do you feel like 'Question...?' is super queer only as it relates to Taylor or as a standalone song? And if you feel it's super queer as a standalone song, can you explain why please?
Good questionā¦ (hee) this is probably (definitely) gonna be a much longer answer than you were looking for anon but I have a lot of thoughts!!!!
So I do think for me the song reads as queer without relating it to Taylor at all!
The first lyrics that point me towards a queer reading of the song are:
āI swear that it was something
'Cause I don't remember who I was before you
A color I've searched for sinceā
All of these lines for me read very much about a queer relationship!
āI swear that is was somethingā makes me think of a relationship that either wasnāt seen a āreally somethingā to outsiders (I think this interpretation is backed up in later lyrics!) or that had to be kept secret and so now the narrator has to affirm to themselves that this was something important and real!
Then the narrator goes on to say ācause I donāt remember who I was before you painted all my nights a color Iāve searched for sinceā.
The narrator was transformed so much by this relationship that they donāt remember who they were before they met this person and had this relationship! This to me reads as a first queer relationship or the relationship that cemented queerness in the identity of the narrator. They canāt go back to who they were before!
āyou painted all my nights a color Iāve searched for sinceā could be my favourite lyric from the whole song because I think it says so much and paints such an evocative imagery. There is a lot going on in this one line! The first thing that jumps out to me is ānightsā rather than days, again to me that paints the picture of a relationship that had to be kept quite literally in the dark.
And then the imagery of those nights being painted this specific colour that the narrator has been searching for since. To me this evokes imagery of films like Wizard of Oz where the film transitions from black and white to colour. The narrators world was in black and white/monotone grey and then this relationship came along and painted their world technicolour and now the narrator is desperately searching for anything to make their world technicolour again!!!
Moving on to the chorus, the first thing about the chorus that reads queer to me is the chorus being based around the word question. This evokes the idea of questioning both the subject of the song but also underneath it all the narrator is questioning themselves, questioning if their memory of how this relationship unfolded is in line with reality.
āCan I ask you a question?
Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room
And every single one of your friends was
But 15 seconds later they were clapping too?
The imagery this part of the chorus creates honestly feels so close to the bone for me as a queer person. āCan I ask you a questionā is such a loaded phrase anyway right? But within the context of all that comes before the chorus I canāt help but think of those conversations you have as a young queer person, where you are trying to figure out if the person in front of you (that youāre maybe crushing on) is accepting of your queerness or maybe even queer like you??
And on the flip side the stomach drop when you are closeted and someone drops their voice in a private conversation and says ācan I ask you a questionā and you have to decide where to trust this person with something so delicate and new within yourself and you have to calculate your own safety all at the same time!
āDid you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded roomā
So this line is telling us that it was the narrator that kissed the subject of the song in a crowded room right? It paints the narrator as perhaps the more confident or the one more willing to risk it all for the feeling of kissing their love in a crowded room? And why is that a big deal?
āAnd every single one of your friends was / Making fun of youā
Which the narrator answers in the following line! The subjectās friends response to the two kissing is to make fun of the subject! I imagine two people kissing and the crowd around them laughing and pointing. The imagery is hidden within a very upbeat chorus but itās devastating! And unfortunately I think a lot of queer people can relate to this experience, of their love being a joke to outsiders (perhaps especially queer women?)
āBut 15 seconds later they were clapping too?ā
I think there are two ways to interpret this line. The first being the literal, that 15 seconds after the kiss began the crowd switched from making fun of the subject to clapping and cheering them on. If you actually think of what it would be like to be kissing in a crowded room being laughed at for 15 seconds that 15 seconds becomes an excruciatingly long time.
So if we take the line less literally, I think the idea being put forward is that when this couple first got together the subjects friends made fun of the relationship, and then after a long time they came around and were supportive. But it seems like the damage was done, to both the subject and the relationship.
āThen what did you do? / Did you leave her house in the middle of the night?ā In the aftermath of the kiss in the crowded room (either metaphorical or literal) the subject leaves the narrator, in the dark, the place where they once shared, alone. But then we learn more about the split in the next lineā¦
āDid you wish you'd put up more of a fight? / When she said it was too much?ā So this implies the narrator said āit was too muchā and the subject didnāt fight her on it and then left. I personally interpret this to mean the narrator in the fallout of the kiss in a crowded room felt like the negative attention and mocking was too much to move past even if this people then came around. But really she wanted the subject to push back against that, and say it was worth the fight.
āDo you wish you could still touch ...her? / It's just a questionā For me regardless of the rest of the reading Iāve always heard these lines as flirting, then trying to cover it up with the deflection of āitās just a question.ā
But I also interpret the pause between ātouchā and āherā as both signalling queerness and like the narrator is almost about to say āmeā rather than āherā, but then stops herself, like she needs to keep the distance from the narrative by using she and her rather me I or me. Like sheās still not sure sheās ready to claim this story as something that happened to her.
Ok so this is already so long Iām just skip the next verse and go into the bridge, but let it be known I also have thoughts about the second verse!!!!
āDoes it feel like everything's just like second-best after that / Meteor strike?ā For me this is the narrator asking the subject if this relationship meant as much to them as it did to her. But she is also upping the stakes of the previous metaphor in the first verse.
In the verse all her nights were painted a colour she has searched for since, but here she is comparing the relationship to a meteor strike, something destructive and dangerous that literally changes the landscape around it. For me reading this as a queer song this feels like a metaphor for coming out.
āAnd what's that, that I heard, that you're still with her / That's nice, I'm sure that's what's suitable / And rightā
Whatās āsuitableā and ārightā feels very much like a way to say straight to me in like a kind of bitchy way (which I love)
āBut tonight... Can I ask you a question?ā
And then it comes right back to the question, the questioning!!!! Even after re-hashing the whole story the narrator still keeps coming back the moment everything fell apart.
Ok yeah so this got soooooooo long but I hope I answered your questionā¦?
