#marjorie

My history with this song:

It's warmed my heart so much to see Taylor opening up about her love for her grandmother 🥹🥹🥹

Thoughts:

"marjorie" is a shimmery, reverent tribute to Taylor's late grandmother Marjorie Finlay.

The production is metallic and ringing, perhaps evoking the phrase of something "ringing a bell", as the song is drenched in memory, even positing that memory can counteract death itself: "What died didn't stay dead / You're alive, you're alive in my head." As the song builds, it gains an almost hymnal quality, aided by Justin Vernon's backing vocals.

Marjorie lives on in the balanced advice she bestowed, in the Swiftian montage of lovely memories we're treated to in the bridge, in the recording of her singing layered over the final chorus and outro. Yet, Taylor regrets having failed to live in the moment, to appreciate and drink the person in front of her up:

"And I complained the whole way there / The carride back and up the stairs / I should have asked you questions / I should have asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me / Should have kept every grocery store receipt / Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me."

"marjorie" is both mystified by the power of memory ("I know better / But you're still around") and saddened by its inherent limitations – you can never remember everything, you can never go back and clarify every point.

I'm particularly struck by the title line: "Watched as you signed your name Marjorie / All your closets of backlogged dreams / And how you left them all to me." The way Taylor doesn't identify her grandmother directly, but instead recalls her introducing herself by leaving her signature, and that line followed directly by Taylor taking it upon herself to shoulder her grandmother's legacy. She does this twofold: by furthering Marjorie's musical ambitions and by immortalizing her name and life in this song. In this way, Marjorie has signed her name on Taylor herself.

Favourite lyric: "Long limbs and frozen swims / You'd always go past where our feet could touch" I love the entire bridge but I find these words so lovely and whimsical, yet also symbolic of Marjorie as a background driving force of Taylor's lifelong ambition.

Favourite melodic line: "I should have asked you questions / I should have asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me" </////3 it's so desperate and lovely