killaswiftorian

[killaswiftorian]

One that I think is a sleeper but would be fun to analyse is WCS x Ivy. They morph into such a cool completely new story to me.

MASHUP OF ALL TIME!!!!!

The one that opened up our third eyes and let us all know we were not in fact going to be ready for TTPD! 🥴 We just didn't know in which way at the time but whooooo boy is it ever a doozy in retrospect.

What you need to know is that WCS is probably my favourite song on Midnights (and is one of the foundational songs of her entire discography imo and required reading to understand her work) and Ivy battles neck and neck as my favourite song on evermore with little evermore... So like NYD x Peace and evermore x Peter, this was a mashup that was specifically designed to hurt me, and hurt me it did.

(This is my moment to say that while I love that WCS got some love on the B Stage, I would loooooooove a full electric guitar performance of it because those riffs are indeed like narcotics)

Today's theme: Now I'm covered in you, I regret you all the time.

It's so interesting watching this now with the hindsight of nearly a year's worth of mashups afterwards, because you can tell how much her skill as a "crafter" of these stories grew throughout the tour. Compared to the mashups of the last leg, for instance, where she wove the two songs together more intricately, both musically and lyrically, this is almost quaintly simple. You get most chunks of WCS + the bridge of ivy + last line of WCS. The two stories work together excellently thematically, but you can really see how much her brain worked on these to develop them into their own new songs the further into tour she got. And, how much work that all must have taken, which is another marker of her utter professionalism and dedication. This one in comparison just flies by!

Like so many mashups that we've seen since, this mashup is one that ends up totally changing the tone of one song based on what it's paired with, much like Sweet Nothing x hoax would later on. On its own, ivy is a tale about forbidden love, but that love ignites the narrator and gives her a reason to flee for her life instead of slowly succumbing to the darkness in a loveless marriage. However, paired with WCS, ivy becomes a bit of a scathing attack on the subject who preys on her in WCS. She's not telling her lover that he lit the spark that brought her back to life, his ivy being the sign of new beginnings that contrasts to the barren cold of her stone house. Here she's calling his ivy an invasive species whose strangling effect has instead ruined her: the fire here isn't to keep her warm, it's to destroy her. An arson's match leading to a field of dreams engulfed in fire, if you will.

The major thing that struck me after watching this mashup again, though, is how the girlhood line comes into play in the transition into ivy. When she sings, Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts, give me back my girlhood, it was mine first... so yeah, it's a fire, it's a goddamn blaze in the dark and you started it, the girlhood IMO in this instance refers back to the dreams she had along with the innocence of and faith she once held in those dreams. (That being: finding a love that would cherish her with whom she could build a life.)

Or put another way, girlhood = dreamland. They were her long-held dreams that the subject in the mashup singlehandedly sets ablaze to watch burn, and burn her in the process. It's chilling. Because now, so yeah, it's a war, it's the goddamn fight of my life and you started it takes on an even darker meaning, because as we know now, she felt like she was almost literally fighting for her life in the aftermath of what happened to her in the spring of 2023 thanks to a certain conman's actions (that were precipitated by a certain hothouse flower's). By his actions, the arsonist preys on the narrator's most sacred desires and destroys them in a way she couldn't have imagined possible. That is yet another fucking legacy to leave. And that's why she regrets it all the time.

When you get down to it, the mashup is about how someone with ill intent planted the (poisoned) seed in her mind, and it consumed her until it nearly killed her.

In retrospect, I see so many lyric parallels between this mashup and what she wrote about on TTPD, particularly in Smallest Man, which I'm assuming is by design. For instance:

And now that I know, I wish you'd left me wondering -> It's a goddamn blaze in the dark and you started it -> I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive -> I regret you all the time

If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? Years of tearing down our banners, you and I -> So yeah, it's a war, it's the goddamn fight of my life and you started it -> Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?

Lord you made me feel important, then you tried to erase us -> My house of stone, your ivy grows and now I'm covered in you -> And in plain sight you hid, but you are what you did -> I miss who I used to be

You're a crisis of my faith -> I can't stop you putting roots in my dreamland -> I would've died for your sins, instead I just died inside

This was definitely a harbinger of things to come, both for tour and for TTPD ahead of us at the time! Between this mashup and Getaway Car/august/The Other Side of The Door, I think she primed us, without many of us clocking, to the intricacies of what we were about to explore, and again, what a fascinating-- and generous-- way to set up the album!

[killaswiftorian]

cassandra x mad woman x idsb mashup - taylor swift

[killaswiftorian]

as always, reblog with your answers! i can’t include all the albums covers between og and tv, so i just picked the ones i’ve heard complaints about in the fandom

[killaswiftorian]

it’s officially two years since joever. swifties: please reblog and tell us how you found out about the news and what you thought originally 🫡

[killaswiftorian]

Peter x evermore

anon, I want to let you know I saved this one for last because it's one of my absolute favourites and has taken me the longest to write. Evermore my beloved. Peter my precious. They are everything to me and she went and PUT THEM TOGETHER and IN MY OWN GODDAMN COUNTRY and I WASN'T THERE. This is a war crime actually and she should have been deported but I digress.

(I'm kidding.)

Needless to say, I was not OK on the other side of a grainy livestream. In fact, anyone who was on the dash at the time can attest to that lmao. (Click on my toronto n2 tag if you want a trip down memory lane of someone losing their shit after being assaulted by this woman and her piano.)

Buckle up, because you are about to witness a meltdown of epic proportions, so much so that in needs subheadings lmao.

The mashup

As you can probably infer, these are two of my favourite songs of hers, and I absolutely LOVE this mashup for so many reasons. It's a beautiful piano moment, for one-- I know she loves all her musical children, but I think evermore is one of those extra special ones to her that she loves to play, and I may be imagining things, but I think she has a particular soft spot for Peter (the song) too. And she plays it so beautifully too.

The thing I love about this mashup is that it tells such a poignant story. You have one song about experiencing dark times in the wake up a traumatic event and finding your way through it, in part thanks to the support of a loved one, and another that is a tender goodbye to a person you've drifted away from, and together they carry the shipwreck/lost at sea theme so seamlessly. (Which I noted the night she played it!) Yes, all her mashups have been wonderful storytelling moments, but pairing Peter with evermore makes the emotional notes I already love about the song soar, and really highlights the emotional truth of the song to me.

(Also I have an agenda re: Peter but that is neither here nor there lmao.)

The theme of this one to me, unsurprisingly, is: Forgive me Peter, but this pain wouldn't be forevermore.

Or, as I put in in this post the night she played it:

The “it was real enough to get me through but the shelf life of those fantasies has expired” pipeline is ooooooooooof

***OK, I'm going to put the rest of this under a cut, because I lost control of this post and it got incredibly long-winded and nobody needs that taking up their dash.***

There are another few transition that make me feral because they're their own nuggets of the full story. Like:

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… And I was catching my breath, floors of a cabin creaking under my step, and I couldn't be sure, I had a feeling so peculiar this pain wouldn't be forevermore

Because to me, that's the whole story of this mashup in bite size. The narrator held onto Peter as long as she could, throughout all the pain she felt would be forevermore, until she couldn't do it anymore and had to leave. And to borrow from another song, as she was leaving, it felt like breathing. Or, I'm just getting colour back into my face. @soberqueerinthewild noted that that line kind of called back to the theme of the Cornelia Street x The Bolter mashup too, in that she was terrified of if he ever walked away and then she ended up being the one do leave and coming out the other side. She realized Cornelia Street wasn't true in the end and in itself was a moment in time, just like the story told in this mashup is a moment in time that is now relegated to the past. She could in fact survive it, and she could in fact move on.

And then the other one that just really hits me in the feels is this: skipping from the first chorus of Peter to the bridge, Words from the mouths of babes, promises oceans deep, but never to keep... And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn. Which in itself to me feels like the narrator of this tale hanging on the promises of her Peter, once impossibly serious as only they can be in one's youth when one's whole life is still ahead of them, only to keep hanging on the promises as the years prove that Peter just could never follow through on them.

Time and place

I mentioned in the Tim McGraw x Timeless mashup that one detail I loved is how the physical objects in both songs echoed each other as a physical representation of the experience. And the burning lamp/light/cabin floors parallel in this mashup brings to mind the same feelings for me and was one of the first things to jump out at me. It adds such a sense of place to the song, and it's the same reason I love the "remember looking at this room?" lyric pairing in You're Losing Me, for instance. The woman who sits by the window has turned out the lamp that she kept burning despite all odds for so long, and once she gets up, feeling the floors under her grounds her and reassures her that she's made the right call! LOVE THAT.

I've mentioned it before on my blog, but I was catching my breath, floors of a cabin creaking under my step, and I couldn't be sure, I had a feeling so peculiar this pain wouldn't be forevermore is my favourite lyric in evermore for precisely that reason: after spending the whole song adrift, physically and emotionally, the creaking floors beneath her bring her back to reality and tell her that everything is going to be OK when she's on steady ground-- which is why she knows the pain won't last forever anymore. And THAT is what the mashup comes down to.

(I also love the cabin floor creaking line because to me there's a double meaning to it: it's not just the idea of the tiny things like the squeaky floorboards letting her know she's coming out of the fog. To me, it's also that the cabin itself represents her salvation: it's the entire world she's built through her music to help her out of a dark period-- the folklore cabin, if you will. She knew that once she could write her through it, she was on her way out of it.)

The story

I'm going to include the entire mashup here because I want to talk about the story of the mashup with the combined lyrics:

Gray November I've been down since July Motion capture Put me in a bad light I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone Trying to find the one where I went wrong Writing letters Addressed to the fire And I was catching my breath Staring out an open window Catching my death And I couldn't be sure I had a feeling so peculiar That this pain would be for Evermore Forgive me, Peter, 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 She said she was trying, Peter, was she lying? My ribs Get the feeling she did And I didn't wanna come down I thought it was just goodbye for now You said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me Said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me 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 Oh, never to keep And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned 'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned And you said you'd come and get me, but you were 25 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 And I was catching my breath Floors of a cabin creaking under my step And I couldn't be sure I had a feeling so peculiar This pain wouldn't be for Evermore No it wouldn't be forevermore Forgive me Peter, but this pain wouldn't be forevermore It wouldn't be forevermore Forgive me Peter, but this pain wouldn't be forevermore And when I was shipwrecked I thought of you In the cracks of light I dreamed of you It was real enough To get me through But I swear You were there

(apologies for the wonky sizing, the small font option seems to be also want to play zodiac killer for some reason. Every time I fix the formatting it changes the letters of different words so I give up.)

While evermore could certainly be taken in its original meaning (e.g. presumably a reflection on Taylor's experiences in 2016), I think the way it is used in this mashup with Peter can tell an entirely different story (the way all of these mashups have), and one that is incredibly moving. Put together in this way, the story of this mashup TO ME (and I'm making it clear this is just my interpretation of it, y'all do whatever you want) reads like this:

The narrator-- our Wendy if you will-- is frozen in a depressed state, trying to figure out if there was anything she could have done to stop the painful place in which she found herself and shouldering the burden of that, even though it's killing her. She keeps thinking "what if" and conjures up a million different ways to change course, but ultimately they are fruitless or never acted upon. Now grappling with that pain feels insurmountable.

She and Peter have drifted apart, and what once seemed like fate in their younger years full of promise has now crumbled to dust. She didn't want to admit that the dream they shared was gone, because what drove them apart felt like it fixable until it wasn't. (Ill-fated, if you will.)

Despite evidence telling her that things couldn't work out, she kept hoping that Peter would meet her where she was, proving somehow that the trials they've been through were worth it for some greater good. Peter at one point had been as all-in on the fantasy as Wendy was, and that promise was what she held onto to get through the darker times, until she realized that there was nothing left of it and that she was going to have to leave him if she wanted to build a new dream, because Peter was stuck in his own world while she was out building her own. She's finally admitted that the dream is over.

And once she makes that decision to leave, it finally feels like she comes back to life again. She can feel the ground under her, because she knows now that she can in fact get through this dark time.

She knows she caused Peter pain by doing what she did, but she understands now that for herself-- and for Peter-- that the pain of leaving would not last forever, and that they'd both be better off for it. For a time, he was the person she leaned on to get through her darkest hour, and holding onto the dream of theirs got her through that, because for a time, it was real to both of them. (Even if it no longer is.)

(tl;dr: to me the whole mashup in this form is like the hopeful/less pained version of "So Long, London," without the anger.)

Or, put another way, as I said in this post the night she played it:

When the larger story of the evermore/peter mashup (and the shipwreck/ocean metaphor) with the sections she chose is that she was adrift and taking on water, but meeting him felt like fate, then the subject-Him in the song was also lost at sea himself, and she tried to hold on and hope that they’d find each other’s lifelines, but she had to find her own and find the shore and put her feet back on solid ground to save herself and leave him to find his own… Her mind 🫠

(Hmm, maybe I could have saved myself all this writing if I had just gone to my original post from the night of because that made more sense than whatever breakdown I just did lol.)

The parallels

So many lyrics throughout the mashup echo each other beautifully to me too that I just want to shout out, like:

I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone trying to find the one where I went wrong / Is it something I did?

(^^^ that one in particular guts me for about a million reasons but we're driving right past it)

And I was catching my breath, staring out an open window catching my death / Peter, was she lying? My ribs get the feeling she did

Writing letters addressed to the fire / And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn

And when I was shipwrecked I thought of you / Peter, my lost fearless leader

In the cracks of light I dreamed of you / the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light

It was real enough to get me through / the shelf life of those fantasies has expired

But I swear you were there / I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine

Again, calling back to the story told in the combined lyrics, there's such an interesting parallels to me between the songs both emotionally and in the narrative. There's the same sense of loss and confusion, wondering if something could have gone differently to escape the pain, but ultimately realizing the pain is part of the growth and the healing.

And part of that healing, in this story, is understanding that sometimes you can't hold onto things forever. Whether it's the pain of being emotionally exiled in evermore, or the pain of gradually losing her beloved in Peter, the journey from grief to moving on in both is such a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. And when the two songs are grafted together to form a new tale, that same journey is reflected in the "new" song.

I think if you could distill all these parallels into a simpler lesson, it's that, to quote Kelsea Ballerini, for a time the shoe fit, then I outgrew it. As in, a person or an experience can be what you need for a time, but sometimes you need to let them go when your life moves in a different direction.

The music

Another thing I want to talk about is the melody of the mashup, because again, these are two of my favourite songs, and I love the way she's blended them together musically.

The first thing that jumped out at my in this respect is that compared to the first time she played evermore on tour back in 2023, she plays it quite a bit faster in this version. I'm sure it's partially to do with being much more comfortable with the acoustic set, much more adept at the mashups and ad-libbing the melody compared to the studio versions, and completely different Vibes to performing in late 2024 as there were at the beginning of tour in 2023 if you catch my drift. And I also assume it has to do with matching the tempo of both songs: Peter is played a bit quicker as a waltz, so evermore had to pick up to follow suit.

But because Peter does feel like a waltz to me (shoutout to doing ice dance as a kid lmao), sonically the mashup FEELS nostalgic, and it FEELS like replaying the past, like Peter and Wendy figures floating around a ballroom as the scenes play out or something like that. So in that way, evermore is like the setup for the trip down memory lane in Peter. I know this is a very *me* thing, but again, this is why this scratches such an itch in my brain. It's the way the evermore melody to me denotes the reflection, and the Peter melody denotes the events that led her there.

And the part where this all culminates to send me into the stratosphere is at the "Forgive me Peter, but I knew this pain wouldn't be forevermore" section at the end leading into the bridge of evermore, where she plays the evermore lyrics to the Peter melody. She's done this in several mashups to great effect -- notably the Sweet Nothing x hoax mashup that broke my brain -- and this is also really grabbed me, though in a different way than that specific example.

In the Sweet Nothing x hoax mashup, using the melancholy hoax melody under Sweet Nothing denotes the breakdown of the dream, the ways in which the comfort the person humming in the kitchen eroded as betrayal set in. In this mashup, to me using the Peter melody under the evermore lyrics has a more... almost wistful nature, though no less poignant. It's that the memories the narrator held onto about her time adrift and his presence anchoring her now get planted in the same fairy tale/fable setting as the Peter/Wendy story does. Something that once felt real and solid in the naivety of youth now remains firmly part of a past that, well, has turned into folklore. And ending it on evermore's "But I swear, you were there" memorializes the experiences, that it was real once even if it isn't now.

* * *

OK, if you've made it this far, THANK YOU, and also I'm so sorry haha. Like I said, this is one of my absolute favourites for a million different reasons, and I could keep talking about it forever and ever(more). I have so many thoughts about both songs individually at any given time, and putting them together like this was perfect to me, and also designed for maximum impact to hurt me. I just found it all so moving, and so beautifully performed.

And with that, we are officially caught up on Mashup Madness! I can't promise I'm going to have time to get to any others in a timely fashion, but if you have anything else you want to talk about, you know where to find me!

[killaswiftorian]

You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it // You said I needed a brave man // You said it was a great love, one for the ages // You say, "What a mind," // You said I had to trust more freely // You said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me // You said you'd come and get me, but you were 25 // You say, "I don't understand," // You say I abandoned the ship // You said I'm the love of your life about a million times

[killaswiftorian]

inspired by an anon….take the quiz and reblog with your score!

[killaswiftorian]

Notes on the Fearless recording sessions [CHAOTIC]

So this is an unhinged post that's basically a stream of consciousness. This is basically how I work when I have to find a date.

We know that the Fearless was recorded throughout 5 sessions:

December 2007

January 2008

March 2008

Summer 2008

September 2008 (last-minute)

For now I'm gonna leave out the March 2007 sessions, where Taylor said that she was gonna re-record her 2005 songs for TS2, so at least You All Over Me, That's When, We Were Happy and Don't You.

December 2007 Session

On December 23, 2007, Taylor posts on MySpace that she has recorded six songs for TS2. We know that Change and Breathe were two of the six songs because we have footage. A third is likely The Best Day, since Taylor said that it was her Christmas gift to Andrea. She also specified that she recorded in the studio with the band.

We are missing three other songs. It's likely that it's something from the mirror tracklisting:

Permanent Marker

Tell Me Why

I'd Lie

Fearless

Dark Blue Tennessee

Sparks Fly

The One Thing.

It's unclear if the 2005/2006 songs like Permanent Marker, I'd Lie, Dark Blue and Sparks Fly were re-recorded (or recorded at all in the case of Sparks Fly). We also know that R-E-V-E-N-G-E was strongly considered as it was mastered.

Songs:

Breathe

Change

The Best Day

Bye Bye Baby

Sparks Fly

Superstar

January 2008 Session

Around the release of Fearless, Taylor does an interview with MixOnline:

The recording process on this album was spread out over the last year. We started recording last winter, and we did about three songs. About a month later, we did three more.

In mid January, likely on the 14th, Taylor had done an interview with Blender and the interviewer got to listen to some demos: the Kelly Pickler collab The Best Days Of Your Life, Fifteen and Change.

So in January Taylor recorded Fifteen, plus at least two other songs (my guess is that Fearless was also one of the first songs). She also says that in December she recorded three songs instead of six. I'm not the greatest at math but I know when shit don't add up. What happened to the other three? My opinion is that they weren't released, at least not in November 2008, so Taylor cut the number down.

Songs:

Fifteen

Fearless

Tell Me Why

I don't think that only three songs were recorded... but I'll leave it be.

On February 27th, she says that the album is half done.

March 2008 Session

On March 8th she posts on MySpace that the "second album is coming along quite nicely". On March 26th an interview with Billboard is published, probably done before March 8th and she says:

I’m going in to record six more this week and then we have another session scheduled for summertime. We’re really trying to just cut a bunch of stuff and put whatever is best on the album.

So it makes sense that in February Taylor said that she was halfway done with the album: she had completed 2 sessions out of 4.

We know that the March 2008 session was the one when Love Story was recorded, because we got confirmation directly from Nathan Chapman. I actually think that You Belong With Me was one of them. Taking at face value what Liz Rose said, Taylor asked her if she could write on a Sunday. Looking at the timeline, the only possible Sundays are: March 2nd, April 20th, May 11th and June 1st. However, Liz also specified a few times that Taylor recorded the song the day after they wrote it. The only date that matches a recording session is March 3rd.

Nathan revealed that the BMR complained about the recording process for You Belong With Me because it took all morning, therefore, to optimize the time, they recorded 4 songs in the afternoon. I know that BMR is now Public Enemy #1, however, it makes sense that they complained, as they were on a strict budget.

The other song that I think was recorded in March was Hey Stephen, as these are the weeks where Love and Theft opened for her and she and Stephen Barker Liles got close (as confirmed by him). Also, the finger snaps on the songs were the ones of Marina McBride's children and classmates that just got out of school and correct me if I'm wrong but this means that it could've not been late June or early July as American schools are close I think.

Songs:

Love Story

You Belong With Me

Hey Stephen

The Way I Loved You

??

??

Nathan Chapman says that there was another recording session the day after they did You Belong With Me+4 songs.

Summer 2008 Session

The fourth session, that was supposed to be the last, took place in the summer and we know that that's when You're Not Sorry was recorded. John Keefe from Boys Like Girls played the drums on the song and he could've not done it during the March session (the band was in Australia and then Canada that week). It's unclear how many songs were recorded in this session.

The days in which Boys Like Girls were free were from June 23rd to June 25th and also July 1st and 2nd.

Songs:

You're Not Sorry

White Horse

Crazier

The Other Side Of The Door

On July 28th Taylor says that all the songs were recorded.

On July 31st and Aug 1st, Taylor shoots the album photoshoot. The pictures are strongly connected to the songs (like You Belong With Me, Breathe, You're Not Sorry etc...)

August 6th, an insider on Pulse mentions The Way I Loved You .

On August 8th, the USA Today journalist Brian Mansfield mentions Hey Stephen, You're Not Sorry, Fifteen, You Belong With Me, Change, Tell Me Why, The Best Day and Breathe.

September 2008 Session

I think that this is the most famous session of Taylor's career, even the most casual fan might know that Forever & Always was a last minute addition to the tracklist. There's not really much to say here.

MISC

Jump Then Fall is one of the songs that almost has full credits on the booklet because it's an outlier... since Nathan Chapman did everything on this song. I think it's a demo. It was recorded at Nathan's studio anyway. There's a reason why the Programming of the synths is only in the Platinum Edition credits.

The Other Side Of The Door is also an outlier because it was mixed by Mills Logan, a mixer that only appears once in Taylor's discography... why did they bring another mixer? Who knows. Not me. I put it on the summer 2008 sessions because I didn't know where to place it. It's probably wrong.

Today Was A Fairytale??? Probably another Chapman demo.

Come In With The Rain wasn't re-recorded. It's just the 2006 version. They were really broke, uh.

In October 2008, Rolling Stones says that 50+ songs were recorded for Fearless

[killaswiftorian]

why do i want to have a meltdown every time Robin comes on

[killaswiftorian]

Can you elaborate “she’s outgrown her musical audience”? I believe this to a very large extent, too

to me, we’ve reached this interesting point where the depth of tortured poets is missed by wide swaths of the fandom, and it’s even more striking now than it was in midnights. the media literacy crisis is in full form. nobody sits with an album and tries to digest it. if there’s something they don’t understand, they’re not inclined to put in the effort to try to understand it. they immediately seek out an explanation that they understand - typically from swiftie influencers. and the explanation can’t be too detailed either, because they don’t have the patience or attention span for it. so we arrive at this point where easily digestible yet incorrect theories spread like wildfire, because nobody cares enough to research or synthesize or read about something they enjoy. they’re too interested in salacious details, even if they’re false, and it leads to them missing the forest for the trees entirely.

[killaswiftorian]

Happiness Will Come To You.

[killaswiftorian]

Fuck Marry Kill with T-Swizzle! Spin the wheel for a song.

Thanks to the anon in this post for the idea! I thought it sounded cute and fun

[killaswiftorian]

sometimes when i look into your eyes, i pretend your mine all the damn time -> what if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?

[killaswiftorian]

people who don't like the beach aesthetic of 1989 tv don't have an emotional attachment to these visuals I guess ??

[killaswiftorian]

The narrative comes from Me! being an unpopular choice for first single, and ready for it/look what you made me do making people think the whole album would sound like those songs. I think people felt misled by these choices after hearing the full albums, because they felt there were better songs on the album that could’ve reached more people had they been chosen. And tbh I remember the OG red era singles confusing me too because I never heard any aside from back together, trouble and 22. I was amazed that there were three more (and none of them were all too well…)

all too well should never have been a single, and the rep singles smashed fjdjdjdj idk what people want. it would have ruined the entire thing with rep if she’d released something like delicate first!

[killaswiftorian]

the whole cardigan/Peter parallels are messing my head can u explain

okay so peter is actually one of my favorite songs on the album for this reason! I think it has parallels to a lot of other songs, not just cardigan. the first thing to get out of the way is the cardigan lyric about peter and wendy: ‘tried to change the ending, peter losing wendy.’ now, that line doesn’t make a ton of sense because peter losing wendy is the ending of peter pan (idk I’ve never seen it and never thought I’d spend this long thinking about them), but I think what she’s saying is that he tried to change the ending of *their* story to peter losing wendy. peter loses her because she outgrows him, while he remains a ‘lost boy’ forever. the cardigan demo has an alternate lyric where peter actually *leaves* wendy. this does not happen in the original story, and to me, it reads like betty (eh, I don’t think those characters existed when she wrote that song, but bear with me) is accusing him of trying to change their fate by leaving her. peter is meant to always come back to wendy. *she* is the one who eventually leaves him. either way, cardigan ends with them together. yay for betty and/or taylor.

now, peter was written 3-4 years later, and it is the conclusion of a story about outgrowing someone despite truly wanting them back. the ending was not, in fact, changed. she did outgrow him. very sad. I actually want to go lyric by lyric, but I’ll put a cut just in case.

Forgive me Peter

My lost fearless leader

In closets like cedar

Preserved from when we were just kids

Is it something I did

the song starts with taylor trying to figure out what went wrong. did she do something wrong to crush these dreams of theirs? she kept him in a closet of cedar (where unmarried women kept their belongings that they would want to take with them after getting married) in her mind, but things didn’t work out anyway. the first line being ‘forgive me, peter’ indicates that she is the one who pulled the plug, and she’s apologizing for it. again, she isn’t entirely sure what went wrong, which, to me, is a clear parallel to how did it end.

The goddess of timing

Once found us beguiling

She said she was trying

Peter was she lying

My ribs get the feeling she did

when they first met, the timing seemed to be perfect for their relationship (‘the goddess of timing *once* found us beguiling’), but that didn’t last. the goddess of timing claimed that she tried, but nothing could save them. taylor even wonders if she lied, which suggests a lack of faith in higher powers like fate or deities. this verse introduces timing as a major conflict in the story. ‘are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these?’

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

peter went away, but he promised to come down once he was ready for a relationship. yes, this kind of applies to both of the main storylines on the album. you could take this to mean that they actually broke up a decade ago but promised to get back together, or you could assume there was some sort of break to their relationship, which she and joe did have. i kind of took it to mean that he wasn’t fully committed to the relationship, but he promised to be eventually. again, the renegade lyric, but also ‘i’m a fire, and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm if your cascade ocean wave blues come’ and ‘I’d hold you as the water rushes in,’ both of which are grand promises that neither party could keep.

Are you still a mind reader?

A natural scene stealer

I've heard great things Peter

But life was always easier on you

Than it was on me

he is charismatic. his magnetic field is a little too strong. he can read people. but he’s also fragile and inexperienced (‘he was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman’). he may be able to read people, but things have been way too easy for him to ever understand a truly hurt person fully.

And sometimes it gets me

When crossing your jet stream

We both did the best we could do underneath the same moon

In different galaxies

And I didn't want to hang around

We said it was just goodbye for now

this is the thesis statement of their relationship to me. obviously, there’s the call it what you want parallel, but more importantly, it shows that the two people really wanted this to work. they just came from completely different places in their lives and perhaps the entire universe. this verse seems to reference the epilogue (‘resentment rotting away galaxies we created’ / ‘some stars never align’). they learned the right steps to different dances, if you will. she knew he needed time, so she left temporarily.

And I won't confess that I waited

But I let the lamp burn

As the men masqueraded

I hoped you'd return

With your feet on the ground

Tell me all that you'd learned

Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned

she does get with other men, but she keeps longing for him. she wishes that he would return with a grasp on reality and be the man she needs. if anything, the time away would give him the perspective he needs to ground himself. interesting parallel to ‘I said I don’t mind / it takes time’ in loml.

And you said you'd come and get me but you were 25

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 onto the days when you were mine

But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light

this is just devastating to me. well, first of all, both matty and joe were 25 when they first met her, which, lol. the dreams they had together have expired now. it’s been too long. she cannot keep holding onto a love from almost a decade ago. he took too long to return. he lost his lifelong dreams to what was only supposed to be a chapter of his life. she tried to hold onto the days when he was hers, and everything was right, but she had to turn out the light at some point. this is the moment when she gives up on their relationship. she apologizes for abandoning the ship, but she must do it.

overall, I think peter is a story about two people who genuinely did everything they could to be together, but their needs and their growth no longer aligned. there’s a sense of acceptance and lingering fondness here. she did everything she could not to bolt, but the ending was the same.