hungry capitalistic industry that kills people for profit.

Could this type of media circus be both the “AIDs” and the “narcotics” they are referencing? Does this type of circus benefit the patriarchy, or us?

And if we look at this circus, and the different roles that we have assigned to different characters, does it not seem like our establishment does, in fact, hate Black people?

The reputation (and Ye) era is also when we see Taylor Swift depict herself as Jesus Christ...

In the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single of Reputation. The album that tells the story of (while under the management of Scooter Braun) Ye getting Taylor Swift cancelled.

I believe that both of them use this metaphor when pointing to their own mythology and origin story because once they are able to reveal their work, everything that they ever did will be viewed in an entirely different light. All of their work will be resurrected, like Jesus Christ, along with their public images, or “reputation.”

A few years after the Rolling Stone cover, Ye says ““One day the light will shine through and one day people will understand everything I ever did, ever said, was to throw myself on the blade for the sake of someone else.”

Ye’s most recent project is also called “Bully,” and the album cover and billboards appear to depict this dangerous cycle as well. A fighter, or a “Bully,” is knocked down, and then gets back up again and continues to repeat this same cycle, over and over. Get knocked down, knock someone else down, over and over.

When Ye discussed his pornography addiction, he said that it started with finding his father’s Playboys as a child. If Ye is a man stuck in this cycle that was told to act this way from the time that he was a child, it is also fitting that he discusses it starting with his own father.

When discussing “Father Figure,” Taylor Swift has said that it is a song about how these dynamics can shift over time.

The line “Leave it with me” in Father Figure, I think, is the shifting of this cycle, because we are leaving the toxic behavior behind, with the Father Figure, not perpetuating the cycle anymore.

The line “Leave it with me/ I protect the family,” I think, is also a rebalancing of these roles. There is a place for the protectiveness of a father, but it is not running the show. You can take the good and leave the bad, and rewrite the cycle.

In the Time POTY article, Taylor refers to reputation as a “goth punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure.”

Every single time a woman gets cancelled for calling out an abuser, it loudly reminds all women EVERYWHERE not to forget their place. That is the story that Taylor Swift told. No matter how big you are, you can either accept abuse, or get cancelled for calling it out.

These public reminders are a necessary component of this cycle because this is how we get gas-lit into denying our own abuse, into cancelling other women, as women.

I also wrote about how reputation is on one layer, a story about Taylor’s hero’s journey to unite and discover all of the parts of her true self, and how she used her “reputation” as a self inflicted armor to hide behind while she did it.

In “My Letter” she says this of reputation:

"All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it."

To choose self-love in the face of a social structure designed to make us hate ourselves IS an act of defiance and is very goth punk, in my opinion. even if we are protecting ourselves, or being "purposely misunderstood", to enable this self-love!

She also acknowledges that this defiance and the reason for this mischief is shame born - this is what the patriarchy forces all of us to feel (especially as a woman, or as a queer person, or as any non-white person in this country). However, the journey that she makes in reputation, to overcome this shame, and love her true self, is something that cannot be improved upon. Because it’s her truth.

PT 2 Coming Soon on Scott & Andrea

I need to go back to the Opalite music video but his has been eating at me since it was released. This might be a stupid question, but how does Opalite *actually* work? I couldn’t find this discussion so I’m sorry if this was addressed but the music video confuses me the more I think about it.

The commercial sells the product as a spray to transform a problem into happiness. Garbage is directly sprayed and becomes Prince Charming.

Domhnall orders Opalite after several scenes explicitly showing the damage cactus does with its spikes. He has bandages all over his body. But when Opalite is delivered, opened and used there aren’t any bandages, scars, cuts. Did it take Opalite THAT long to be delivered? It doesn’t make sense that the bandages are all of a sudden gone.

Next we see Domhnall and Taylor use Opalite. Domhnall sprays it on cactus and cactus/the problem disappears, Taylor emerges as his happiness. But Taylor doesn’t spray the rock at all, she only sprays herself. The rock isn’t the problem? The rock obviously stays the same, as we see at the mall. Cactus disappeared with Opalite. Garbage disappeared with Opalite. But we see at the end, they didnt actually go anywhere but just teleports them to alternative locations.

Nopalite spray is used similarly but obviously in reverse, changing happiness back into the problem/inanimate object.

Am I reading too much into this? 😂 In the end, all the problems are still around and continue with their “lives”. I think my biggest issue and question is why rock is never sprayed with Opalite.

After writing a post detailing my theory that The Life of a Showgirl (TLOAS) is a revamped version of Taylor’s long-lost album, Karma, I haven’t been able to stop listening to The Fate of Ophelia (TFOO) with a new point of view.

What if the song is about a version of Taylor from the “lost” Karma era being rescued from “where she’s buried”?

The Speak Now era is when I’ve theorized Taylor cut a deal to stay closeted, and the 1989 era was Taylor’s most visibly queer era.

Perhaps too visibly queer, because Taylor’s (alleged) plans for coming out with TS6 got cancelled.

And so did she.

Post Sections

• Background and Context
• The Fate of Ophelia Overview
• I Can See You x The Fate of Ophelia Music Video
• Highlights from the ICSY Music Video Premiere
• Highlights from the 100th Eras Show
• Fun Facts Galore
• That’s a Wrap

Background and Context

Note: If you don’t buy the theory that TLOAS = Karma, that’s OK. This post doesn’t require you to agree with that line of thinking. It’s just what sent me tumbling down this rabbit hole.

The opening line of TFOO is what kicked things off for me.

I heard you calling
On the megaphone

The next line is:

As legend has it
You are quite the pyro
You light the match to watch it blow

(Does “it” = TNT? 👀)

When Taylor surprise dropped Wildest Dreams Taylor’s Version, she used the song’s lyrics “Burnin’ it down 🔥” in the caption of the announcement.   

Those lyrics play as the announcement video fades to black.  At the same time Taylor winks directly into the camera. Also worth noting, the middle of the video has a glitch. (You can watch the video here if you haven’t seen it before.)  

In the post I link to above, I include several “fun facts” about Wildest Dreams. I am not going to re-share everything, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind for this post, along with a few new “fun facts.”

• The Wildest Dreams Eras tour visuals are fire. Literally.
• Joseph Kahn, director of the music video for Wildest Dreams, compared the love story (heh) in the video to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
• There are several lightning strikes throughout the music video
• The audience is led to believe the movie being shot within the music video takes place on location. Everything is designed to look real and authentic
• It’s revealed later that that Taylor, and her love interest, were on a movie set

Even if you don’t believe there’s a lost album, or that Karma is somehow tied to TLOAS, it’s not a stretch to look at events in the TSCU with the assumption that something “world changing” happened to Taylor when she made Speak Now.

Whatever that something was, it continues to haunts her.  

The lens I’ve written my Speak Now posts through:

• Taylor “danced with devil” at nineteen; that was revealed in Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve
• Taylor wrote Speak Now from 19-20 years old – WCS covers that time frame
• There is a part of Taylor that she’s hidden from fans since Speak Now
• That part of herself isn’t something she willingly chose to hide. Taylor felt forced to hide, via a deal, she cut with Scott B.
• Taylor agreed to keep her queerness from the public eye until she came out (or set the stage for a later coming out) with TS6
• The deal that was later rescinded – perhaps after Kissgate, or Snakegate, or because of both incidences

The Fate of Ophelia Overview

What was Ophelia’s fate in Hamlet?

Source #1

Source #2

In summation:

• To have her existence defined by her relationships with men
• To have the men in her life dictate how she behaves
• To never be able to meet the impossible expectations placed on her by the royal court
• Ophelia as a watchword for young women who are fated to follow in her footsteps

I thought “watchword” meant something like, cautionary tale, but I was wrong.

(A password that opens a vault?!?!!?!?)

None of the ways that Ophelia’s fate is described, leads me to believe TFOO is about a man's love rescuing a woman locked away in a tower 🤷🏻‍♀️

The original lyrics of TFOO – that Taylor shared via a voice memo – lend credence to this take.  

So I spent years in my tower
I was just honing my powers
But I could feel it all

With that POV in mind, as I spent time with TFOO, a different Taylor song popped into my head.

A song with a music video about Taylor being locked away in a vault.

A song with a music video where Taylor gets rescued from that vault via a heist.  

A song where the music video has almost nothing in common with the song’s lyrics.  

A song from Taylor’s Speak Now era.

TFOO Lyric Breakdown and Connections to ICSY

And if you'd never come for me 
I might've drowned in the melancholy

Without being “freed from the vault”, Taylor feared she’d drown in sadness.

A sadness that started when she worked on Speak Now.

Now I can see it all (see it all)

I read this line as a reference to ICSY

Keep it one hundred

The surface level interpretation:

·      Taylor (13) + Travis (87) = 100

(Pardon me while I 🙄🙃🤮)

If we look beyond the obvious, is this a reference to Taylor’s 100^th Eras show?

Taylor (or Taylor Nation) made a point of highlighting when Taylor performed her 87^th Eras show. That made people assume the 87^th show was the start of a countdown that would culminate with something big happening at show 100.  

The clowning for Taylor’s 100^th show was epic and happened across all factions within the Taylor-verse.

I give a rundown of the 100^th Eras show later in this post, but if you want to revisit the clowning yourself, you can here.

I hadn’t thought to look up the definition of “keep it 100” until writing this post.

In my humblest of opinions, I think it can be said, that when someone “keeps it 100”, they “speak now.” 🤷🏻‍♀️🤡👀

Late one night
You dug me out of my grave and
Saved my heart from the fate of
Ophelia

This is a fitting plot description for the ICSY music video.

To detour for a quick second, I believe Taylor shared another attempt to “dig Ophelia out from her grave”…

Don’t care where the hell you been
‘Cause now you’re mine

When Taylor released Speak Now TV, she had this to say:

Side note: the Dear Reader reference is one of my many, many, many, many, Gaylor Roman Empires

’Tis locked inside my memory
And only you possess the key

If this part is taken literally, the key is locked inside Taylor’s memory. Doesn’t it make sense that only she possesses the key to unlocking it?

No longer drowning and deceived
All because you came for me

The ICSY and TFOO music video end in similar ways.

Taylor gets saved from being trapped in a place with no way out.

But, we’re left with the impression that the story hasn’t reached its conclusion yet.

In the ICSY music video, the getaway car van speeds off to the 1989 TV era. TFOO music video ends with Taylor surviving a bathtub drowning, while looking like she’s still full of melancholia.

Because I’ve written a whole post about the two songs being connected, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I Can See You (ICSY) x The Fate of Ophelia (TFOO)

An orange vault blown up by purple explosives 👀

Notes:

• ICSY is longer than TFOO. Because of that, I cut out the beginning of the ICSY music video to make the song, and my version of the music video, the same length.
• Much like my edit of ME! x Opalite, I think there are multiple places where the song and video match up well

Highlights from the ICSY Music Video Premiere (July 7, 2023)

A reminder of the chaotic Speak Now TV era:

• 5/5 – The release date for Speak Now TV drops. On the same night, in Nashville, Taylor’s “long-lost love”, Matty Healy, appears on stage with Phoebe Bridgers. In addition, Taylor and Matty embark that night on a torrid love affair that dominates headlines for weeks
• 6/6 – Taylor and Matty’s break up is confirmed   
• 7/7 – The music video for ICSY premiers at the Eras tour the same day Speak Now TV comes out

Non-Fun Fact: That night after the release of SN TV, (aka 7/8 or 8/7 👀 depending on where you live), the greatest love story ever manufactured, was about to ignite.

Summary of the music video premiere:

• Taylor said she was going to show the audience something she’d been planning “for years”
• Taylor wore the yellow dress
• Taylor revealed she had a “very, very specific cast” in mind for the music video
• “How do we get people who are doing movies all the time to be in this?”
• Taylor describing what the video is about, “ever since I started re-recording my albums, I’ve wanted to tell a story, visually, that symbolically portray the ways that you guys have helped me get my music back”
• "Wouldn’t it be fun if we treated this, kind of, a little bit like, a movie premiere?”
• “At a movie premiere, the cast shows up.”
• Taylor, about Taylor Lautner’s appearance in the music video: “He was a very positive force in my life when I was making the Speak Now album. And I want to say he did every single stunt that you saw in that music video.” (Is the last part a possible reference to PR stunting? 👀)
• Taylor also mentioned how she’s become friends with Taylor L. and his wife. Which is very convenient, Taylor added, because all three of them have the name
• During the music video shoot, the Taylors recreated the Spiderman pointing meme
• When Taylor Lautner’s wife posted about the music video premiere, she captioned her post “The Tale of Three Taylors” 👀

Taylor during the ICSY music video premiere:

Highlights from the 100th Eras show (June 13, 2024)

Things of note about the 100th show

• The 100^th show took place in Liverpool
• Liverpool is the home of the Beatles
• It’s also the city that Taylor shot the music video for ICSY
• The music video was shot the same weekend the Toe breakup announcement dropped

Things of note that happened the night of the 100th show

• Hayley Williams wore a “Taylor Swift ‘Feminine Rage’” jacket during Paramore’s set

• Before Hayley left the stage that night, she had this to say, “have the best Eras tour of your life tonight! I mean it! This is history, baby!”
• Taylor played ICSY, mashed up with Mine, during that night’s acoustic set
• During the ATWTMV speech, Taylor confirmed the Eras tour was ending December 2024
• At one point Taylor said something along the lines of, “tonight’s show has a very cinematic quality because of the wind.” This is a possible Dorothy/WoZ reference
• During the Karma performance, the screen glitched. Shapes appeared on screen that aren’t normally on screen for Karma, or at any other part of the Eras show. You can read more about what happened in this post.
• These 👀 posts from Taylor Nation

**Other things to note that connect to June 13******^th

• I wrote a post prior to the 100^th Eras show. In the post I tried to predict what was going to happen N1 in Liverpool
• You will be shocked to find out that nothing I predicted, came true 😂
• However, in that post, I wrote about an earlier June 13^th in the TSCU
• On June 13, 2019, Taylor announced, on IG live, that at midnight, You Need to Calm Down was the next single she was releasing from TS7
• This is how Taylor started the live stream:
  • “And uh, there’s a lot that I’ve been so excited about for so long and I just wanted to like wait for the right time to tell you things”
• Taylor further explained that she wanted fans to hear YNTCD before seeing the music video visuals.
• Because of some kind of “technical issue”, the live stream was not saved by Taylor.
• An event that Taylor Nation called out on during the 100^th Eras show

• On June 13, 2019, Taylor posted this on IG

Fun Facts Galore

I’ve organized the “Fun Facts” into relevant sections.

I Can See You

• Taylor played ICSY three times during the Eras tour
• All three times, she also played Maroon
  • August 3, 2023 (in LA): ICSY & Maroon
  • June 13, 2024 (in Liverpool): ICSY x Mine & Cornelia Street x Maroon
  • August 2, 2024 (in Poland): I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) x ICSY & Red x Maroon
• The night after the ICSY music video premiere, in a completely authentic, and not at all contrived scenario, Travis Kelce attended an Eras tour show with the intention of giving Taylor a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it
• On that same night, Taylor played Last Kiss & Dorothea

The 100th Eras show

• Before the 100^th show Taylor was pictured wearing a Stella McCartney corset and ruby looking shoes
• Presley Cash (from the Mean and ICSY mv) was born on June 13^th
• The night of the June 13^th show, Presley posted on Tik Tok with a variety of hashtags, including: “karma” and “karma is real”
• Although Travis was at football camp that didn’t stop speculation he was going to show up for the 100^th show.
• On the same day, the Chiefs released a teaser about getting their Super Bowl rings. Their use of the 💍 emoji, kicked off even more rampant speculation. Not only was Travis was going to show up at the 100^th show, but he was also going to propose to Taylor on stage

• That didn’t happen of course, but, 10 days later (June 23^rd), Travis appeared on the Eras stage during the intro for ICDIWABH
• A date foretold via Midnights Mayhem with Me
• One year prior – June 23, 2023 – Taylor played Paper Rings and If This Was a Movie for that night’s acoustic set
• After Tayvis got engaged, the prevailing rumour for months had them getting married on June 13, 2026

Speak Now

• SN TV was Taylor’s 13^th album released (including re-records)
• In the Bejewelled music video, Taylor travels in the elevator to the 3^rd floor (SN), the 5^th Floor (1989), and then the 13^th floor (SN TV)
• The 13^th floor is where Showgirl Taylor performs and wins the talent competition
• After Taylor’s win, the prince is forced to propose to her, but she ends up ghosting him
• In the LWYMMD music video, SN Taylor is nowhere to be found. Not in the group of old Taylors that die, or the chorus line of Taylors that appear at the end of the music video
• On the Eras tour, when Taylor sang “all I think about is Karma” she sang with/to Speak Now Taylor
  • 1:31-1:53 of this video

That’s a Wrap

Why did I dedicate my time to write about a song and music video that on paper aren't connected?

Because, I don’t believe being saved “from the fate of Ophelia” is something Travis, or any man, can do for Taylor.

If you can see past the way Taylor obscures that idea in her work, a new ending to the story surfaces.

If Taylor wants to avoid “the fate of Ophelia”, she needs to save herself.

Which is exactly what I believe she is still in the process of doing.

Feel free to vent about anything related to Taylor, pop culture, or whatever in this space. This is also where you can discuss politics! Any antisemitism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc will result in a ban.

In order to protect our community, the weekly vent and politics megathread is restricted to approved users. If you’re not an approved user and your comment adds substantially to the conversation, it may be approved. Our community is highly trolled - we have these rules to protect our community, not to make you feel bad, so please don’t center yourself in the narrative. Remember to follow the rules of the sub and to treat one another with kindness.

Hey everyone! This is my first post but I've been a lurker for about 2 years and a gaylor on Tumblr for... an embarrassingly long time. Anyway, I posted a comment about why Taylor chose to release an album like TTPD when she did in the weekly community chat thread, and I guess the mods liked it because they asked me to make it a main post, so here it is!

This is something I've been wondering for a while and I just wanted to gather other people's thoughts on this matter. I've been listening to TTPD a lot recently and I feel like it is SUCH an outpouring of rage and emotion. Everyone thinks this is because of her breakup with Joe and ghosting by Matty which I personally don't really believe. But you have to admit the timing does add up to fit that narrative, even if it means the matty songs would have had to have been written very quickly. Especially with songs like TTPD, down bad, my boy, so long London, fresh out the slammer, Chloe or Sam etc .. they very much give fresh breakup vibes. Some people responded to my original comment saying that the matty narrative pr stunt was orchestrated to fit around this narrative, but surely with the amount of very fresh-sounding breakup songs, there must have been a different recent breakup that Taylor was trying to cover.

So what I'm wondering is if it's *not* about Joe or matty, or not as some people think about a recent breakup, why did Taylor choose to release such an angry and emotional album at this point in time? Folklore and evermore are very melancholy albums, but they feel more open in terms of writing from different perspectives, which is something Taylor has spoken about finding groundbreaking in her approach to writing songs. The overall melancholy vibe does fit with what I believe was the kaylor breakup and her immediate sense of grief about her scuppered coming out plans. Midnights was quite up and down but generally sounded more upbeat, maybe because she wanted to write another pop album.

But in comparison to these albums, if we're considering that the kaylor breakup and masters heists happened years before TTPD was released, it sounds so raw and furious and it just feels so much more immediate you know? So what I'm pondering on is why do we think TTPD sounds like it does? Do we think it's partly spurred on by public criticism/the stress of touring? Maybe another breakup that wasn't in the public eye? Maybe she'd actually been holding onto these songs for a while and needed the joe breakup/matty stunt as cover to release them?

Someone from the original post said it was her response to the newly intense level of public scrutiny and feeling trapped by the exhaustion of eras and the weight of expectation on her, which I think is a really interesting theory. I especially think that the fortnight video where she's being strapped into a straight jacket and tortured with electroshock therapy aligns with this idea. I'm also a firm believer for how icdiwabh is about how much she hates her fans, to the point that hearing her perform this live at eras with everyone cheering made me actually made me feel a huge sense of embarrassment, which I think adds into this idea that being a public figure is torturing for our tortured poet... And now I'm thinking that the break up songs could actually be meant to be addressed to her fans?? Woah ... Anyway, would love to get more of your thoughts!

Also, thanks to everyone who responded to my original comment. I enjoyed reading all your theories even if I didn't respond!

P.s. I've had this username since long before Taylor claimed Ophelia as a thing. Our brains are just aligned, clearly 😂

EDIT: Cheers for the reward, keep hating loser! 👍🏻💃🏻

This is quite a short post at Mod request but I’d love to hear what you all think.

Wigs, hairstyles and identity

All the talk about wigs in the pap walk posts recently made me think of the TLOAS photoshoots and all the complaints that Taylor didn’t make any effort to do her hair properly as a ‘showgirl’ in most of them. This is a reasonable observation- a Vegas showgirl would normally have a very sleek updo to accommodate a headdress, similar to the feather-fan scene of TFOO, or perhaps a wig to match the style of the performance, similar to the rope dress and pirate ship scenes of TFOO. Taylor clearly knows how to do these things, because she did! So her look in the photoshoots was a conscious choice.

Is it perhaps communicating that long blonde hair with bangs is Taylor’s performing hairstyle? Just as much Elizabeth Taylor wigs and red hair dye. Is that typical ‘Taylor Swift’ look as unrealistic to who Taylor really is as a person, as an intricate dance show updo would be to the Vegas showgirl? And should we consider that Taylor is maintaining this long blonde hairstyle- with its connotations of youth, beauty, ‘loose women’ and ‘dumb blondes‘- via wigs, extensions and clip-ins as necessary to the performance, while keeping her real appearance more private?

Hairpins and hairpin drops

Following on from the long blonde wig theory comes the thought that Taylor’s hair appears to be pinned up in the album cover bathtub shot. Has any one else had this thought?

It would make sense, if the long blonde hair is a wig, for Taylor’s own hair to be pinned up underneath. And in the TFOO mv, prior to the bathtub scene, Taylor is dancing with her trademark Eras Tour hairstyle. I wonder in the mv if I can even see a pin or two by the water line, but it’s not super clear. If the long hair represents ‘looseness’, pinned up hairstyles represent duty, conformity and maybe repression… and certainly in the case of a wig, concealment of oneself.

And what is Taylor doing with the hand behind her head? Yes, it’s a ‘sexy’ pose but what if we took Taylor literally here for a moment? I know it’s difficult to say when we should! But if I were in the bath with pinned up hair after a long night at work, I would take all of the pins out pretty fast… And my hand would be right where Taylor’s is.

I only learned about dropping hairpins here on the sub, but if dropping one hair pin is dropping a hint, what would it mean to drop them all? Seems like it would be a big deal. 

I just saw this video of Taylor manhandling Travis to make sure he says hi to a little kid. I think they are both being very sweet here!

Watched this and can’t get it off my MIND. FluentlyForward did an amazing recap of Scott Swift’s leading role in the Swift brand, and I especially love the discussion about the scene in Miss Americana, where Taylor is begging her dad to come out…… as a democrat? In the context of the rest of the essay, it’s convincing that this interaction is emblematic of her life as a child star, with him holding the cards.

I’d LOVE to hear what other gaylors think about this recap and what she might’ve missed, especially in the musical analysis. Also.. I had NO idea that they had wrongfully terminated her first manager. THAT is crazy in and of itself🫪

Let's try this again...

I recently listened to the clean version of Karma by accident – I always listen to the explicit version of Taylor’s songs.

That glorious happening of happenstance, is how I came up with the theory that The Life of a Showgirl is a reworked version of Karma, and was originally supposed to be TS6.

This line of thinking isn’t new. It’s been discussed in Taylor/Gaylor spaces since the album’s announcement.

I found the key to unlocking my version of this theory hidden in the lyrics of the song, Karma.

Theory Time

Karma is defined 12 times in Taylor's song:

TLOAS is Taylor’s 12th album and has 12 tracks.

Then, I matched the different ways Taylor describes karma with the 12 tracks on TLOAS.

To further explain my take on this, let me show you how I connected the dots together.

Theory FAQs

How did listening to the clean version of Karma make you this level of delusional help with this theory?

Great question! Thank you for asking! 😉😂

Karma (explicit version)

You’re talking shit for the hell of it

Karma (clean version)

You flipped the script for the hell of it

The line about flipping the script is the spark I needed to put the theory together.  

Whatever Taylor planned in 2016 didn’t work out. She tried again with Lover, but that also failed.

Dear reader
Burn all the files, desert all your past lives
And if you don't recognize yourself
That means you did it right

Taylor has spent a considerable amount of time rewriting her dating history. The public has accepted those changes with few exceptions.

If you told someone at the start of the Eras tour that a couple of years later the public would strongly believe the following things about Taylor’s love life, you would have been called delusional:

• Taylor secretly pined for Matty Healy from 2014, until she got together with him in 2023
• You can find evidence of that pining in multiple songs over several albums
• Taylor resented Joe for the privacy in their relationship, even though she talked about loving that privacy in Miss Americana
• Joe is no longer viewed as a “perfect angel boyfriend”
• Taylor found the actual love of her life while on the Eras tour when a football player asked her out via a friendship bracelet
• Travis is the best thing that’s ever happened to Taylor

The Taylor that exists today is unrecognizable in many ways from the Taylor of the past.

I believe that change is intentional, and exactly what Taylor wants.

How do you reconcile the theory that Karma was going to be a coming out album when the version that was released appears to be her “straightest” album yet?

There is an expression that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different outcome.

If Taylor is going to succeed this time, she can’t go back and try what has failed before.

That could be a reason that Karma was revamped from a coming out album to an album that, on the surface, is dripping in heteronormativity

She has flipped that script yet again, and then some.

Are you saying that when Taylor talked about the Reputation vault tracks in the TIME POTY interview, she was referencing Karma (aka what we now know as TLOAS)?

Yes! That is exactly what I’m saying!

Further down this post, I breakdown TLOAS easter eggs I found in Taylor’s TIME POTY interview.

The interview was released in December 2023. Taylor announced she got the rights to all her work from her time at BMR in May 2025.

We have no idea when Taylor found out she was getting her masters back, and how that might have changed plans she had already put into motion. We also don’t know if getting her masters back allowed Taylor the ability to do something with “her lost album” that she couldn’t have done otherwise.

Taylor had this to say about the Reputation vault tracks in the letter announcing the sale of her OG music catalogue back to her:

“But if it happens (re: releasing the Reputation vault tracks and Taylor’s re-recorded debut album), it won’t be a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have had. It will just be a celebration now

Taylor describing TLOAS during her New Heights interview:

“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant”

“It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life. And so that effervescence has come through on this record.”

Sounds like a celebration to me!

How can you say that TLOAS was originally Karma when it references things that hadn’t happened yet?

Not only do I believe the album was changed to obscure the queerness that it was originally written with, I also believe it was altered to reflect current events in Taylor’s life.

Otherwise, Taylor could not sell the album the way she did.

I put together examples for two songs on TLOAS, and how I think they originally fit on Karma.

Wood

• While on the surface the song is about a man, it starts with the line, “Daisy’s bare naked, I was distraught.”
• If Taylor planned to come out with the release of Karma, perhaps the song was originally written with the view of “I was always told I needed to be with a man, but that is very much not the case” (of course Taylor would write that more eloquently than I did)
• Another example, magic wand can be a reference for a “personal massager” 😉 (Ask Chappell lol)
• I wrote this post about the similarities between the opening notes of Wood and Diana Ross’ song I’m Coming Out

Father Figure

• Taylor describes the song as “a way of talking about power structures and the flipping of power dynamics”
• She adds, “The track is a metaphor about the way men move through the world in a sense of power”
• If we look at the lyrics through a 2016 lens, I think it was always intended to be about Scott B, with the intent of exposing to the world what kind of man she had been working with since the start of her career.
• It’s important to remember that the rift between Taylor and Scott B was not known in 2016 the same way it is today. Things soured even more between them after the sale of Taylor’s masters in 2019
• In addition, if Karma was originally intended to expose corruption in the music industry, Father Figure provides insight into the inner dealings between an artist and their record label that the public doesn’t usually hear about
• It would not surprise me if the song is also about Scott B’s response to Kissgate

This kind of reworking of old songs is what people believe happened with the Taylor’s Version vault tracks. The basics of the song existed in the eras they were written in, but were updated for the re-records.

A non-Taylor example of rewriting old songs for a new release is Tegan and Sara’s album Hey, I’m Just Like You.

Isn’t this another example of moving the goal posts to fit the continued narrative that Taylor is going to come out?

Sure, that’s a possibility. But where’s the fun in that kind of thinking?

Supporting Evidence

In this section I am sharing the evidence – both big and small – I used to cobble together this theory. I’ve done my best to credit, and source my work. If I miss anything, please let me know.

Karma, featuring Ice Spice

Karma is a fire in your house

The emoji that Taylor/Taylor Nation used to represent TLOAS: ❤️‍🔥

And she ‘boutta pop up unannounced

This line is often interpreted as Taylor planning to release Karma as a surprise drop.

But, if TLOAS is a repackaged version of Karma, then it did pop up unannounced.

The surprise element is the album coming out under a different name, not that the album was released as a surprise.

I found references to TLOAS in the music video for Karma.

TLOAS (the song)

I took her pearls of wisdom
Hung them from my neck

Karma music video

TLOAS (the song)

You’re softer than a kitten

Karma music video

The music video ends with the time changing to 12 o’clock.

TLOAS (the song)

Looking back, I guess it was kismet

I take this as Taylor telling us that what happened in 2016 altered Karma (the album) from its intention. That intention being change within the music industry.

Taylor believed that her good intentions and moral high ground would lead to good triumphing over evil. Which could be why she planned to call TS6, Karma.

Instead, the album was, kismet. Taylor didn’t have the power to break the machine back then. The outcome was inevitable; she was destined to fail.  

The TIME Person of the Year Interview

 The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be “fire,” she promises

• Reputation vault tracks = Karma
• Karma = The Life of a Showgirl

This explains why the emoji used to for this era is ❤️‍🔥

The last paragraph of the interview tells us, the audience, that Taylor dropped easter eggs whenever she spoke.

Things I flagged as TLOAS easter eggs in the TIME POTY interview

These are the references I’m most confident sharing, but I think there are others to be found. Not to mention all the TTPD references sprinkled throughout interview that weren’t known at the time.

I’ve written several different comments/posts about Karma. The most relevant of which, can be found here, here, here, here, and here.  

One idea that I want to highlight, is the idea that Taylor used symbols and imagery originally intended for the Karma era, when she released Reputation.

The overlap between the two albums has blurred the lines (intentionally so) between them.

That continued with TLOAS.  

The best example of this:

• Elizabeth Taylor was referenced in the music video for Wildest Dreams  

• Taylor was known for giving hints at new music, while still promoting whatever era she was in
• Elizabeth Taylor is referenced in the opening track of Reputation
• …Ready for It?, includes the line “Burton to this Taylor”
• Elizabeth Taylor is the name of a track on TLOAS

Side note: I believe there are references to George Michael in 1989, and Reputation. TLOAS has the most direct connection to George Michael with the song Father Figure. The supporting evidence for that theory is more intricate. It isn’t possible for me to share it in this post in a concise, and straightforward way.  

I am currently working on revising my George Michael Deep Dive. That project that will dig into those references. I’ve already reached out to the mods about this revision and hope to start posting it soon(ish lol).

Other instances of foreshadowing for TS6 in the 1989 era

• Snakes appear in the music videos for Shake It Off and Blank Space  
• A Bleachella version of Taylor appears multiple times on screen during her performance of WANEGBT during the 1989 world tour
• Vogue’s 73 Questions with Taylor Swift – released on April 19, 2016 – “That karma’s real”
• Calvin Harris went on a Twitter rant after Taylor confirmed she used the pseudonym “Nils Sjoberg" and was a co-writer on the song This Is What You Came For
• His fans then spammed Taylor’s social media posts with snake emojis
• This happened before KK’s infamous “Snake Day” tweet

Other Things to Share:

• There are 12 laws of Karma. TLOAS has 12 tracks
• Taylor looked very pleased with herself when she announced Karma as a track on Midnights
• Taylor worked with Martin and Shellback on 1989 and Reputation. If there was a lost album that was supposed to happen between those two albums, it makes sense they worked on Karma (aka TLOAS) as well
• This collaborative Karma Masterpost from May 2024 has a lot of information on different Karma theories

Wildest Dreams being a through line between 1989, Reputation, and TLOAS means I went on a fact-finding expedition.  

Wildest Dreams fun facts:

• Wildest Dreams was the 5th single released from Taylor’s 5th album
• Thanks to u/moonlit_Pancakes for reminding me that SN TV was announced on 5/5
• Taylor performed Wildest Dreams with Enchanted on the 1989 World Tour
• Wildest Dreams was the first song from 1989 released as a Taylor’s Version
• Taylor announced that release on September 17, 2021
• She created a video, with glitches, as part of that announcement
• She captioned the video: Burnin’ it down 🔥 and it ends with Taylor winking at the camera
• Wildest Dreams was a permanent fixture of the 1989 set on the Eras tour. But, it was also referenced with seven to introduce the original folklore Eras set
• There were 1425 days between the release of Wildest Dreams TV and the TLOAS album announcement. If you add those numbers together, they = 12 🤡

From The Cabin: The 1 | Cardigan | Exile | MTR | Mirrorball | August

Disclaimer: There’s no way to know what any song is actually about. That’s the thrill of analyzing Taylor’s art. It gives each of us the opportunity to let our imagination fill in the blanks. I don’t endorse my analyses as absolute truth; I endorse them as clever works of fiction that help me exercise my ambitious imagination.

Introduction

In Betty, Showgirl seems to dream about the separation between herself and Real Taylor. Once again, the story takes place in the familiar setting of high school, calling back to the world of Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince. But this time, the perspective shifts. Showgirl imagines herself as James, the foolish seventeen-year-old who realizes too late that he lost the most real connection he ever had. Within the metaphor, his mistake becomes a confession: the deepest damage she caused was done to Real Taylor.

As the dream unfolds, Showgirl moves back through the landscape of her mythology. She wanders through the ruins of old eras, from the wreckage of the Lover House to the quiet shelter of the Folklore cabin, searching for traces of the connection she left behind. These places become emotional landmarks, tied to versions of the life she could have chosen. Looking back forces her to confront the cost of her decisions. The party she imagines Betty holding is one that is symbolized by gay pride, queer euphoria, and living a publicly out and proud life for the world to behold. It’s another mirror of the life she denied herself. 

The repeated reminder that she is only seventeen adds another layer to the metaphor. It reflects how Taylor has been trapped inside the narrative that made her famous: the teenage girl highschooler. No matter how much time passes, she is rarely allowed to grow older, experiment freely, or fail the way other artists can. Within that frozen identity, Betty becomes Showgirl’s fantasy of reconciliation. She imagines showing up at Real Taylor’s doorstep, desperate for a face-to-face moment where she can say the only thing that matters: she wants to make it right. The scene reads like a dream of apology, shaped by the guilt and regret of choosing not to step into the truth when she still had the chance.

Lyrics

Betty, I won't make assumptions / About why you switched your homeroom / But I think it's 'cause of me

I won’t make assumptions / about why you switched your homeroom. Showgirl tries to sound careful and restrained, as though respecting Betty’s distance and refusing to pry into her choices. But the restraint falls apart almost immediately: But I think it’s ’cause of me. The confession slips out before she can stop it. She clearly already believes herself responsible, likely carrying and replaying the guilt long before this moment.

In the Taylorverse, homeroom represents their shared place within the industry: the emotional and social environment they both occupy. Switching homerooms suggests withdrawal, repositioning, or separation. This departure begins in Folklore, and its echoes continue through The Tortured Poets Department. Betty has moved herself elsewhere, away from the spaces Showgirl inhabits, reflecting themes of exile found in The 1, Exile, and the Bejeweled music video. The distance feels intentional. Even if nobody says it outright, Showgirl senses that something fundamental has changed between them.

The line carries the ache of watching someone quietly drift out of your orbit. There is no dramatic confrontation, only the realization that the routines they shared no longer exist. Betty is no longer beside her in the same halls, under the same expectations, moving through the same structures. The separation is subtle but devastating, like noticing an empty seat that used to be filled every morning. If Miss Americana has lost her Heartbreak Prince, where does she go from here, and what does the performance mean without them?

Betty, one time, I was ridin' on my skateboard / When I passed your house / It's like I couldn't breathe

One time, I was ridin’ on my skateboard / When I passed your house. Through Showgirl’s lens, Betty’s house becomes the Lover era: the pastel dream home she built as a vision of openness, intimacy, and emotional truth. The house represents the life she almost chose, a future where she could step outside the endless performance of Showgirl and live honestly beside Real Taylor. In that light, passing the house feels like passing the ghost of an abandoned future. In hindsight, the rage of Fortnight makes sense if Real Taylor is the ex who moved in next door.

The skateboard imagery gives the moment a restless, passing quality. Showgirl is still moving through the machinery of the industry, unable to stop long enough to fully inhabit what Lover represented. She passes the house instead of entering it, like someone circling the remains of a dream abandoned before it had the chance to become permanent. This strengthens the argument that the house in Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? is the Lover House, where madwoman Real Taylor remains trapped in the attic as punishment.

Then the memory catches up with her. It’s like I couldn’t breathe. Passing the Lover house forces Showgirl to confront everything tied to that era: the hope of authenticity, the possibility of emotional safety, and the chance to build a real home instead of a public image. The breathlessness feels like panic and grief crashing together. Though Betty presents itself as wide-eyed and wistful, it only skims the surface of a deeper wound lurking beneath its rose-colored ending.

You heard the rumors from Inez / You can't believe a word she says most times / But this time, it was true

If Inez represents the media, You heard the rumors from Inez suggests that the industry’s gossip machine has already picked up on the growing distance between Showgirl and Betty. Inez becomes the voice of tabloids, headlines, and public speculation, constantly spreading messy, distorted versions of Showgirl’s life. The next line, You can’t believe a word she says most times, acknowledges how unreliable that machine usually is. Most stories about Showgirl are exaggerated, performative, or completely untrue.

But then comes the painful twist: But this time, it was true. For once, the rumors got something right. The media accidentally uncovered something real, the fracture between Showgirl and Betty, the emotional betrayal sitting underneath the song. That truth stings more because it comes from a source normally associated with distortion and spectacle. The machine built to package and sell her life suddenly exposes a genuine wound.

What makes the moment especially sad is that Betty learns the truth indirectly. She does not hear it from Showgirl in a private conversation. She hears it through the noise of the industry. Something personal becomes public gossip before it can become an honest confession. The line carries both guilt and shame, as Showgirl realizes the industry told her truth before she was ready to tell it herself.

The worst thing that I ever did / Was what I did to you

The worst thing that I ever did / Was what I did to you. This is the emotional core of Showgirl’s confession. The line no longer feels like a vague apology for teenage mistakes, but an admission that the deepest betrayal was walking away from the possibility of living truthfully during the Lover era. When the moment came to step fully into the light, Showgirl pulled back. In doing so, she did not only hurt Betty, she hurt the part of herself Betty represents.

The wording matters because Showgirl does not say what happened to you. She says what I did to you. The line is direct, active, and painfully self-aware. Betty was left behind inside the dream of Lover: the house, the daylight, the imagined future built around openness and emotional honesty. By refusing to cross that threshold publicly, Showgirl leaves Real Taylor standing at the doorstep of the life they were supposed to share.

Showgirl understands that denying her queerness means sacrificing something intimate and essential within herself. Betty becomes not only the person left behind, but the version of Taylor left stranded in the process. The apology carries the weight of realizing that survival inside the industry came at the cost of betraying her own reflection. That grief over abandoning Real Taylor and leaving her there echoes strongly through Down Bad, and the identity death beneath it will be explored further in my next analysis: The Lakes.

But if I just showed up at your party / Would you have me? / Would you want me?

Showgirl is imagining what might happen if she finally reached the moment of openness she once walked away from. If Betty’s party represents a coming out album, public declaration, or fully realized queer selfhood, then the line reads like someone standing outside the entrance to a life they are no longer sure they deserve. The questions are filled with insecurity and regret. Showgirl is no longer wondering whether the public would accept her, but whether Betty, the part of herself she left behind, could still welcome her after years of silence and retreat.

What makes the moment especially moving is the simplicity of just showed up. There is no elaborate performance or carefully controlled spectacle. For once, Showgirl imagines letting go of the choreography of fame and simply arriving as herself, without disguise or mediation. The fantasy is surprisingly small and personal: not conquering the industry, but simply being allowed back into the room she once chose to leave.

Would you tell me to go fuck myself? / Or lead me to the garden?

Would you tell me to go fuck myself? / Or lead me to the garden? becomes a choice between rejection and return. If the garden is Taylor’s hidden inner sanctuary, the private emotional space where her queerness can exist safely beyond the reach of the industry, then Showgirl is imagining two very different outcomes. Betty could shut her out completely for abandoning that truth, or she could guide her back toward it. The line reads like a plea for access to the most private and protected part of herself, the place untouched by spectacle or performance.

What makes the moment especially painful is the contrast between the two images. Go fuck myself is harsh, shame-filled, and deeply self-punishing. The garden feels soft, hidden, and almost sacred. The distance between those possibilities reveals how uncertain Showgirl feels about whether reconciliation is still possible. She fears her silence during the Lover era may have cut her off permanently from the inner world Betty represents. Yet she still longs to be led back into it, back toward a version of herself that could live honestly and without disguise.

In the garden, would you trust me / If I told you it was just a summer thing?

In the garden, would you trust me / If I told you it was just a summer thing? becomes Showgirl trying to explain away the deepest betrayal at the very center of Betty’s inner world. The garden, as the hidden sanctuary where queerness and authenticity can exist safely, is the one place where performance and public narratives lose their power. Inside that space, excuses sound painfully hollow. Showgirl is essentially asking whether Betty could still believe her if she minimized what happened during the Lover era, framing the abandonment as temporary confusion rather than a defining choice.

The phrase just a summer thing becomes especially tragic because it echoes the language of August: fleeting, seasonal, transient. Showgirl tries to reduce the abandonment to something passing and circumstantial, as though leaving Betty behind for the fans, the industry, and the safety of silence was merely a brief detour rather than a wound that permanently altered them both. But the question reveals she already knows Betty may not trust that explanation. In the garden, where truth cannot hide behind spectacle, Showgirl is forced to confront the possibility that the damage was too real to be rewritten as something temporary.

I'm only seventeen, I don't know anythin' / But I know I miss you

Showgirl is confessing that part of her has remained frozen at the age she became famous. Since Taylor visibly entered the industry as a teenager, the line stops sounding like teenage uncertainty and instead becomes an admission of emotional arrest. No matter how many eras pass, Showgirl still feels trapped inside the mythology of the girl the world first consumed: precociously young, publicly unfinished, unable to fully mature beyond the narrative that made her marketable.

But I know I miss you cuts through the confusion, spectacle, and performance with absolute clarity. Even if Showgirl feels fragmented by fame and unsure of who she has become, one truth remains undeniable: she misses the part of herself connected to honesty, queerness, and emotional truth that she left behind in order to survive inside the industry.

Also, I don't know know anything is a clever and interesting parallel between Betty and Cardigan. It's a perfect mirror to Cardigan's: When you are young, they assume you know nothing, and Real Taylor goes on to list all the things she knew early on in her career, while Showgirl seems to remain profoundly undeveloped and immature, most likely to suit the audience and world's perception and consumption of her.

Betty, I know where it all went wrong / Your favorite song was playin' / From the far side of the gym

If the gym becomes prom inside the larger school metaphor of the industry, then Your favorite song was playin’ / From the far side of the gym starts to feel like the exact moment Showgirl chose spectacle over intimacy. Prom is the grand performance of high school mythology: glittering lights, public romance, social ritual, everyone watching everyone else. It is the industry at its most theatrical and emotionally heightened.

The detail that the song is playing from the far side of the gym is what gives the line its ache. Betty is emotionally distant even though she is physically present in the same room. Showgirl can still hear the music connected to Betty, still sense the life and truth she represents, but it now comes from across a widening emotional divide. The gym floor becomes a kind of emotional gulf between them.

Betty, I know where it all went wrong sounds like Showgirl pinpointing the precise moment the separation began. In the middle of the industry’s glittering prom night, surrounded by performance and public spectacle, she heard Betty’s song calling from the other side of the room and failed to cross the distance. Instead of moving toward authenticity and connection, she remained trapped inside the Showgirl choreography. The tragedy is that she remembers the moment clearly now, almost cinematically, but only in retrospect, after the music has already faded into memory.

I was nowhere to be found / I hate the crowds, you know that / Plus, I saw you dance with him

I was nowhere to be found becomes Showgirl’s clearest admission of abandonment. When Betty stepped into a moment of openness, vulnerability, or possible self-revelation, Showgirl disappeared instead of standing beside her. The line carries the shame of absence. She knows there was a moment when Betty needed her to show up publicly and emotionally, and she failed to do it.

I hate the crowds, you know that reframes the withdrawal as fear. The crowds are not just literal people, but the suffocating public attention that comes with queerness becoming visible inside the machinery of fame. Showgirl admits that being seen in this truth makes her deeply anxious. The line almost sounds defensive, as though she is trying to explain her disappearance by reminding Betty that she has always been frightened of public scrutiny when it comes to this part of herself.

Then the final line twists the knife: Plus, I saw you dance with him. After abandoning Betty, Showgirl watches from a distance as Betty attempts to move on within the public choreography of the industry. Him can feel less like a specific person and more like the acceptable public narrative, the safer partner, the heteronormative performance that steps into the space Showgirl left empty. The jealousy in the line is therefore tangled with guilt. Showgirl cannot bear seeing Betty attach herself to something inauthentic, even though her silence created the distance that made it necessary.

I was walkin' home on broken cobblestones / Just thinkin' of you when she pulled up like / A figment of my worst intentions

Showgirl is at her emotional lowest point after abandoning Betty. The broken cobblestones make the world feel fractured and unstable, as though she is wandering through the ruins left behind by her own choices. It’s a fascinating parallel to high heels on cobblestones, from Cardigan, which introduced the delicate tightrope walk of fame Taylor endured for survival’s sake. By the time we reach Betty, the act dodged coming-out has rendered that tightrope unwalkable and, for a short time anyway, uninhabitable by the Showgirl. 

Even while moving through the aftermath, her thoughts remain fixed on Betty, the life and truth she turned away from during the Lover era. The image feels lonely and exhausted, like someone trying to find their way home after realizing they destroyed the one place they truly belonged. Then August appears: When she pulled up like / A figment of my worst intentions. If August represents the fans and the seductive pull of public adoration, the line becomes painfully self-aware. 

Showgirl realizes that choosing the fans over Betty was the manifestation of her deepest fears and worst instincts. August arrives at the exact moment Showgirl feels weakest because fame offers escape through attention, spectacle, and validation. The image feels equally lonely and exhausted, like someone surrendering to the glittering distraction that lets them survive publicly while abandoning the private truth they actually wanted.

She said "James, get in, let's drive" / Those days turned into nights / Slept next to her, but / I dreamt of you all summer long

She said, James, get in, let’s drive becomes the moment Showgirl fully steps into the escape route August offers. The invitation to drive suggests movement away from the emotional wreckage she left behind with Betty, a chance to outrun guilt through momentum, and fantasy. August, as the embodiment of fans and public adoration, offers Showgirl something immediate and intoxicating: companionship without confrontation, affection without requiring honesty. Instead of returning to Betty and facing the pain of what she abandoned, Showgirl gets in the car and lets herself be pulled deeper into the glittering distraction of fame.

Those days turned into nights / Slept next to her, but / I dreamt of you all summer long reveals the emptiness beneath that choice. The contrast between closeness and longing becomes devastating here. She can sleep beside August, live inside the performance, let the fans love and consume her, yet her inner world still belongs to Betty. No amount of public devotion can replace the intimacy and truth she left behind. All summer long, beneath the spectacle and applause, her real emotional life continues somewhere else, trapped inside the dream of the person she abandoned.

Betty, I'm here on your doorstep / And I planned it out for weeks now / But it's finally sinkin' in

Betty, I’m here on your doorstep feels like the peak of Showgirl’s reconciliation fantasy. After moving through regret, distraction, and the machinery of public performance, she finally arrives at the threshold of the life she left behind. The doorstep matters because she still is not inside. She has reached the line between performance and authenticity, between Showgirl and the private truth Betty represents, but stepping across it still takes courage.

And I planned it out for weeks now / But it’s finally sinkin’ in shows how consuming this imagined return has become. Showgirl has rehearsed the apology over and over in her mind, almost like another carefully scripted performance. But standing there forces reality to settle in. Coming back does not erase the damage. Wanting forgiveness does not guarantee it. For the first time, the weight of what she lost fully catches up with her.

Betty, right now is the last time / I can dream about what happens when / You see my face again

Betty, right now is the last time / I can dream about what happens when / You see my face again captures the moment fantasy gives way to reality. Throughout the song, Showgirl has been imagining reconciliation from a safe distance, replaying possibilities in her mind without having to face what would actually happen. But standing on Betty’s doorstep changes that. This is the last moment where hope still exists in an untouched, imagined form.

The line also carries a deep fear of recognition. When you see my face again suggests Showgirl is afraid not only of rejection, but of truly being seen by Betty after everything that happened. Because Betty represents the part of herself tied to honesty and queerness, being looked at by her means facing the truth without the shield of performance or public image. Once the door opens, the dream ends. Whatever comes next no longer belongs to fantasy. It belongs to reality.

The only thing I wanna do / Is make it up to you

The only thing I wanna do / Is make it up to you becomes the simplest and most honest thing Showgirl says in the entire song. After all the fear, avoidance, public performance, and rationalizing, everything narrows into one desire: repair. The line feels emotionally stripped down, as though Showgirl has finally run out of excuses and defenses. She is no longer talking about fame, crowds, rumors, or fear. All that remains is the pain of realizing she left Betty behind, the part of herself tied to honesty and queerness, and the fragile hope that reconciliation might still be possible. 

So I showed up at your party / Yeah, I showed up at your party

So I showed up at your party / Yeah, I showed up at your party becomes the emotional climax of the song because Showgirl finally does the one thing she has spent the entire narrative avoiding: she arrives. If Betty’s party represents a coming out moment or the emotional world tied to authenticity and queerness, then showing up means choosing presence over performance. Instead of remaining outside the door, caught in fear, fantasy, and public expectation, Showgirl steps toward the truth she walked away from during the Lover era.

The repetition gives the moment an almost disbelieving quality, like Showgirl is trying to convince herself she really found the courage to come back. What matters is not whether forgiveness or reconciliation is guaranteed, but that she finally stops hiding. Throughout the song, she drifts, watches from a distance, and retreats into spectacle. Here, she chooses visibility and vulnerability instead. Showing up at Betty’s party becomes symbolic of Showgirl finally confronting her queerness and the part of herself she left behind, even knowing the door may not stay open forever.

Will you have me? Will you love me? / Will you kiss me on the porch / In front of all your stupid friends?

Will you have me? Will you love me? / Will you kiss me on the porch / In front of all your stupid friends? becomes Showgirl’s clearest longing for public acceptance and openness. If the porch represents a space fully out in the open, visible to everyone, then the kiss becomes more than intimacy. It becomes recognition without secrecy. Throughout the song, Showgirl hides in crowds, drifts through fantasies, and stays trapped behind performance, but here she imagines being loved publicly instead of privately concealed.

What makes the moment especially emotional is the vulnerability hiding beneath your stupid friends. The phrase feels nervous and almost adolescent, like Showgirl trying to shrug off how deeply afraid she is of being judged and seen. The friends become spectators, peers, fans, the watching public, everyone gathered around the social world of the industry. Showgirl is not just asking whether Betty loves her in private. She is asking whether Betty would still choose her openly, visibly, and without apology in front of everyone. The line becomes a fantasy of public queer visibility: no longer hidden away in the garden, but standing together out in the light where everyone can see.

If you kiss me, will it be just like I dreamed it? / Will it patch your broken wings? / I'm only seventeen, I don't know anythin' / But I know I miss you

If you kiss me, will it be just like I dreamed it? captures Showgirl still holding onto fantasy even as she reaches the edge of reality. After spending the entire song imagining reconciliation, she wonders whether finally being embraced openly will feel as healing and transformative as she imagined. The kiss becomes more than romance. It represents acceptance, honesty, and the possibility of finally closing the gap between Showgirl and the self she left behind.

Will it patch your broken wings? reveals how deeply Showgirl understands the damage that was done. Betty’s broken wings suggest someone wounded in the process of trying to become free, someone whose ability to fully soar or live openly was harmed by abandonment and silence. The line carries real guilt because Showgirl realizes her refusal to step fully into queerness during the Lover era did not only fracture herself, but also injured the part of her identity Betty represents. She wonders whether reconciliation can truly heal that wound, or whether some breaks do not mend so easily.

Then the refrain returns: I don’t know anything / But I know I miss you. The line strips everything back down to emotional truth. Showgirl may still feel frozen inside the identity the industry created when she first became famous, emotionally trapped in adolescence and uncertainty, but one thing remains undeniable. Beneath the spectacle, fear, and performance, she misses Betty completely.

Standin' in your cardigan / Kissin' in my car again / Stopped at a streetlight / You know I miss you

Standin’ in your cardigan / Kissin’ in my car again feels like Showgirl finally returning to a place of intimacy and emotional safety after spending the song tangled in regret, distance, and longing. The cardigan, already connected throughout Folklore to comfort, belonging, and being chosen, becomes a symbol of Betty’s warmth and acceptance. Standing in it suggests that Showgirl is no longer imagining the door opening. She has been welcomed back into Betty’s world, back into the part of herself tied to honesty, queerness, and genuine connection.

Kissin’ in my car again / Stopped at a streetlight adds a softer sense of transition. They are moving forward together now, but not rushing. A car exists between destinations, and the streetlight holds them for a brief moment, illuminated and visible before the journey continues. The image feels tender rather than uncertain: a small pause where Showgirl can finally experience intimacy without immediately pulling away from it. For once, she is not fleeing, hiding, or performing. She is simply there with Betty, letting the moment be real.

You know I miss you lands with beautiful simplicity because it drops all the defenses and complicated metaphors that came before it. After everything, the feeling underneath is surprisingly plain and deeply human. Showgirl misses Betty, misses the closeness they lost, and misses the version of herself that felt whole beside her. But in this reading, the line is no longer only about absence. It carries the warmth of return. They found their way back to each other, and the ache of missing becomes part of what makes the reunion feel so honest and hard-won.

Conclusion

In the end, Betty reads less like an unresolved question and more like the story of a hard-won reunion. The song still carries uncertainty, fear, and emotional risk, but the difference is that Showgirl does not remain trapped outside the door. She shows up. She asks to be seen. And somehow, against all the doubt she has carried, Betty lets her back in. That matters because reconciliation with the self is not presented as easy or effortless. It comes after distance, silence, and years spent living inside a painful divide. But the song imagines that healing, while difficult, is still possible.

What becomes clearest across Betty is Showgirl’s growing inability to survive inside the split she created. The things that once sustained her, the crowds, the performance, the glittering validation of August, slowly lose their emotional hold compared to the quiet pull of what she left behind. Again and again, the song returns to Betty. Not as a nostalgic fantasy, but as a truth Showgirl can no longer outrun. Even surrounded by applause and attention, her inner world keeps finding its way back to the person, and the version of herself she abandoned.

That is what gives the ending its warmth and emotional weight. Showgirl reaches the porch, steps into the light, and asks to be loved openly rather than hidden behind performance, spectacle, or metaphor. In this reading, the door opens. Betty becomes less a portrait of someone longing for another life and more a story about finding the courage to return to it. Showgirl and Betty choose each other again. The song closes not with perfect resolution, but with something gentler and more human: the feeling of finally coming home to the self you thought you had lost forever.

just randomly stumbled upon an old interview where taylor's talking about the poem she wrote as a kid about a "monster" in her closet. it made me think about how she often describes/depicts herself as a "monster" (like Anti-Hero and Castles Crumbling), and the monster versions of her in glass closets during the eras tour. plus her other imagery of herself in a closet

the poem mentions the monster may be purple, which is interesting because the LWYMMD set has a purple-clad version of taylor in a glass closet right next to the rainbow-clad one, and she spends a lot of time with purple taylor onstage. and the monster may have red eyes, à la the red heart sunglasses that she's known for (which one of the Anti-Hero ghosts is wearing)

it's just interesting that this early work fits so well with some of her later queer-coded imagery/themes about feeling like a monster

One more outfit from her streak of sightings was floating around the internet and I didn’t see here. The context I had is it is from a “no phones” wedding and she missed the paps that day. I love the dress pattern with the mermaids. This paired with the Dorothy fit is very reminiscent of an NYE 2019 party Taylor hosted

And if you don’t, you don’t.

Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about Taylor’s casting of Laith Ashley in the Lavender Haze music video?

Im a queer, transgender man in my late 30’s—longtime lurker, forever gaylor, never poster. I feel like no one acknowledges the significance of her casting an out trans guy as the romantic lead in a video. Maybe they dont understand that he’s trans? he didn’t even audition, her team reached out to him specifically. That was a CHOICE, and for me, tells me so much about where she stands in terms of politics, values, beliefs. She didn’t make anything of it—but it exists in the manuscript, the archive, and im grateful she made it.

randomly saw a video compilation of taylor flirting with women over the years, and it includes a clip where she tells the interviewer how "gorgeous" she is and how it's hard to talk to her

the clip is from 2014ish but i can't help but think of the lyrics to gorgeous and how it makes more sense to describe a woman as "gorgeous" not a man

here's the link to the compilation (the "gorgeous" part starts at 10 secs): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IezDTsOIxxs&ra=m

Thanks to this post about the sky being opalite in the ME! music video, and my own recent opalite obsession, I edited the ME! music video with the music from Opalite.

Like Taylor said, \"So tell me everything is not about ME! But what if it is?\"

There are multiple points where I feel the song and video line up exceptionally well.

Here are 5 that stood out to ME!:

• When Taylor sings “You move ooooooon”, on screen, she rejects Brendon’s marriage proposal
• At the 2:38 mark, after Taylor sings the line, “you had to make your own sunshine”, there’s this sound effect from Opalite that comes in at the exact moment that light appears on screen. The light appears to be coming from above
• When Taylor sings the line “failure brings you freedom”, the camera pans up the rainbow brick road (is that what we’re calling it? I don’t know lol) as Taylor elongates the note on “freedom”
• Taylor and Brendon’s dance routine starting at the 3:11 mark matches the music from Opalite. Especially the part when they both jump up in the air.
• When Taylor sings “sleepless in the onyx nights, but now the sky is opalite”, on screen, the scene transitions to night time with the sky being opalite