#the bridge is excellent!! the chorus is fine! verses? can’t stand em

[francesderwent]

the verses of I Hate It Here are aggressively banal. the words don’t sound pretty, the rhymes sometimes aren’t perfect, the melody trips downwards and lands heavily. then the chorus comes along and lightens everything, there’s energy and brightness and musicality. secret gardens with just one key, books remembered from childhood—suddenly the song is fun to listen to. the return to reality is even harsher in the second verse, and so the second chorus escapes even further away. Taylor is refusing to use her specific power, the power to take the everyday and draw it up into the beautiful, to make what is small seem important. she speaks in something like her own voice briefly in the bridge—I'll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I'll get lost on purpose is a very Swiftian line—but then she slips back into the fantasy, and is finally returned rudely back to real life