lilhappytweety

[lilhappytweety]

crying over a picture of a dog watching the northern lights

[lilhappytweety]

Taylor Swift performs onstage during "The Eras Tour" at La Defense on May 10, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )

[lilhappytweety]

The Eras Tour: Paris.

[lilhappytweety]

fri(ends) - v

[lilhappytweety]

Throwback to when I took painkillers and woke up with Photoshop open on my computer to this image I had made

[lilhappytweety]

people are saying do it scared, but you also gotta do it alone. you'll miss out on so much you want to do if you wait til someone will do it with you. do it scared and do it alone.

[lilhappytweety]

[lilhappytweety]

This a a reminder to not fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy into something, does not mean you should indefinitely waste more time and energy on it, if you decide it’s not what you want anymore. This goes for anything, from books, to relationships, to jobs, to hobbies, etc.

If it’s not serving you anymore, move on.

[lilhappytweety]

I really love how THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is so in the moment and processing things as they happen while THE ANTHOLOGY is more reflective and takes a step back to look at specific moments and feelings. Both methods work really well together and her designating them to certain “sides” helps strengthen those ideas.

[lilhappytweety]

op is missing the point

the song being called “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” is irrelevant to the message it’s trying to convey. It’s actually kind of a RED HERRING.

the narrator starts the song IMAGINING their flame coming back to their apartment just like the old days just to realise they are not alone but with a new partner, this partner (as well as the sexual orientation of this person) is irrelevant to the story, it could have been anyone! but what haunts our narrator is actually all the what ifs.

what is actually important is that both the narrator and their flame watched the time past without acting on their feelings (this idea is later explored in Peter, this is another song that instead of portraying a worse image of however the narrator is singing about humanises them).

so, time passed and both parties idealised the hell out of their short time together, their youth, and the people who they were when they fell in love. this happens even to the best of us, it’s such a tragic and relatable feeling that the narrator describes in the album as self-destructive as well as kind of inventive.

the actual tea of this song it’s in the bridge: where the narrator admits that it doesn’t matter that they tried because it was never meant to be, so they kind of pathetically just plead to exist in the same world, forever wondering if that affair also affected the other person as much as they did to the narrator.

still, i wanna say that biphobia and the erasure of bisexuality, as well as outing a person are bad things, one should not encourage those, but that’s not even close to be the premise of this song. this song needs a lot of context and it doesn’t really matter who’s she singing about. ttpd it’s better enjoyed as a musical experience when you consider every song as a composite sketch, and if you don’t like her, then why are you tunning?

Is Taylor Swift trying to Out someone? or is she just sensationalizing Bisexuality in order to make herself into more of the poor, misbegotten lost lover?

Despite this being one of the more clunky, songs- the message is clear as day:

Swift writes, "Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness/ Named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus/ And I just watched it happen/As the decade would play us for fools /And you saw my bones out with somebody new/ Who seemed like he would've bullied you in school/ And you just watched it happen" (Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus).

Let's try to parse out what the hell she's trying to say. The song begins with her daydreaming about the lost lover moving on with.... several different names: female, ambiguously female, or outrightly male. Why throw in that final, masculine name? She is clearly saying that her last lover was bisexual. Now, I'm not in the business of speculating on the sexuality of others, however it seems that Swift has no problem whatsoever with sending her perpetually clue-finding fake Sherlockian fans to do her speculation dirty work.

I have no doubt she means for this song to start a rumor about whichever ex.

The next few lines make this even more abundantly clear, with the phrase "the decade would play us for fools" meaning to connect her real-life long-term relationship to the concept of both a "decade" and "fools."

She continues, "And you saw my bones out with somebody new/ who seemed like he would've bullied you in school. Swift could be saying that she's the one moving on with somebody new "who seems like he would have bullied him in school." Thus, he (the ex) is just watching it happen as the person who would have been bullied by Swift new man. It's such a weird line, is she implying that she will always be just bones? even in a new relationship? (please, Swift seek help).

Afterall, she is currently dating a football bro who would have for sure bullied people in school, especially shy music /drama-kids like any of her actor Ex's. Swift is also very much attached to picturing them through the lens of high school era imagery (as shown in "So High School).

So, why did she include a jab at bisexuality in the same song in which she states she's dating a high school bully? Clearly, Swift is outlining some type of fantastical reality in which she is the lover lost to time, always "wondering" as she mentions later in the song, while her bisexual ex is out there blowing through people. So, she's still the sad girl/good girl that is moving on, only with one guy. In this case, she is literally on the side of the bully, which is what we are supposed to root for as she denigrates her bisexual ex? It's such a weird premise for a song, that trying to write out a coherent interpretation is barley possible.

It sensationalizes bisexuality by using it to prop up her own sorrow at someone moving on, while it also typifying stereotypes of bisexual people as a bit... (for lack of a better word) slutty. There is no reason to list that many names unless she wants people to think he will move on with all those people, or a few of them, or one of them. The implication is clear, however, that she is using bisexuality as a prop in her own fantasy about how her ex, and her, would move on to their own respective people.

The high school bully bit remains...um... weird.

Anyway, someone please tell Taylor Swift to not rely on stereotypes of bisexuality as a prop for her own melodramatic fantasy about how she thinks her ex will move on.

It's deeply uncomfortable.

Also, Swift, you sound like a woman that peaked in High School.

#taylor swift #ttpd #the tortured poets department #chloe or sam or sophia or marcus

[lilhappytweety]

–Huda Fakhreddine

[lilhappytweety]

TAYLOR SWIFT Photographed by Beth Garrabrant for ''The Tortured Poets Department'' Part 1.

[lilhappytweety]

Since we're discussing down bad today I want you all to know that on the clean version Taylor replaces fuck with what and that puts such an interesting emphasis on her questioning herself, doubting herself, trying desperately to reconcile her feelings with the reality

What if I can't have him? I might just die it would make no difference

What if I can't have us? I might just not get up

Cause what if I was in love?

[lilhappytweety]

exactly, love being this only thing she can’t control, but also love being this thing that pushes her life (and her art) through.

love and it’s endless pursuit being her muse: that’s why we have songs like state of grace, mastermind, alchemy and the profecy

Down bad is I think a pivotal moment for Taylor where she's realising that she's been selling herself a narrative of fate-driven cosmic love for so long and it has hurt her!! Because if it's meant to be then you can ignore the red flags and try and squeeze yourself into a shape that isn't you.

She's come back down to earth and it's painful and she's covered in blood and she still wishes she could have that kind of love... but at least she's back on solid ground

#down bad #ttpdminutes #ttpd #taylor swift ttpd #ttpd lyrics #taylor swift lyrics analysis

[lilhappytweety]

Go off together?→!

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #you can run away with me #any time you want

[lilhappytweety]

here's what I love about loml: the melody and lyrics fit together so well that nothing sounds clunky, but she's still not compromising on artistic value. in fact, i'd say the shorter lyrics enhance the quality as its just sucker punch after sucker punch. the cadence of most of the song (as per the line fragments) sounds like someone taking short breaths, as if debilitatingly encumbered by emotion. or, if we take it further in the context of the funeral motif, like someone taking their last breaths.

there is this 'duality' (opposites) to the song in sooo many ways: first in the lyrics (never before/never since, one kiss/getting married, alive/cemetery, low-down boy/stand-up guy, all time/momentary, "I'll never leave"/"never mind") then in the first chorus she paints a picture of a wedding but its almost unnervingly unclear because of all the funeral diction (cemetery, killing time, (holy) ghost). as the song shifts from 'love' to 'loss,' the wedding image gets juxtaposed by one of a funeral, and YET there are parts where the two blur together (suit and tie, at some point that glow starts to feel like a hole) -> which I feel so perfectly represents the tension in that relationship where there is such a fine line separating the two harsh extremes.

even as the duality starts to dissolve past the first chorus (more emphasis on the 'loss' --> con man, get-love-quick scheme (scam), hole), the tender melody and pleasingly smooth vocals remain which creates this unsettling effect since that quiet peace has been flipped on its head to be turned into this quiet devastation. taking it one step further, the fact that this song is phrased to be written completely in hindsight (past tense throughout) it makes the quiet unassuming joy the speaker gets from their fictional wedding feel even more tragic.

by the time we get to the second chorus there is minimal ambiguity in her tone, it is 100% fully one of mourning and bordering on anger (as seen in the bridge). even in her contemptuous 'Mr. Steal Your Girl,' she follows it up with how hurt she feels over him calling her the love of his life as if she can't even be properly/fully angry at this person. in fact, that line is at the end of the chorus, almost symbolising how she can feel as angry as she wants at him, but despite all that there's this underlying grief and despair over his inability to follow through with his love-of-his-life promises. as the message gets clearer, the message/feeling of the song hits harder as there is less confusion or ambiguity.

in the bridge, there's this fantastical image of 'dancing phantoms' which reignites that confusion in the song with the added instability from the sinister image of the phantoms, plus the cadence of the song increases, she's talking faster now and there's less 'empty room,' indicating more pointed/stronger emotion. with the song's tone of this bone-deep grief, the 'terrace' might be a very very subtle nod to suicidal ideation, emphasis on the might. throughout the song she rattles btw love and loss, so this sudden suggestion that it was 'counterfeit' casts doubt on the validity of her emotions in the first place.

here we also start to move past from the duality as indicated by the three tiers of legendary -> momentary -> unnecessary, as if she is washing her hands of the whole affair ('should've let it STAY BURIED'). this lyric also indicates her moving past the duality as letting something stay buried implies that it has already been buried, ie its 'funeral' has passed, and the funeral motif was used as part of the duality representation from earlier.

anyways all this to say for most of the reasons above ^^ this song also gives me STRONG corpse bride vibes of which i made an edit here if anyone's interested :)

[lilhappytweety]

Whenever someone says “Wise men once said,” I feel the need to look up who wrote it first. If Google search results and the absence of it in Bartlet’s Familiar Quotations (fifteenth edition, at least) are to be believed, Taylor is probably the wise men in “The Albatross.” The closest thing I’ve found to “Wild winds are death to the candle,” is “Candle in the Wind” by Bernie Taupin (lyrics) and Elton John (music), originally written about Marilyn Monroe (and in later versions, Princess Diana), who died young after she “lived your life like a candle in the wind […] Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.”

It is

1) funny that Taylor calls herself a wise man while essentially talking shit about herself from the perspective of her detractors, and

2) interesting to me because, in the warnings, our narrator is being described as the wind, not the candle being burned out. By the end of the song, however, the albatross metaphor is subverted, and the albatross is the hero. If we reverse that first warning, too, it turns the narrator/Taylor back to the candle, at risk of being extinguished by the wind (in “Candle in the Wind,” that is to say, extinguished by the pressures of fame and the way we treat celebrities).

There’s also a loose (undoubtedly unintentional, but fun) connection to some historical tortured poets.

In Elton John: The Making of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (2001), Bernie Taupin said “I think the biggest misconception about ‘Candle In The Wind’ is that I was this rabid Marilyn Monroe fanatic, which really couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not that I didn’t have a respect for her. It’s just that the song could just as easily have been about James Dean or Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain. I mean, it could have been about Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf. I mean, basically, anybody, any writer, actor, actress, or musician who died young and sort of became this iconic picture of Dorian Gray, that thing where they simply stopped ageing. It’s a beauty frozen in time. In a way, I’m fascinated with that concept. So it’s really about how fame affects the man or woman in the street, that whole adulation thing and the fanaticism of fandom. It's pretty freaky how people really believe these people are somehow different from us.”

Lyricist Tim Rice added, “It’s not just the fact that it’s about Marilyn Monroe, because Marilyn died about forty years ago now nearly, yet the song’s still—well obviously it’s got the Diana connotations now—but it’s about all people who were misjudged in their lives. It’s a song about unfairness and the destruction of reputation. And a lot of people, I think, can—even if they haven’t been through that themselves—they can understand it in their heroes.”