violent, exquisite happenstance

love (derogatory)

then it comes back with reputation as rae discussed above, and comes back in hot on reputation but especially lover, with an entire song relating sex to keep love alive with a long-term partner, “religion’s in your lips, the alter is my hips, even if it’s a false god, we’d still worship this love” and saying “desperate people find faith so now i pray to jesus too.” and i also think that the use of “goddamn” in ivy is interesting. “oh, goddamn, my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand // yeah, it’s a fire, it’s the goddamn fight of my life, and you started it // now i’m covered in you // i’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones in a faith-forgotten land” (relating right back to don’t blame me and “i once was poison ivy but now i’m your daisy” and she’ll be using for the rest of her life.)

The legendary songwriter reflects on co-writing with Swift and demoing the track on New Year's Day 2014: "Everybody's on vacation, but she showed up"

When Taylor Swift dropped 1989 in 2014, Diane Warren wondered why the song they wrote together, “Say Don’t Go,” didn’t make it on the LP’s tracklist. So when the famed songwriter heard from her lawyer that Swift would finally release it nearly 10 years later, she was surprised — and more than ready.

“Everything has its time, you know? It took a while to see the light of day, but I’m glad it finally did,” Warren tells Rolling Stone. “It was worth the wait.”

Warren, who typically writes on her own, says the two of them “sat down and wrote the song,” which was released Friday as one of 1989 (Taylor’s Version)‘s vault tracks, “from scratch” during the last few days of 2013. She remembers being impressed with how specific Swift was with her lyricism and how considerate she was about how her fans might receive it.

“She was very particular about how she said certain things. It was a really interesting experience. She gets her audience,” Warren says. “She’s deeply aware of how her fans want to hear something. I can’t explain it, but that’s probably why she’s the biggest fucking star in the world.”

Several days after writing the song together, they got into Warren’s office to record a demo, where Swift played it on her acoustic guitar. “We demoed it on New Year’s Day. And I’m a workaholic, and that’s fine for me,” she says. “But I remember being impressed that she did, too. Everybody’s on vacation, but she showed up.”

“I was curious what they would do with the record,” she adds. “And I assume it’s Jack Antonoff who produced the shit out of the song.”

Warren says she was emailed the song just a few hours before it was released on Friday while at dinner with friends. She says she went outside to listen to the song. “I said, ‘Oh my god, this is fucking awesome,'” she says. “It was such a surprise to me that the record version was as good as it was. You know what? I hope they release this as a single because I think it’s a fucking hit.”

Her favorite part of the song? When Swift goes up an octave in the track’s second verse. She also says “Say Don’t Go” was released with the same lyrics they wrote nine years ago: “It still stands. It’s timeless.”

Warren attended The Eras Tour earlier this year and sat alongside Swift’s parents to watch the show. She says she had “never seen anything like” the crowd at her concert. “When I first worked with Taylor to where she is now, it’s so crazy. She’s probably the most popular person on the planet. It’s like, wow,” she says. “Taylor Swift could be a cult leader if she wanted to!”

Playful cat quilts call for playful quilting!

In folklore, it’s interesting because the Betty triangle has no conclusive cheating but there is a definite feeling like James betrayed Betty and used this “other woman” and it’s all kind of contextualized within this “people do dumb things” narrative and the overarching point is that Betty and James chose each other in the end anyway. But I believe there was an underlying current of infidelity running through august and “you were never mine” and just slowly falling in love with a person who clearly was only with her out of necessity. But still, the message was clear: august was catching feelings for James when she knew he wasn’t hers at all. I wonder how any potential Betty would feel knowing that James was halfway flubbing that it was “just a summer thing” and how you should take it when a person is saying that when the other woman views it SO differently.

But then we get to hoax which is so clearly antithetical to afterglow in every single way: YOU did this, YOU betrayed me, YOU hurt me. And even though she’s still saying that she wants him, she’s calling out the fact that that’s HER weakness that wants him, instead of her strength.

On evermore, it’s probably the most striking shift because it’s not even like she’s questioning whether or not he did it (I just can’t prove it etc.) and whether or not she should take him back, it’s more concerned with her OWN behavior. What would you do if I did this? What would you do if I were to fuck my hometown ex? What would you do if I said no to your proposal? What would you do if we were married and I cheated on you? I think I would give you forgiveness. I think I’d kill you and your mistress. I think I’d just fall out of love with you. The skeletons in both our closets, the ladies lunching, I hurt him too, all point to different possible endings for this thing.

And then you see those same stories recur on midnights: the small town love, the threat of going out, a “good husband” chastising his wife for stepping out and her astonishment at him even noticing, being ultimately alone in my pen, dying within the context of your relationship. I feel like midnights was actively writing the ending to this thing as it was happening.