"Long live all the magic we made, and bring on all the pretenders!"

A diamond's gotta shine

Then and now. 💜

I recall late November Holding my breath, slowly I said “You don’t need to save me, but would you run away with me?” “Yes”

✨ i've spent my whole life trying to put it into words ✨

but if RED was an album of contradictions, it was better for it - it captured perfectly the hysterical rambling of a 22 year old recounting a bitter break up. the missing pieces in the half-stuttered story simply showed the true grief in it. the vault tracks fill in the some of the emotional gaps (between Stay Stay Stay and WANEGBT), the sonic gaps (between IKYWT and I Almost Do), the chronological gaps (between All Too Well and 22), but more than that, they confirm what her audience often wondered as we rode RED’s roller coaster - was the hurt at the core of the album actually more crushing than RED’s most dramatic lyrics? was the noxious heartbreak too raw and left on the cutting room floor? this is the question the vault tracks answer. reopening a wound. in 2012 this generation’s heartbreak songwriter wrote her definitive heartbreak album and told us the where, when, who and how. in 2021, RED finally has its why.  the other core difference between the Fearless and RED vaults is that any of the Fearless tracks probably could have gone on the original 2008 release. RED’s, for various reasons (too mature, too unfiltered, too drunk, too humiliated, too painful, too incompatible with Taylor Swift’s 2012 brand image), could never have gone on the original album. the bodies can only be exhumed now because the general public’s perception of both Taylor Swift’s songwriting process and her dating life has changed significantly in the last 10 years. it seems strange from the outside, this retroactive vulnerability, but it also retrofits the album with a closure it maybe never had. the vault tracks put a lid on the narrative; reflective, older and wiser, it’s Taylor Swift’s last confession of damage - just how bad that age (and the power-imbalance in that relationship) was for her. to many, the new context the vault tracks provide is going to feel like petty revisionism. her fans though, who remember Taylor Swift at 22, who have now been 22 themselves, well, you were there, you remember it all.

I’m begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, that’s my man

August slipped away into a moment in time...

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry, I'm setting off

But what would he do if he found us out? 🌿

hello mr perfectly fine…

Pictures of Taylor being magical 16/100

invisible string (2020) | tolerate it (2020)

August slipped away into a moment in time...