Tay Sway is BAE

“I’ve been thinking about addiction and I’ve been thinking about people who, if they’re suffering from mental illness or they’re suffering through addiction or they have an everyday struggle, no one pars them on the back every day but every day they are actively fighting something. But there are so many days that nobody gives them credit for that and so, how often must somebody who’s in that sort of internal struggle must want to say to everyone in the room, ‘You have no idea how close I am to going back to a dark place.’ (...) I had this idea that the first verse would be about someone who is in a sort of life crisis and has just been trying and failing and trying and failing in their relationship, has been messing things up with the people they love, has been letting everyone down, and has driven to this overlook — this cliff, and it’s just in the car going, ‘I could do whatever I want in this moment and it could affect everything forever.’ But this person backs up and drives home. (...) And then the second verse is about someone who felt they had a lot of potential in their life. I think there are a lot of mechanisms for us in our school days, in high school or college to excel and to be patted on the back for something. And then a lot of people get out of school and there are less abilities for them to get gold stars, and then you have to make all these decisions, you have to pave your own way and there’s no set class yourself you can take. I think a lot of people feel really swept up in that, so I was thinking about this person who feels really lost in life and then starts drinking and every second is trying not to.”

"'Death by a Thousand Cuts' was inspired by the movie Someone Great. I cried watching the movie and so for about week, I started waking up from dreams that I’m living out that scenario. I woke up and was like oh my god I’m writing a breakup song."

taylor: religion’s in your lips… the altar is my hips

“You are what you love” what a way to end this album I’m

“This album is a love letter to love itself - all the captivating, spell binding, maddening, devastating red, blue, gray, golden aspects of it (that’s why there are so many songs). In honor of fever dreams, bad bad boys, confessions of love on a drunken night out, Christmas lights still hanging in January, guitar strings scars on my hands, false gods and blind faith, memories of jumping into an icy outdoor pool, creaks in floorboard and ultraviolet morning light, finally finding a friend, and opening the curtains to see the clearest, brightest daylight after the darkest night… We are what we love. This is Lover.”

“One of Swift’s primary gifts as a songwriter is her ability to conjure lyrics that are at once both intensely specific and also universally relatable. Her songs invite the listener to share in her glittering public life, as she dusts her lyrics with clues that die-hard fans can link back up to moments they’ve already seen through the lens of her much scrutinized-celebrity. In that way, her music is like Swift herself offering up a private director’s commentary on her public persona, lifting a curtain to reveal the three-dimensional interiority behind two-dimensional paparazzi photos.”