"You look like Clara Bow in this light / Remarkable / All your life, did you know / You'd be picked like a rose?"
Taylor loves dropping Easter eggs, and as it turns out, her 2024 Grammys dress and accessories were a subtle nod to the title of a track on the album she'd announce that night. In "Clara Bow," named in ode to the 1920s starlet and original "It" Girl, Taylor explores the expectations and exploitations of the fleeting fame that comes along with being the next young, "dazzling" thing.
"Truth, dare, spin bottles / You know how to ball, I know Aristotle / Brand-new, full-throttle / Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto / It's true, swear, scouts honor / You knew what you wanted, and boy, you got her."
Travis Kelce shares his first Taylor song with the one and only Aristotle. In "So High School," the muse is clear as day, with lines like, "You know how to ball, I know Aristotle." She capitalizes on the reason everyone is so obsessed with their public courting; it feels like we're watching a romcom where the quirky theater girl gets with the popular jock with a heart of gold. "So High School" is the perfect heartwarming bop to serve as the score for a heartwarming movie we all got front-row seats to.
Over the years, Taylor has named three of the "fictional" characters in her songs after Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold's children. There's Betty, Inez, and James from the folklore love triangle. She even featured one of the Lively-Reynolds kiddos on her 2017 Reputation track, "Gorgeous"!
Taylor has been besties with Blake and Ryan for years, and they even tagged along with her to a couple of Chiefs games to watch Taylor's beau play. Any time a random name pops up in Taylor's lyrics and Blake has popped out a new kiddo, the conspiracy theories fly. (But they're usually true!)
"I laughed in your face and said, 'You're not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain't the Chelsea Hotel / We're modern idiots.' "
In the title track for The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor name-drops the famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thomas died at the Chelsea Hotel at the age of 39 in 1953. His work influenced artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and clearly, Taylor Swift.
"So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst / And tried to tell the town / So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say / Do you believe me now?"
In "Cassandra," Taylor puts herself in the Queen of Troy's shoes. Cassandra, from Greek mythology, was the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, king and queen of Troy. Apollo, hoping to win her affection, granted her the power of prophecy. But when she rejected his advances, he cursed her with the burden of knowing the truth—but no one ever believing her. Taylor draws parallels between Cassandra's tragic story and her own of her "exile" for "Snake Gate" back in 2016. She tried to warn us about Kanye...(but to be fair a lot of other people have too).
"I am someone who, until recent events / You shared your secrets with / And your location / You forgot to turn it off / And so I watch as you walk / Into some bar called The Black Dog / And pierce new holes in my heart / You forgot to turn it off."
In "The Black Dog," Taylor describes going through a breakup and noticing her former flame forgot to stop sharing their location with her. She tracks him as he walks into a pub in London called The Black Dog, and among other things, she hopes he has a really crummy time without her there.
"I don't think you've changed much / And so I changed your name and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singin' / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you, 'cause / All that time you were throwin' punches, it was all for nothin' / And our town, it looks so small from way up here / Screamed, "Thank you, Aimee" to the night sky and the stars are stunnin' / 'Cause I can't forget the way you made me heal."
In a song titled "thanK you aIMee," Taylor details a bully with a "bronze, spray-tanned statue" in their "hometown." Taylor often refers to her life—and the entertainment industry specifically—as "high school," so in this instance her "hometown" would be Hollywood. She also became notorious for leaving hidden messages in her lyrics with seemingly random capitalized letters throughout—so the Taylor math is definitely mathing here.
Everyone knows about Kim editing a video to paint Taylor as a liar back in 2016; it basically altered the projection of Taylor's career and life overall. We all know she likes to hold her grudges; and Kim's daughter, North, has roped her into dancing along to several Taylor Swift songs on TikTok over the years. "thanK you aIMee" has to be Taylor's most savage song to date.
"I laughed in your face and said, 'You're not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain't the Chelsea Hotel / We're modern idiots.' "
The iconic singer was thrilled to be name-dropped in Swift's title track, "The Tortured Poets Department," and expressed her gratitude by posting a picture of herself reading a Dylan Thomas book. She captioned it, "This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thank you, Taylor.”
“You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratched your head, you fell asleep/ Like a tattooed golden retriever.”
On The Tortured Poets Department's title track, Swift lets us in on a munchies session with an ex-flame, where they discuss Charlie Puth's potential. I personally don't see it, Taylor, but this song is still a bop.
"So long, London / You'll find someone ... / I didn't opt in to be your odd man out / I founded the club she's heard great things about / I left all I knew, you left me at the house by The Heath / I stopped CPR, after all it's no use / The spirit was gone, we would never come to."
In "So Long, London," which Taylor chose for the notoriously devastating Track 5 on TTPD, she grieves her life in London and says goodbye to the "house by The Heath" she shared with her lover—likely the same one she referenced them loving the light in on "You're Losing Me."
"How many days did I spend / Thinkin' 'bout how you did me wrong, wrong, wrong? / Lived in the shade you were throwin' / 'Til all of my sunshine was gone, gone, gone / And I couldn't get away from ya / In my feelings more than Drake, so yeah / Your name on my lips, tongue-tied / Free rent, livin' in my mind."
In "I Forgot That You Existed" from her Lover album, Taylor admitted to being in her feelings "more than Drake." That's a lot of feelings, girl.
"I laughed in your face and said, 'You're not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain't the Chelsea Hotel / We're modern idiots.' "
Taylor has become notorious for sprinkling hyper-specific details about her love affairs throughout her lyrics, and she did just that in "The Tortured Poets Department." In the title track, she recalls a conversation where she attempts to bring a manic lover back down by reminding him they aren't legends like Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas, and "this ain't the Chelsea Hotel." Icons like these two, as well as Andy Warhol and Janis Joplin, stayed at the Chelsea Hotel (originally constructed in the 1830s) during its heyday, and Taylor does love escaping to former decades through her lyrics.
"Little did you know / Your home's really only a town you're just a guest in / So you work your life away / Just to pay for a timeshare down in Destin / Florida, can I use you up?"
In "Florida!!! (feat. Florence + the Machine)," Taylor (and Florence Welch, with whom she co-wrote the track) explore the desire to light a match to your life and head to Florida to bury your problems in the swamps. It's a certified banger.
"But if I'm a thief, then he can join the heist and / We'll move to an island and / And he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor / Every love I've known in comparison is a failure / I forget their names now, I'm so very tame now."
In "Ready For It?"—off her 2017 Reputation album—Taylor asks her new lover if they're ready for what they're about to step into by taking their relationship public. She promises he can be the "Burton to this Taylor," referencing the great love between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The two acting legends were famously on-again-off-again throughout their careers.
"And at first blush, this is fate / When it's all roses, portrait poses / Central Park Lake in tiny rowboats / What a charming Saturday / That's when she sees the littlest leaks / Down in the floorboards / And she just knows / She must bolt."
Taylor loves coloring her stories with New York City imagery, and she does just that in "The Bolter" on TTPD, the older sister song to "Getaway Car," where she sings about spending a "charming Saturday" at Central Park Lake.
"And to tell you the truth, sometimes I wish I was her / Well, she's so New York when she's in LA / She won't lose herself in love the way that I did / 'Cause she'll call you out, she'll put you in your place / When Emma falls in love, I'm learning."
Taylor has become notorious for penning songs about her famous besties. Swifties quickly noticed one of the Speak Now (Taylor's Version) vault tracks, "When Emma Falls in Love," was clearly about her longtime BFF Emma Stone. The two became friends during Taylor's Fearless era back in 2008 and have remained close ever since—and clearly Taylor looks up to her when it comes to love.
"We were in the backseat / Drunk on something stronger than the drinks in the bar / 'I rent a place on Cornelia Street' / I say casually in the car / We were a fresh page on the desk / Filling in the blanks as we go / As if the street lights pointed in an arrowhead / Leading us home / And I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends / I'd never walk Cornelia Street again / That's the kind of heartbreak time could never mend / I'd never walk Cornelia Street again."
On her 2019 album Lover, Taylor memorializes Cornelia Street in New York neighborhood Greenwich as a beloved place she'll never be able to walk again if her lover walks away. She rented the apartment on the now-famous street in 2016; it's currently listed as $17.9M to purchase.
"You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye / And I got that red lip classic thing that you like / And when we go crashing down, we come back every time / 'Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style."
Mr. Harry Styles has racked up quite his fair share of Taylor Swift songs penned about him. The two dated off-and-on from 2012-2013, and her 2014 album 1989 was speculated to be mostly about their relationship. Just to name a few: "Style," "Out of the Woods," "Wildest Dreams, ""Clean," and "Is It Over Now?" Fans long speculated he was the "one who got away" for Taylor, until the Matty Healy of it all was revealed by the mastermind herself...
"I knew you / Your heartbeat on the High Line / Once in 20 lifetimes, I / And when I felt like I was an old cardigan / Under someone's bed / You put me on and said I was your favorite."
What is the High Line, as referenced in Taylor's famous song, "Cardigan," from Folklore? It's a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park, greenway, and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad spur on the west side of Manhattan in New York City. The High Line was inspired by a similar project completed in Paris in 1993, a 2.9-mile-long Coulée verte (tree-lined walkway).
"'Cause, baby, now we got bad blood / You know it used to be mad love / So take a look what you've done / 'Cause, baby, now we got bad blood, hey / Now we got problems / And I don't think we can solve them."
It's a tale as old as time, and one we know quite well by now. Back around 2012, Taylor and Katy scheduled tours around the same time (this was her Red era), several backup dancers dropped out of Taylor's tour to do Katy's, Taylor accused her of stealing them, and the two spent the next several years trading public jabs. (They also both dated John Mayer, not to make it about a man...)
Taylor turned the beef into a hit with "Bad Blood," and Katy swung and missed with her attempt at a clapback, "Swish Swish." The two famously buried the hatchet in Taylor's "You Need to Calm Down" music video in 2019, and the rest is ancient history.
"After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own / Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone / But you keep my old scarf from that very first week / 'Cause it reminds you of innocence / And it smells like me / You can't get rid of it / 'Cause you remember it all too well, yeah."
Ah, the famous red scarf. It symbolizes Taylor's "innocence," which she memorialized losing to Jake Gyllenhaal in every Swiftie's favorite song, "All Too Well" on the Red album. Even his sister, Maggie has been asked about the famous scarf in interviews over the years—but like Taylor told us, it isn't real. It's symbolic, and it's ancient history. And if you want the full context, just watch the All Too Well short film, written and directed by Swift herself!
