Taylor Swift’s songwriting has come back into focus with the recent release of The Tortured Poets Department, her 11th studio album complete with a bonus album titled The Anthology. Much of the focus has gone into some lackluster writing, which is uncommon for her but does rear its ugly head sometimes. However, here are some of the best lyrics on all 31 tracks from Swift.
5) Taylor Swift Reference in Clara Bow
On the finale track of the original album, Swift writes after two verses, “You look like Taylor Swift in this light. We’re loving it. You’ve got edge, she never did. The future’s bright, dazzling.” Following the song’s narrative, she has positioned herself as the Stevie Nicks and Clara Bow of the generation, hinting at an understanding of her new place in music. She has long contended with who she is and the plight of women in the music industry, but this line from Clara Bow showcases an understanding.
Artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, Chappell Roan, and others are up-and-coming artists in Swift’s own space, and she knows the future no longer includes her, but that this new era will be compared to her. They will be compared in the same way she was compared to the female superstars before her.
4) The Beginning Line of the Bridge in The Black Dog
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The Black Dog, the first track on The Anthology, brings the songwriting into much sharper focus than The Tortured Poets Department did. It’s tremendously written as a whole, but the beginning of the bridge is stunning, “Six months of breathing clean air, I still miss the smoke. Were you making fun of me with some esoteric joke?”
Swift reflects on what was ultimately a bad and (as smoke is) unhealthy relationship. Even six weeks after being finally able to breathe freely, she still misses what was even if she knows it wasn’t good for her. Swift follows that up with a biting question as to whether or not the entire relationship was some inside joke she’s just not a part of. It’s a brutal and almost whiplash-inducing duology of lines.
3) Peter‘s Unflinching Metaphor
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Taylor Swift is evidently fond of the film Peter Pan, as it’s been referenced now in two songs: cardigan and Peter, the latter coming from her most recent bonus album. In it, she sings, “And you said you’d come and get me, but you were twenty-five. And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired. Lost to the ‘Lost Boys’ chapter of your life. Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried. To hold on to the days when you were mine. But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light.”
It’s a far more in-depth reference to the Disney film than her other song, and it paints a somber picture. Whoever Peter is referring to promised Wendy, the protagonist in this song, he would eventually grow up or mature and go find his lover and they could be happy together.
But Swift says that that time has passed. She waited (though not proudly as she says earlier in the song) for him until she couldn’t. Wendy, who sat by the window in the film, turned off the light and moved on despite Peter’s promises that he’d come find her.
2) So Long, London‘s The Tortured Poets Department Track 5 status
Fifth tracks from any Taylor Swift project pack a punch, and The Tortured Poets Department is no different. So Long, London is metaphorically a goodbye to a former love and the place they shared so much time together, and the chorus is as heartbreaking as it comes.
She sings, “So how much sad did you think I had, Did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go ‘fore I’d self-implode? ‘Fore I’d have to go be free?” She questions the unnamed mystery man, though her fans have easily solved that one, about how much he thought she was willing to endure for their relationship.
It’s a connection in many ways to another heartbreaking track called You’re Losing Me. How much sadness did her partner believe she had to withstand? How much heartache could she put up with? At a point, those things become unbearable, which is where Swift ended up at the writing of this song.
1) The Bridge of How Did It End?
How Did It End? makes a case for the best song on the entire project. Taylor Swift finally ponders the question she’s probably been getting and asking herself after the end of a six-year relationship. Known for her bridges, the bridge of this track cements itself as one of her best ever, “Say it once again with feeling. How the death rattle breathing silenced as the soul was leaving. The deflation of our dreaming, leaving me bereft and reeling. My beloved ghost and me, sitting in a tree. D-Y-I-N-G.”
The first line suggests a break, perhaps against her will, from the scripted and forced answers she’s given to the titular question throughout the song. Swift follows that up by detailing what it was really like. The death rattle is what it sounds like moments before someone’s death, as their breath gets ragged and shorter. But eventually, it silences as whoever’s soul ultimately gives up its life.
This moment puts an end, or a deflation, to the protagonist’s (perhaps Taylor Swift’s own) dreams of a long and happy relationship, leaving her staggering and feeling deprived of something she longed for. The really brutal line comes after, as she describes her relationship as a child with a familiar rhyme that shifts to a much darker ending.
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