E
Emily Bootle
Guest
Taylor Swift has always been a poet. Though she’s not known for her lyrical subtlety – “Karma is a cat/Purring on my lap ‘cause it loves me” doesn’t exactly scream WH Auden – she has essentially built a career on old-fashioned romanticism. Her life, and particularly her relationships, provide the fodder for her prolific output: she weaves them into fairytales, crafts them into theatre, inserts roses and rain and blood and ballgowns and “sneakers” and “take-out coffee” until we are fully immersed in her exquisitely painful and narratively perfect American dream. You may find her music dull, her content self-indulgent, or her imagery crude, but I don’t think you can deny that anything but poetry could have such a profound effect.
And now, with her new album The Tortured Poets Department – which turned out to be a surprise double-drop of 31 songs – she taps into this in her usual self-aware manner. “You’re not Dylan Thomas/And I’m not Patti Smith”, she sings on the album’s title track – a classic “This isn’t the movies” line shoved in at a crucial turning point of a movie. Because elsewhere there are typewriters and plenty of anguished longing: this is the album fans have been waiting for that picks over the end of her long-term relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn.
So, to give this tortured poet the tortured poet treatment, here’s a SparkNotes-style breakdown of 11 of the best and not-so-best metaphors (and similes, strictly speaking) from The Tortured Poets Department. Expect sparkle. Expect sincerity. Expect bona fide Taylor Swift.
Yes, it’s strictly a simile, but this is bound to go down in the Swiftian history books, along with her other adorably clunky lyrics such as “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby” (“Anti-Hero”, 2022) and “I felt like I was an old cardigan” (the aptly named “Cardigan”, 2020). The allegory is thin here – it would appear she’s referring to short-lived, ill-advised boyfriend Matty Healy, who has tattoos and puppy eyes. We can also readily believe he is something of a simple soul who really just needs someone – preferably a very clean, soft, nice-smelling woman in the vein of Swift – to scratch his head. The line comes just after they have that most romantic of conversations: whether “Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist”. It’s not her most stirring work, but it gets the job done.
Never try to tell me Taylor Swift isn’t distinctive. Visual invocations? Handcuffs? Spells? Rhythmic (speeding up at the end of the line) and melodic (hanging on one note until the final syllable) tics? This is Swift through and through. However, as far as poetry goes, it does remind you of her own admission that she’s “not Patti Smith”. Fights, sure; tunnels? Grey and blue? It’s a little vague, possibly alluding to ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s low mood, which is mentioned several times – but the real problem is the mixed metaphor. I’m not sure you can be handcuffed to a spell. There’s a lot going on, a fair amount of rhyme-related gymnastics – but it’s not ineffective, given it comes up in a song called “Fresh Out the Slammer”, the slammer being her relationship. As per, we get the message.
It’s unclear whether this was written before or after the Barbie movie came out, but unfortunately it’s now impossible for it not to take on connotations of Ryan Gosling and “beach offs”. Still, like Barbie, there is plenty of toy-based metaphor to dig into: Swift seems to be talking about Alwyn in this song, a synthy Antonoff banger with a chugging rhythm and irreverent lyrics; it doesn’t matter that it turned out not to be “real” (an idea that crops up all over the album) because she had never felt more alive, or, maybe, herself.
Taylor Swift performs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November 2023 (Photo: TAS2023 via Getty Images)
Swift has compared herself to many objects over the years – the cardigan, a mirrorball, a “crumpled up piece of paper” – and an Aston Martin is among the more self-complimentary. You’d ruin me, which is a shame, because I’m great, she’s saying, in a song that leans into her trademark romantic extremes (here, she’s either going to “be your wife” or “smash up your bike”). It’s reminiscent of the chaos-fetishisation of 2014’s “Blank Space” (“So it’s gonna be forever/Or it’s gonna go down in flames”, she sang with a gleeful glint in her eye), but 10 years on it feels as though the “smashing up the bike” option is less exciting, more resigned and ironic: our Taylor’s grown up.
Another simile – one that I admittedly struggled to get my head around at first, mainly because I wondered what the “small town” was supposed to represent. As the song goes on, it becomes clearer: this is a boyfriend (presumed to be Healy, who was decreed “unsuitable” by many due to his rockstar recklessness and political insensitivities) who embarrasses her in public but whom she believes she can mould to her will; the “small town” is perhaps just the surroundings with which he and his aggressive vaping (normal cigarette smoke does not “billow”) jars. “The dopamine races through his brain on a six-lane Texas highway”, she sings later – again, not entirely coherent, but we certainly get a good picture.
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The lyrics from this song, opener “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone, are already making waves on social media – namely the line “I love you, it’s ruining my life”, a perfectly self-deprecating and hyperbolic millennial sentiment that fans can readily direct at Swift herself. In an all-American scene of “backyards” and watering flowers, Swift and Malone lament a former lover turned friend, and the mundanity of heartbreak. The glumness of “Mondays” and “endless February” lends itself perfectly to a gorgeously emo, self-pitying ditty that I predict will become a Swiftie favourite.
Anyone claiming this isn’t an album about Alwyn should give this song another spin – not that it would be possible to miss it the first time round (“So long, London”, five years after going “back to Highgate/To meet all his best mates”? Come on). Its thrilling specificity is exactly what makes it so sad, because we can connect it so easily in our heads to real people – and Swift laments all the effort she put in to save the relationship before eventually letting go. CPR is an exhausting, desperate physical exertion, and the idea that “we would never come to” will be familiar to so many. She cuts to the heart of the feeling with this one.
We’re back into “cages” and “locks” on “Guilty as Sin”, where Swift hashes over her fantasies that help her escape the boredom and turmoil of what we assume is a long relationship. But she pushes beyond the prison motif with this line, revealing the precariousness of her imagined world and comparing her present situation to a “maze” – an altogether more complex form of entrapment. It’s also got a nice fairy tale feel, harking back to her early, princessy days.
Taylor Swift (Photo: Beth Garrabrant)
Smoke again – but here it’s not a vape cloud. Purported bonus track “Black Dog” (which is to say it was “bonus” until she released 15 more) is metaphorical in itself – it refers to a bar called the Black Dog, which she saw “you” (Alwyn) go into, but the image of a black dog is also one of haunting, trauma and death. The smoke, though, could represent not only something suffocating but London, AKA the Big Smoke – a city that Swift, if she’s anything like the rest of us after a break-up, can never visit again. This line also goes a long way in showcasing her mixed emotions – clean air, or perhaps her own city, is better, but she misses the smog and filth of London, or her London Boy.
Emily Bootle
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Now we’re really getting into it. “But Daddy I Love Him” is a screed against the moralising fans who chastised her for her relationship with Healy after he was deemed too “problematic” – and here she gives it back to them. There is so much here – Swift sings of how sensible arguments can’t change the chemistry, jokingly declares she’s “having his baby”, describes his “bedroom eyes” as a “remedy” to emphasise it was a big fat rebound. But beyond this the song manages to dig into the tiresome dynamics of internet-age fan culture – “If all you want is gray for me/Then it’s just white noise”, she sings, bemoaning the supposed safety of green flags. And then, “vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing” – vipers and empaths aren’t as natural a pairing as wolves and sheep, but she manages to pour scorn on a much-overused word that, she is quite right, people weaponise in order to judge her (and others). Go Taylor.
Last, but not least: a meta, self-aware finale (at least until she dropped that second half of the album). Beauties, beasts, crowns, roses, city lights – it’s a full-blown Swiftian fairy tale that culminates in full self-realisation. First she looks like Clara Bow, then Stevie Nicks, and then in the final verse – after she’s reached Manhattan and LA, become a “real queen” and “the god we’re worshipping” – she finds she looks a lot like herself. Reading between the lines, it’s a moving picture of staying grounded in the face of unimaginable exposure – and the perfect happy ending for our times.
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And now, with her new album The Tortured Poets Department – which turned out to be a surprise double-drop of 31 songs – she taps into this in her usual self-aware manner. “You’re not Dylan Thomas/And I’m not Patti Smith”, she sings on the album’s title track – a classic “This isn’t the movies” line shoved in at a crucial turning point of a movie. Because elsewhere there are typewriters and plenty of anguished longing: this is the album fans have been waiting for that picks over the end of her long-term relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn.
So, to give this tortured poet the tortured poet treatment, here’s a SparkNotes-style breakdown of 11 of the best and not-so-best metaphors (and similes, strictly speaking) from The Tortured Poets Department. Expect sparkle. Expect sincerity. Expect bona fide Taylor Swift.
11. “I scratch your head you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever”
From “The Tortured Poets Department”
Yes, it’s strictly a simile, but this is bound to go down in the Swiftian history books, along with her other adorably clunky lyrics such as “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby” (“Anti-Hero”, 2022) and “I felt like I was an old cardigan” (the aptly named “Cardigan”, 2020). The allegory is thin here – it would appear she’s referring to short-lived, ill-advised boyfriend Matty Healy, who has tattoos and puppy eyes. We can also readily believe he is something of a simple soul who really just needs someone – preferably a very clean, soft, nice-smelling woman in the vein of Swift – to scratch his head. The line comes just after they have that most romantic of conversations: whether “Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist”. It’s not her most stirring work, but it gets the job done.
10. “Grey and blue and fights and tunnels/Handcuffed to the spell I was under”
From “Fresh Out the Slammer”
Never try to tell me Taylor Swift isn’t distinctive. Visual invocations? Handcuffs? Spells? Rhythmic (speeding up at the end of the line) and melodic (hanging on one note until the final syllable) tics? This is Swift through and through. However, as far as poetry goes, it does remind you of her own admission that she’s “not Patti Smith”. Fights, sure; tunnels? Grey and blue? It’s a little vague, possibly alluding to ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s low mood, which is mentioned several times – but the real problem is the mixed metaphor. I’m not sure you can be handcuffed to a spell. There’s a lot going on, a fair amount of rhyme-related gymnastics – but it’s not ineffective, given it comes up in a song called “Fresh Out the Slammer”, the slammer being her relationship. As per, we get the message.
9. “I felt more when we played pretend/Than with all the Kens/’Cause he took me out of my box”
From “My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys”
It’s unclear whether this was written before or after the Barbie movie came out, but unfortunately it’s now impossible for it not to take on connotations of Ryan Gosling and “beach offs”. Still, like Barbie, there is plenty of toy-based metaphor to dig into: Swift seems to be talking about Alwyn in this song, a synthy Antonoff banger with a chugging rhythm and irreverent lyrics; it doesn’t matter that it turned out not to be “real” (an idea that crops up all over the album) because she had never felt more alive, or, maybe, herself.
Taylor Swift performs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November 2023 (Photo: TAS2023 via Getty Images)
8. “I’m an Aston Martin that you’d shoot straight into the ditch”
From “imgonnagetyouback”
Swift has compared herself to many objects over the years – the cardigan, a mirrorball, a “crumpled up piece of paper” – and an Aston Martin is among the more self-complimentary. You’d ruin me, which is a shame, because I’m great, she’s saying, in a song that leans into her trademark romantic extremes (here, she’s either going to “be your wife” or “smash up your bike”). It’s reminiscent of the chaos-fetishisation of 2014’s “Blank Space” (“So it’s gonna be forever/Or it’s gonna go down in flames”, she sang with a gleeful glint in her eye), but 10 years on it feels as though the “smashing up the bike” option is less exciting, more resigned and ironic: our Taylor’s grown up.
7. “The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train through a small town”
From “I Can Fix Him (No, Really, I Can)”
Another simile – one that I admittedly struggled to get my head around at first, mainly because I wondered what the “small town” was supposed to represent. As the song goes on, it becomes clearer: this is a boyfriend (presumed to be Healy, who was decreed “unsuitable” by many due to his rockstar recklessness and political insensitivities) who embarrasses her in public but whom she believes she can mould to her will; the “small town” is perhaps just the surroundings with which he and his aggressive vaping (normal cigarette smoke does not “billow”) jars. “The dopamine races through his brain on a six-lane Texas highway”, she sings later – again, not entirely coherent, but we certainly get a good picture.
6. “All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February”
From “Fortnight”
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The lyrics from this song, opener “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone, are already making waves on social media – namely the line “I love you, it’s ruining my life”, a perfectly self-deprecating and hyperbolic millennial sentiment that fans can readily direct at Swift herself. In an all-American scene of “backyards” and watering flowers, Swift and Malone lament a former lover turned friend, and the mundanity of heartbreak. The glumness of “Mondays” and “endless February” lends itself perfectly to a gorgeously emo, self-pitying ditty that I predict will become a Swiftie favourite.
5. “I stopped CPR, after all it’s no use/The spirit was gone, we would never come to”
From “So Long, London”
Anyone claiming this isn’t an album about Alwyn should give this song another spin – not that it would be possible to miss it the first time round (“So long, London”, five years after going “back to Highgate/To meet all his best mates”? Come on). Its thrilling specificity is exactly what makes it so sad, because we can connect it so easily in our heads to real people – and Swift laments all the effort she put in to save the relationship before eventually letting go. CPR is an exhausting, desperate physical exertion, and the idea that “we would never come to” will be familiar to so many. She cuts to the heart of the feeling with this one.
4. “One slip and falling back into the hedge maze/Oh what a way to die”
From “Guilty as Sin”
We’re back into “cages” and “locks” on “Guilty as Sin”, where Swift hashes over her fantasies that help her escape the boredom and turmoil of what we assume is a long relationship. But she pushes beyond the prison motif with this line, revealing the precariousness of her imagined world and comparing her present situation to a “maze” – an altogether more complex form of entrapment. It’s also got a nice fairy tale feel, harking back to her early, princessy days.
Taylor Swift (Photo: Beth Garrabrant)
3. “Six weeks of breathing clean air/I still miss the smoke”
From “Black Dog”
Smoke again – but here it’s not a vape cloud. Purported bonus track “Black Dog” (which is to say it was “bonus” until she released 15 more) is metaphorical in itself – it refers to a bar called the Black Dog, which she saw “you” (Alwyn) go into, but the image of a black dog is also one of haunting, trauma and death. The smoke, though, could represent not only something suffocating but London, AKA the Big Smoke – a city that Swift, if she’s anything like the rest of us after a break-up, can never visit again. This line also goes a long way in showcasing her mixed emotions – clean air, or perhaps her own city, is better, but she misses the smog and filth of London, or her London Boy.
2. “I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing”
From “But Daddy I Love Him”
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Now we’re really getting into it. “But Daddy I Love Him” is a screed against the moralising fans who chastised her for her relationship with Healy after he was deemed too “problematic” – and here she gives it back to them. There is so much here – Swift sings of how sensible arguments can’t change the chemistry, jokingly declares she’s “having his baby”, describes his “bedroom eyes” as a “remedy” to emphasise it was a big fat rebound. But beyond this the song manages to dig into the tiresome dynamics of internet-age fan culture – “If all you want is gray for me/Then it’s just white noise”, she sings, bemoaning the supposed safety of green flags. And then, “vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing” – vipers and empaths aren’t as natural a pairing as wolves and sheep, but she manages to pour scorn on a much-overused word that, she is quite right, people weaponise in order to judge her (and others). Go Taylor.
1. “You look like Taylor Swift in this light”
From “Clara Bow”
Last, but not least: a meta, self-aware finale (at least until she dropped that second half of the album). Beauties, beasts, crowns, roses, city lights – it’s a full-blown Swiftian fairy tale that culminates in full self-realisation. First she looks like Clara Bow, then Stevie Nicks, and then in the final verse – after she’s reached Manhattan and LA, become a “real queen” and “the god we’re worshipping” – she finds she looks a lot like herself. Reading between the lines, it’s a moving picture of staying grounded in the face of unimaginable exposure – and the perfect happy ending for our times.
Continue reading...