The more I look at this photo, the more I notice that the ladder is a backward 7…it’s like this era is an ascension through the closet to whatever is coming next, a beautiful place where Taylor can show us her true home movies instead of these meticulously constructed ones. What a lovely metaphor.
-ORANGE: The GAME ROOM where they play UPSIDE DOWN CHESS I mean truly her mind.
-PINK: The bedroom, ya know, a place for ladies.
-DEEP BLUE: The dining room, a public place for guests to see – also a place where Taylor plays a sad tiny piano and a sad violin.
-CLEAR/PALE BLUE: The bathroom, a place where no one should be able to see you (unless that’s what you’re into, go off), is a fishbowl here, a symbol that the public feels it has a right to examine Taylor’s most intimate secrets from every angle – and her lover climbs in beside her, because she’s worth it. (Who could stay? My heart!)
-SCARLET:The living room where the New Year’s party is held, the color of inflamed passions and raging jealousy (interesting that this room wasn’t green with envy!). Interesting that this is the only room where Taylor and her lover’s outfits don’t match the decor.
-GREEN:The music room, not one of the more symbolically rich rooms in the house. Could be connecting music to nature (the human need to create) as well as to money (never forgetting that music is Taylor’s business and her career as well as her art).
-RED:The front hall, the beating heart of the home, through which Taylor and her lover can get everywhere they want to go.
-YELLOW: The closet, where Taylor takes her heart (deep blue) and dresses it golden, and climbs a ladder into…
-THE ATTIC: The only room in the house that isn’t painted, where Taylor can access her memories and see her true self, where she can be all different sides of her personality at once. The only way to reach this special place is to climb through the closet.
-OUTSIDE:The rest of the world is black and white. But inside, Taylor and her lover are in screaming color.
She climbs through the closet to get to the attic, where her most private memories are stored. In every other room in the house, her outfits are monochromatic - one note, one side, one aspect of who she is - but here in the most private place in the house, she’s allowed to be her true self.
The closet is also where her yellow outfits are stored – where she takes her heart (deep blue) and paints it golden.
This lyric sticks out to me in the world of the song: It doesn’t make sense on a literal level (you don’t need to call anyone to let your friends stay over, they’re already there), and “make the call” as a decision sounds a bit too serious, like you’re in the White House situation room instead of a living room.
But what if “our place” is the phrase with two meanings here? As in, “It’s our place to make this decision, not anyone else’s.” To me, this lyric reinforces the idea that this private couple gets to make their own choices about their lives, and it’s not our place to question them. We can’t possibly know what motivates their decisions or what their lives are really like; we just have to trust that they’re doing what’s best for them.
Anyone know who the Kar look-alike on the bike at 1:05 is? Love that she’s wearing the butch inverse of Tay’s 1989 Grammys look! (But like IS that Karlie or????)
It’s been a MINUTE since Taylor has given us lyrics rife with layers of meaning to interpret, and I’m so excited to get IN! TO! IT! with the lyrics of “You Need to Calm Down.” I’m sure the MV will give us more visual clues to play with, but before we get there, I want to point out a few lines that are worth a second (or third) listen:
Verse 1:
You’re takin’ shots at me like it’s Patrón
This might be my favorite lyric in the song. This verse can feel naval-gazing and petty, like Taylor is venting her frustrations about being an ultra-rich celebrity who draws ire online. But this lyric speaks to something more systemic: the addictive, anesthetizing rush of Getting Angry Online, as toxic, violent, and numbing as substance abuse. This is a big idea to cram into an 8-word turn of phrase; for me, it’s elegant, perfect, vintage, Swift.
Snakes and stones never broke my bones
There’s the easy wordplay here (snakes, KKW, got it), but I’m more interested in the “stones” part of the lyric. This takes me back to “New Romantics”: I could build a castle out of all the bricks you threw at me. And then we found out what happened to those bricks in “Call It What You Want”: My castle crumbled overnight. I think this lyric references not only the pain Taylor has endured due to online vitriol, but the deeper, more personal losses she’s suffered as a result of her intensely public life – namely, the closet. We’ll get more on that in…
Verse 2:
This verse takes obvious aim at homophobic bullies, but I think it also alludes to the pain of life in the closet, using an ongoing metaphor of light and darkness.
Sunshine on the street at the parade But you would rather be in the dark age Makin’ that sign must’ve taken all night
Sure, the dark age can refer to the middle ages, but it can also mean a literal dark age: a period in a person’s life when she’s forced to live in darkness, when she can’t, to quote a certain music book written by one Ms. April Heart, “Step into the daylight and let it go.” She punctuates this idea with the perfect exclamation point:
Shade never made anybody less gay
This line has THREE meanings (my favorite!!) the first being the most obvious – that throwing shade on someone won’t change who they are. The second is an in-joke for LGBTQ+ people – bench, we invented shade, and throwing shade is part of what MAKES us gay. But the third meaning here is shade as darkness, continuing the imagistic theme of “dark age” and “night” from earlier in the verse. Being in the closet and hiding who you are doesn’t make you less gay, and no one knows this better than Taylor.
Bridge/final chorus:
We all know now We all got crowns
Several folks have noted two pointed Karlie references in the lyrics (Knockout and Sunshine); I think this is a third. The king/crown codeword for Karlie was riddled throughout Reputation, including in the CIWYW lyric I referenced earlier: My castle crumbled overnight / I brought a knife to a gunfight / They took the crown but it’s all right. She references the pain of that moment in verse 1, but here in the bridge, it sounds a lot like a happier turn to me? Which brings us to:
Can you just not step on our gowns?
“Gown” is an interesting, specific word. You wear a gown to graduation (a moment of transition/emergence, like a snake becoming a butterfly), to a red carpet event (à la Billy Porter or JVN, e.g. “can you just not step on his gown”), and to a wedding. And what kind of wedding would have more than one gown? Welp, one with more than one bride.
This may be a reach, but I think this song resonates so strongly because it has a consistent undertone that layers with Taylor’s personal narrative: the pain of snakes and stones, of living in the darkness and seeking the light, of feeling like you’ve lost the person most precious to you, and of finding hope in the end.
While I have you here, I also want to mention how much I love this song for 2019, a time when we’re seeing our government attack LGBTQ+ people in dangerous, unprecedented ways. Whether or not you buy ANY of this subtext, I think it matters that one of the biggest pop stars in the world is calling out homophobic, misogynistic anger, speaking directly to those who traffic in it, and saying she won’t stand for it. So proud of our queen, and (particularly after feeling quite let down musically and lyrically by “ME!”) so happy to stan.
P.S. Bonus lyric: You are somebody that we don’t know.
Living for Taylor referencing one of the gayest tropes of all:
The inspiration behind ‘Don’t blame me’, aka she is obsessed.
Yes, Taylor clearly sampled. This is not the point though. The point is what inspired her. Not only the lyrics but her muse as an angel that falls from grace. The fact that the commercial came out right after they met makes it all the more interesting. Now I want a mashup of both songs.
This is pretty crazy!!
So taylor had the nerve to say:
“Echoes, love your name inside my mind/ Halo, hiding my obsession”
Aka she was obsessed with Karlie when they first met but because she had such a good girl image no one suspected that she was that crazy lol
Unfreakingreal how blatant she was with so many songs, but especially this one.
Yelling “TRIP OF MY LIFE!” in the song is another great touch.
ngl this makes me think of the a few months after red came out and we all changed our FB profile pics to the HRC logo to support gay marriage……also it looks like a wedding cake
