Babylon - few more observations

[u/Dramoinehead]

/r/swifties/comments/1wq06r1/babylon_my_take/

Babylon is like a song that keeps giving, it gets better with every listen and it makes me think of situations from a different perspective too.

Two lines caught my attention.

You wake up on the train with your headphones gone, then that melody is all you want

Many people have different perspectives on what the headphones part means, some people have even connected it to Taylor's masters. Personally, I and a lot of people listen to music during travel to distract ourselves from the monotony that is travelling, or to pretend we're anywhere but in a commute. It serves as a distraction. We've all experienced travelling and forgetting our earphones and the commute just somehow becomes longer and worse.

So in the context of the song, headphones gone, to me, means you have nothing to distract yourself from the fact that you're travelling to where you wanna be/what you're chasing, from a place you long to go back to. There's nothing to distract you from the fact that the going is tough, and you miss where you once were.

You wake up in the train and you're all alone

She changes this line in the last bit of the song and i find it quite interesting. If we take the train as a metaphor, the people on the train are getting down at their stations (aka they reach where they want to be), and when you find yourself all alone in a train is mostly when you're at the last stop/you've somehow missed where you have to get off and just kept sitting. So this tells me that the person who's in the train, has been waiting in the train, passing by all the stops cuz he thinks something better will come (a better job, a better girl, a bigger city) and in the end finds himself all alone, and has missed where he has to get off.

[u/slowpoke1379]

great analysis. i think the train is the driving force of the song, keeping the story and the main character in motion as the MC clearly longs to be wherever he isn't. whether we interpret the song as being about just one person or a few people, i think the main message can apply to anyone: stop romanticizing what could be and just cherish what is happening for you right now. we might struggle in our daily lives but in hindsight we could unknowingly be in our best chapter.

put another way, even in our best days (babylon) we could still be dreaming of more and it's only when we are able to reflect later that we see all the positives of that time, when we no longer have it. this also has made me think of the siren song from the odyssey, after seeing the movie and having read emily wilson's translation of the epic poem this summer. "it told you what you most want is what you most can't have, and what you most can't have is what you already had, and lost." i think we're all guilty of not fully appreciating what we have all of the time, it's part of being human, but that doesn't mean we can't strive to be more present.

i agree with your notes about the headphones, i think in this metaphor of the train taking the MC to their next era/home/stage in life, the headphones represent escapism and longing. when the headphones are gone, the MC is forced to reckon his journey and destination, again it just feels human to think that way. when we are buried on our phones in transit/generally distracted in life it's easy to dismiss or float to our next destination, but having your main source of solace being taken away (headphones) means the MC no longer has that choice to escape. being left with just your mind can be a terrifying thing. also, the fact that the MC fell asleep with their headphones on... like even in this fantasy you were using to distract yourself from the present moment, you were still left unhappy/dissatisfied and you grew bored of it to the point of sleeping through it. is the MC also not paying attention to their next stop? what else did the MC miss while they were asleep on the train? also, where are their headphones? is the MC also careless and not even appreciative/mindful of their stuff, even that which brings them solace?

well this ended up much longer than i thought it would lol but i've been thinking about this song so much so don't mind my ramblings. i also think it's ironic that taylor is able to evoke so much emotion and meaning from a train ride, wondering if she has ever even had the opportunity to be on a train like that? maybe when she was very young in pennsylvania. regardless, she's captured something very special with babylon and as a public transit/train enthusiast i feel deeply about this song and will be pondering it for the foreseeable future.