I have heard mixed interpretations of dancing with our hands tied. How do you interpret it?
well i can tell you how taylor interpreted it.. i don’t think i’ve really seen anyone post about the meaning behind this song even though everything else has come out… it’s actually really funny because dwoht has become the most misunderstood song on rep LET’S CLARIFY
taylor set it up by saying that inspiration for the song came when she was back in LA after spending several months out of the public eye. as we know now she spent basically all of this time in the UK with joe without anyone knowing she was in a relationship. back in LA (i think for work), she went to the gym only to be caught by paparazzi on her way out.. the paps shouted all kinds of things at her including comments about her weight… remember this was the first time she had been properly seen in months and nobody knew she was in a relationship..
she described being really overwhelmed by the experience but that her thought process was less about herself and more about how she could possibly have a normal relationship when this was her life. taylor actually said that after the incident she went straight to the recording studio, cried, and wrote this song. for the record, i’m pretty sure she was describing this day in Jan 2017
in terms of how this led to the song, i think in the past we know taylor has made comments like “who would sign up for this” but this was more of a “who would stick around for this” kind of situation.. it’s important to remember that taylor describes this relationship as being different to any other relationship she had ever been in. firstly nobody knew they were together and secondly this person had signed up to be with her despite everything. i think i remember taylor saying something along the lines of feeling like she had something permanent she needed to protect.
i’ve seen a lot of people say dwoht is a break-up song but.. it’s not.. at all. it’s about a bunch of internalised doubts taylor had about her ability to be in a long-term relationship being brought to the surface quite suddenly. in the song she isn’t questioning the relationship because things are going badly, she’s questioning it because things are going well and she’s scared that she’s going to destroy it by virtue of who she is. in my opinion, this is why dwoht represents what reputation is about at it’s core. the effect her reputation has had on the people she loves. this entire era has been about her taking control in order to protect something that has become everything to her.
a recent example of this true meaning is that taylor actually said before performing dwoht in manchester that the song was about feeling “a combination of love and fear” and “how those two emotions coincide with each other and fight with each other”.
if we look at the song this explanation is probably most visible in the lyric "i loved you in spite of deep fears that the world would divide us” but it’s echoed throughout the track in lyrics like “you said there was nothing in the world that could stop it i had a bad feeling” and “i knew there was no one in the world who could take it i had a bad feeling”. i could do a full lyrical analysis but that would take forever.
basically, this song is really important in the context of reputation and i think if you really pay attention to taylor when she’s performing it you can see how important it is to her in general.. imo it explains why she didn’t perform it in the way we might have expected.
