i have degrees in both textual and musical analysis and i kind of miss writing essays so i'm dissecting the tortured poets department. and i'm stuck on so long london because beside the lyrics having so much contained in them, it's also so deep sonically.
like the so (so) long (long) lon(lon)don(don) intro sounds like bell chimes, and that has three different meanings to me. it could be wedding bells, it could be a clock striking passing time, or it could be church bells for a funeral. and these three things perfectly encapsulate what went wrong in her relationship. waiting for forever but you end waiting so long it kills you and your relationship. and then the rest of the song sounds like trying to look through a fog or mist, like running out of breath on a hike, with the way she pauses after each syllable in the chorus. plus the constant beating sound in the verse that evokes a beating heart or footsteps or seconds ticking away on fast forward.
but then there's also an angelic feeling with the constant echoing choir (all taylor's voice) and to me that's meant to represent heaven, which means death, but also peace, like this song was her way of letting go of that relationship and moving on. so they died but she's at peace with it. it was a good relationship and it's going to heaven now.
and it reminds me of delicate, with the dreamy echoey intro and then the beat dropping in, and the way she was just going through the motions in the music video. like maybe the relationship that saved her from the stress of performing for the public started to feel like a robotic performance too. going through the motions of intimacy but it was just a desperate act to keep something that was already dead. and thus the first and last acts of their relationship ended up sounding the same in reverse.
and to talk a little bit about the lyrics they're full of references to sisyphus and to weathering a storm, to navigating through troubled water with a crew but you're the only one trying to save the ship. then there's the parallel to champagne problems with "you'll find someone, i'm not the one, i'll find someone". how sometimes there's no dramatic exit, you just fizzled out.
"i stopped cpr, after all it's no use, the spirit was gone we would never come to" is basically the thesis of stop you're losing me, and she delves into an analysis of how that came to be in how did it end. "our maladies were such we could not cure them." how did it end? she can't pretend like she understands. she did everything she could to keep the ship afloat and was blind to unforeseen circumstances.
the stitches undone also call back to glitch's "five seconds later i'm fastening myself to you with a stitch" and the embroidery of "we were just kids, babe" in loml.
it's like this song is an amalgamation of every other song that she wrote about the topic.
the colour blue that was associated with this person so positively in past songs is now their downfall ("you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days")
and of course the call back to cornelia street with the parallel between "i hope i never lose you, hope it never ends, i'd never walk cornelia street again" and "i'm just mad as hell cause i loved this place for so long, london".
everything that began ended in the same way, as also encapsulated by the song loml. love of my life, loss of my life. all the disappointment that comes with that. a full birth to death cycle summarised in a few verses.
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“Taylor Swift doesn’t have any queer themes in her lyrics”
Taylor Swift:
“Oh muse, let’s run away together to a place where I can keep you safe and we can be free to be together away from everybody who would want to keep us apart. A place different and far away from here where everyone hunts us and tears us away from each other because they don’t understand our love. Come with me, muse, to a faraway fantasy land where there is no media, no paparazzi, and the only people who live there are gentle and clever, and they DO understand because they’re like us.”
#ttpd analysis day fourteen - The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
i'm gonna be honest with you this was the hardest song to dissect because every time i listen to it the bridge makes me lose my mind. it has the same addictive pull as the bridge of Would've, Could've, Should've, Cruel Summer, Getaway Car. it's SO good, imo one of her best bridges ever written.
i first want to comment on in your Jehovah's Witness suit which is again another lol-lyric moment, but in a big brain connection i saw that @thisisctrying pointed out that he was essentially selling her a religion. i love this bc it continues the religious imagery of Guilty As Sin?
you hung me on your wall, stabbed me with your push pins makes me think of a couple of different things - image wise, it makes me think of pinning a map up on a wall, marking places that you’ve been (also a hint of carve your name into my bedpost ≠ i'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song (from FOB)). it also makes me think of pierced through the heart but never killed. the other connection that comes up is to “put a pin in it” means to save something for later, typically to postpone something useful but not for immediate use. this meaning feels more likely given the subsequent were you a sleeper cell spy? in fifty years, will all this be declassified?
the bridge just goes so hard, I’m obsessed. there are a few callbacks to previous work but to me this bridge is on mtr echelon:
the betrayal in did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? is so good. esp given how she historically describes her bed/room as a safe space - turned my bed into a sacred oasis/drew a map on your bedroom ceiling/the warmest bed I’ve ever known
the gun weapon of choice is also interesting to me considering she’s also discussed daggers and poison, and a gun specifically has to be loaded. it makes me think of memories feel like weapons/we gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring
the line were you writing a book? IMMEDIATELTY made me think of so I'll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends who'll write books about me, if I ever make it which is especially painful i think for the narrator. they’ve historically said “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized,” she continued. “Not to sound too dark, but I just struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” and this lyric does exactly that - it reduces the person to a product, a story to be sold for a profit.
to end, the lyric and in plain sight you hid but you are what you did and I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive gives me such chills. i saw someone share that they had a history of abuse and that lyric made them feel so validated. there’s just something so haunting and angry but beautiful about it.
I don't understand, what's going on with Taylor and Matt trash being a couple? Could you explain to me?
nothing is really going on at the moment tbh, cuz they broke up a pretty long while ago, but the issue is the album (if that's what you're referring to) and taylor swift herself.
[will add sources and more stuff when I find the links and if I realise I missed something out, cuz this is a general thing based off of memory]
Context: dating history
Basically she and matty had been friends for a few years (there are rumors of them hooking up ig in 1989 era maybe, but I don't really care enough to believe shit like that). Apparently he had also been pining for her (according to stuff he said in interviews and tweets) for years, but again, you can still chalk it up to rumors if you wanna.
The thing is that post her breakup with joe alwyn, she started dating him (in like april I think) [there had been dating rumors of them since 2014 tho, and again in March 2023] and the fandom kinda got divided.
Here is the link to their entire timeline
Context: what matty healy did
Matty healy (you prolly know this) is basically racist, sexist, antisemitic, homophobic and God knows what else I have missed out or not been aware of. He did shit like doing the nazi gesture on stage, mocking asian accents, tastelessly making fun of ice spice on her race and bodyshaming her, laughing and basically confirming that he watches violent rape porn of black women on a site that is known to be highly problematic and force their actors (gender neutral) to do things they dont consent to (there was also an actress who was assaulted or something but im not informed on it). Even when he was called out on stuff like this, he accused people (who were poc, btw) of overreacting.
Context: taylor and activism
Taylor had also, in the past (lover era, and miss Americana the doc) had talked about how she had been too quiet about political issues and politics itself for too long, that she understands her influence and power in society, and that she "needs to be on the right side of history" and even specifics such as that she thinks it's spineless to go on stage and say "happy pride month" and not acknowledge the political oppression that queers in USA were facing (something about a bill or the republican party idk man I'm not american, i dont remember but i did research when i watched the doc tho). She has claimed she was gonna be clear about where she stands (many republicans had considered her to be one, and many thought she's conservative or something, but she was always quiet about it, until the lover era). However, she just stopped that activism after the lover era, and went back to being quiet on where she stands (I've seen many swifties refer to the lover era as the activism era) and hasn't spoken about anything substantial really. She did some things like post a black square with 13 hearts during blm, and stuff that every celeb who wasn't openly a pos did, but that's kinda it. Even as a self proclaimed feminist, she didn't speak up on issues such as roe v wade, or about an issue regarding drag queens despite having them in yntcd, or talking about trans/queer rights until she was in a blue state (im not an American, I just like to keep up a little with stuff in usa cuz it's always up in my face sadly, and thus i cant be specific, but anyways, correct me if I'm wrong, or if I missed something).
So even after saying she'll be vocal, she was just... not. And that's basically her on politics or giving a shit about minority communities.
Context: Fandom's reaction
Swifties were extremely disappointed that taylor CHOSE to associate with a man like this, and there were fans calling her out, and she received backlash, too.
Most of these swifties were poc (myself included) and they felt hurt that an artist that they not just supported and developed such a deep connection with, but also financially supported for years, would have such disregard for them. Not just was she dating him, but she kept saying things such as "I have never been happier in all aspects of my life" or saying "I love you" or "uk who you are" in romantic songs on the tour, which was just adding insult to injury. She also did a collab with ice spice (which was completely out of nowhere, and the collab itself seemed badly made and rushed), which fans and others speculated to be a pr cover up for the fact that matty healy had mocked her (many ppl also believed that it was too quick for it to be a pr cover tho).
Now, in the fandom, when poc swifties were calling her out on dating mh, (mostly) white swifties started harassing poc swifties for doing so, or saying that they are hindering with her happiness or some bs about it being "just a fling" (again, myself included). They said it's the same as seeing a friend get out of a long-term relationship and make bad dating choices, and poc swifties should let it go (as if taylor is our close personal friend). In a mostly white fandom, poc swifties felt alienated and sidelined.
Ofc, taylor never addressed any of this backlash, and after she broke up with him, there were articles saying that sources say (which mostly means her pr team atp) that her breakup had nothing to do with his controversies or behavior.
The album release (lyrics, references and reaction)
Now, with the release of ttpd, contrary to what most of the fandom believed, most of the songs on both the albums are believed to be (and heavily hinted on) about matty healy. These include 4 songs- "ttpd", "but daddy I love him", "I can fix him (no really I can)", and "guilty as sin?"
Ttpd, the title track, talks about mh being "a tattooed golden retriever" (wtf) and about him love-bombing her, and her pining after him, thinking about marriage and shit. But daddy I love him and I can fix him, are basically that no one supported her dating decision and she's claiming that she loves him oh so goddamn much, but more importantly, her talking about her fans' reactions. Specifically, describing her poc fans to be "vipers" and "judgemental creeps" who hate her and them being hurt as "bitching and moaning", and basically took the side of the (white) fans who defended her, indirectly. She described his racist bs as "crazy" and said shit like she could "handle a dangerous man." She also has another song, "Guilty as sin?" and while I genuinely don't give a fuck about what she chooses to do in her private life, unless it is problematic, it is about her fantasizing about being with that racist man while being in a long term relationship with joe alwyn. She sings about how she wants him and wants to be with him... in multiple ways, iykyk. Again, out of context, I love this song so much, but that doesn't erase the context, right?
She also has a song "I hate it here" where she says the following lines:
"My friends used to play a game where
We would pick a decade
We wished we could live in instead of this
I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid"
And while there are many reasons why this line by itself is racist (romantisization of a time that was extremely shitty to many communities, most of which she is not a part of, showing herself to be "oh look I'm so woke I still remember the bad things even when I romanticize bad eras in history" which is something you expect from an ignorant white high schooler maybe, not a 34 y/o billionaire who claims to be well-read, etc.) but taylor swift herself saying these is adding insult to injury cuz she has shown time and time again she has no problem with racism (she kept quiet when antonia gentry, a black actress, received hate and racist threats by swifties because of a line BY NETFLIX that taylor didn't like, and she shouldn't ofc, but it wasn't the actress' fault), or associating herself with them (matty healy, for example). It is hypocritical to write something like that after writing an album about pining after a man and his "dangerousness," which is just bigotry. Way to romanticise racism, sexism, and antisemitism, taylor.
Even now, after listening to the album, she clearly doesn't like mh anymore, NOT because of his actions, but because he broke her heart, showing that she still enables and is okay with everything he did.
And that's kind of it (ig) about her and matty healy. I'm not really sure exactly which part you wanted to know, so this is just a gist of it all. Hope it helps :)
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"your impressionist paintings of heaven turned out be fakes" is such an interesting line because like. the whole THING about heaven is that it is some unknowable thing that you only see after you die. it's something you have to have faith in. but this guy claimed to have paintings of it! and impressionism as a movement contains artists like van gogh & monet & picasso, artists whose work is often considered to be priceless.
this creates the concept of a priceless painting, and it turned out to be fake. and anyone could've known it was fake with any passing art knowledge of what these artists painted. this is followed by the line "and all at once, the ink bleeds" which uses an entirely different art metaphor. paint doesn't bleed through the canvas. ink bleeds through paper, but there's art that uses paper and ink to craft it.
it's a series of "i was conned, i was tricked, i thought we had something" through various art metaphors. hell even in the opening "we embroidered the memories of the time i was away" uses an art metaphor, suggesting embellishment and deceit that the narrator is complicit in. it looks pretty, it sounds pretty. but it wasn't real.
All of this talk about @taylorswift's new album is really just proving to me that people have no idea what poetry is??? Like every time I see a post online someone's put in the comments "wow how poetic touch me while your boys play grand theft auto" or "that metaphor is so obvious how can you say her lyrics are poetry" or whatever and like I get it. The Poetry you had to read in high school felt Incomprehensible and you were Bad At Analyzing It. I felt that way too, and I got a degree in literature.
But "Incomprehensible" is not in the definition of poetry. It doesn't need to be endlessly complex with allusions and metaphors you'll never be able to unravel. The Google definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is:
All poetry has to do is be words that express meaning and have rhythm. (That's basically all songs.) There's nothing in the definition about how you should be unable to parse all the meanings behind it. If you hear a collection of words that make you feel something, that's poetry. It just is.
Or, to quote Wordsworth, poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which he believed should be written in plain language, and since there's a heavy Gothic/Romantic strain in Tortured Poets Department, I think it's reasonable we should default to a definition from that school of thought.
Poetry does not have to be incomprehensible to be meaningful. You can feel something because of the specific words in their specific arrangements, or the literary devices utilized, or even just the rhythm in which they are spoken. It doesn't have to have you getting out a dictionary or diagramming the sentences or spending hours trying to guess what the author really means. It can just make you feel.
I don't know if Taylor Swift is the greatest poet of our generation or whatever. But to say her songs aren't poetry because you think you understand them is belittling and reducing poetry to something it never has been.
I hereby conduct this tortured poets society album meeting in all of its mania and sorrowful blues as I move from unhinged impressions to unhinged first-listen analysis because I am incapable of saying less.
(and to all the Aimees i’m so sorry but that’s on Kim)
This Anthology is taking me so long to process, but nothing feels like the first jarring moments of I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - the cacophony and flashes of a birthday breakdown bopping to 80s arcade game synth. It's crumbled cake and mascara streaks when Bejewelled is actually a delusional Mirrorball,
and The Secret Garden reference in I Hate It Here, oh god, she’s so me:
I hate it here so I will go to / secret gardens in my mind / people need a key to get to / the only one is mine / i read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
I need to come back to that. But the whirlwind of Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? Plans cancelled. IM THE ONE barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, actually. It's me chained-up in that poor things victorian mourning dress shrieking elegies in my tortured nightingale screams.
She's Grammys Taylor looking at the crowd of her peers rolling their eyes, she's the litany of snide jokes diminishing her success, and the children, sisters, friends, and girlfriends of those who wronged her loudly singing her songs.
so i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street / crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / who’s afraid of little old me
i was tame i was gentle til the circus made me mean / don’t you worry folks we took out all her teeth
ohhh, the throwback to Speak Now and the significance of MEAN. The song and its titular word show how childish language encapsulates that pointless spite and the bone deep hurt mean behaviour breeds - but now she’s a phoenix risen, and they hurl her youth and her downfall back in her face - word for word, surprised face - its the dark side the The Lucky One, of not escaping the cage of fame games.
you lured me and you hurt me and you taught me / you caged me and then you called me crazy
i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / so all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs / i’m always drunk on my own tears isn’t that what they all said?
PUT NARCOTICS IN MY SONG took me out. This album is funny in the most sardonic and absurdly humorous ways,
like the classic cowboy western guitar strings in her crime songs (I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can - pistols drawn), but especially the ones leading into Fresh Out The Slammer. Fucking genius, and to follow on with static sounds at 2:26ish to the house where you still wait up, is exactly the kinda detail I adore.
Naively, I thought Florence was done with me after Florida!!! It's a lyrical meme for single 20 & 30 somethings who moved away from home,
my friends all smell of like weed or little babies / and the city reeks of driving myself crazy / little did you know your home’s really only / a town you’re just a guest in
and the haunting morphs from the ghost of your girlhood into the catalogue of decisions and delusions which get you through adulthood. Yet it feels almost like an interlude within the song when
me and my ghosts we’ve had a hell of a time / yes i’m haunted but i’m feeling fine / all my girls got their lace and their crimes / and your cheating husband disappeared/ well no one asks questions here
appears like an alternative pov for No Body, No Crime with the girls and their ghosts and their pacts made over wine. Every Action has an Equal Reaction. Run away to Florida, or Texas, and lose yourself to lose the heartbreak. Its self-destruction, it's trauma-healing, bonding, and its breaking.
(what a song for an angsty girl collab, problematic girl in hand with problematic girl, lyrically and thematically, maybe the real love story is the friends we make along the way.)
And that wasn't even the last of it. It's Florence 2.0 with B side Cassandra, but instead of Dance Fever, its Taylor’s glorious mythology with all the allusions, parallels, intertextual and lyrical ruining of my mind:
when the first stone’s thrown they’re screaming / when its burn the bitch they’re shrieking / when the truth comes out its quiet
so they killed cassandra first cus she feared the worst / and tried to tell the town / so they filled my cell with snakes i regret to say / do you believe me now?
No apologies anymore. A girl given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, the GOD OF POETRY, is cursed with her prophecy never being believed: Burning all the witches even if you aren't one, indeed. She saw the truth of the Trojan horse, and the Trojans insulted her. Rep snake branding and the current cultural view of KK and Ye. I don't need to say anything else.
i was in the tower weaving nightmares / twisting all my smiles into snarls
the family the pure greed the christian chrous line / bloods thick but nothing like a payroll / bet they never spared a prayer for my soul
I literally played that THREE times before I got over it enough to finish my first listen,
and i’m still thinking about Clara Bow and that Stevie Nicks tambourine we collectively freaked over from the Spotify installation, and all the silent movie speculation from the track title release.
you look like Clara Bow in this light - you look like Stevie Nicks in '75 - you look like Taylor Swift
Three women whose public profession became entangled with their pain. Silver Springs. Boyfriend songs. The jokes. Clara Bow.
Clara feared being left behind by 'talkies.' Miss Americana. The fear of 30 bringing death to a woman's Hollywood/Musical career,
beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more / only when your girlish glow flickers just so / do they let you know?
Three women who beat the odds - three women whose talent, craft, and popularity carried them through.
But there's something more to unpack here with cycles and patterns - of the past endlessly repeating. It's the transient nature of fame and our fleeting view of beauty mapped out in the untouchable, ever-changing, and culturally worshiped moon.
It's a body of physical craters, a natural body we call discovered, and fight to claim. We project emotions and create rituals of worship - you're the new god we're worshipping. Endless stories are told about her, but we can never fully see the moon with human eyes. Eclipses, shadows, - 'half moonshinе, a full eclipse' - half-truths and half-moons:
this town is fake but you're the real thing / breath of fresh air through smoke rings / take the glory, give everything / promise to be dazzling
There's a play on light and a play on words in the repetition of Dazzling, shining so bright so blindingly bright. Who is dazzled? Who is doing the dazzling? There's an instability between Director - Public - Star. It's Hollywood lights, No one in my small town thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan / No one in my small town thought I'd meet these suits in LA.
She beat the 'War Big Machine' - but for me, there's ambivalence and illusion on all sides of the final lyrics, you've got edge, she never did / the future's bright, dazzling.
(and ‘Edge’ is particularly ironic when you consider the songs on this album…)
Moving again into the B Side, it's Taylor's departure from Invisible string, red strings of fate, and golden threads à la the golden chain of fate in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities that strikes me.
First, I thought her writing was a complete departure from the themes of destiny and fate, but then, The Prophecy:
cards on thе table / Mine play out like fools in a fablе
it isn't an absent symbol; it transformed. It's the evermore forest amped to the max. Witches, folklore, fairy-tale and fable - a homeric epic. Its the hero's journey distilled as she opens the song with a move from 'full throttle' adventure, to slowing down 'Hand on the Throttle' to appeal for Supernatural aid at the hero's transformative fall.
and it was written / I got cursed like eve got bitten / a greater woman wouldn't beg / but I looked at the sky and said / please I've been on my knees / change the prophecy
Lover asking Traffic Lights becomes spending my last coin so someone will tell me, and this might be the most slept-on heartbreaking line. Her search for reassurance can't be framed as an arbitrary musing anymore. It can't be dismissed as a mere thought on her drive home, or something triggered throughout the day - its intent. It's a quest for answers, a plea, a last-ditch hope difficult to deny.
and I sound like an infant / feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen/ a greater woman stays cool/ but I howl like a wolf at the moon / and I look unstable /
gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table / a greater woman has faith But even statues crumble if they're made to wait / i'm so afraid I sealed my fate / no sign of soulmates
She's asking for a gift from the Gods, and when the God's won't answer, she plunges straight down from heaven or Olympus into the self seizure of power in witchcraft. And when it fails, she descends further - Spending my last coin so someone will tell me it'll be okay - paying mortal fortune tellers, even if they lie.
The song leans on figures without redemption, on the Eve's, on the women cursed and punished, and those who scream like infants rather than enduring burdens and pain in silence. She's poisoned, infected like Aurora from the wound of the pricked hand with dreams of him. Is this a punishment?
She's infected, cursed like Eve got bitten, [lyric of all time!!!!] but does a monster always do monstrous things? Who is the monster? Who is the folkloric, the literary Mad Woman? Perhaps she's written from the desperate, the scarred, and the wronged.
and the transition into another tale with Peter? As in Peter losing Wendy? Is it an epilogue to the Betty trilogy? or a different use of the metaphor?
and I didn't wanna hang around / we said it was just goodbye for now /said you were gonna grow up / then you were gonna come find me / words from the mouths of babes / promises oceans deep / but never to keep
The triangle is echoed in love's never lost when perspective is earned, reflecting the different povs of Betty, August, and James, and placing Peter as the new conclusion - the shelf life of those fantasies has expired / lost to the lost boys chapter of your life/ the woman who sits by the window/ has turned out the (porch?) light.
Promises wear out. Wendy's window closes, and so does this chapter in her life.
my lost fearless leader / in closets like cedar / preserved from when we were just kids / is it something I did? / the goddess of timing / once found us beguiling
is also - intentionally or not - Narnia coded. Is the storybook collecting dust in her closet? Or is the closet still holding a portal to another fairytale land accessible only in youth, another home you can't return to (and another folklore parallel with mtr, anywhere I want just not home).
Side B is so harmonious with ttpd being the end of a chapter as the anthology moves through all the seven stages (or Taylor playlists) of grief.
The Manuscript, the signing of the autopsy, is the Death of the Author. It's the Roland Barthes realisation of All Too Well reborn in joy and fan culture, the story isn't mine anymore, of the Eras - 'I hope you hear these songs and think of this night' - Tour. She knew what the agony had been for - art. connection. - and its these things that create the hope lost in ttpd's journey through mania, disorientation, loss and despair. It all leads to healing, nothing left but a manuscript.
So many thoughts from listen no.1 and they’ll probably change, but i’m so exhausted from this 31 song rollercoaster that I'm just gonna let this sit. death of the author, I guess.