Last Person I Communicated With: The Taylor Swift group chat was freaking out about a "traitor" (by Olivia Rodrigo) & "Burn" (from Hamilton) mashup (this one: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeW1h21G/)
Last Thing I Ate: Mediterranean chicken patty on a pretzel bun with a caesar salad (because I'm adult who cooks sometimes now)
Last Thing I Read: Stranger Than Fanfiction by Chris Colfer
Current Mood: nostalgic and content
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: Not today, but I've done a lot of summer teaching prep this week, so I'm relaxing today.
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: Take a shower and do some dishes
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: gotta do more summer teaching prep
One Reason I’m Happy Today: I'm really excited about starting a new book today (don't know which one yet)
Dear Apocalypsers,
There are 2 things you need to know before I start: 1) I graduated high school 7 years ago today and 2) Glee has changed my life.
I’ve watched all 6 seasons of Glee since February, so when I say it’s “changed my life,” I don’t mean that it was foundational to my high school career or that it inspired me to chase my Arts dreams or anything like that. (Full disclosure, I watched 20 episodes—S4E4 “The Break Up” to S5E1 “Love, Love, Love”—within 24 hours at one point because I was mad they broke Kurt and Blaine up and swore to watch until they got back together. Honestly, I think I watched Seasons 3-6 in a couple weeks.) I never got into the show in high school—which, in retrospect makes no sense—but I existed between 2009 and 2015, so I knew about the show, and I knew about every Taylor Swift cover, and I had definite opinions about them.
The number of times they broke Kurt & Blaine up was unreasonable. If you're gonna commit to teen marriage, then commit to it.
Dylan, you should have known...
But, no. Something about quarantine and my Trashy Teen Show watch history on Netflix led me to watching Glee nearly 6 years after it ended and nearly 12 years after it premiered. Now, I could write an entire blog series on things that show did poorly; I honestly thought I was on an extended acid trip for seasons 1-3A (and then I think I just adjusted to it and stopped questioning it, like it was a form of Stockholm Syndrome). I sent furious texts to so many people seeking some kind of explanation for what I was seeing. Surely it was satire…right? They wouldn’t present this to tweens and teens…in all seriousness? Or would they? And, if they did, how were we supposed to distinguish between the satire and the sincerity? Like I said, this could be an entire series.
Pretty sure he never forced me to watch Glee with him in high school because he KNEW I'd react like this and wanted to save himself.
I didn’t have a lot of expectations for Glee, but I certainly didn’t expect it to give me closure about my own high school experience.
Like I said in my opening, I graduated high school 7 years ago, and for the first time since then, I’ve been able to look at pictures of my friend group from that time and not feel like I’ve swallowed a razorblade and it’s just perforated my stomach. And that’s, strangely, thanks to Glee.
If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m an unfailing optimist, and I always have been. (I didn’t believe in love for four days my first semester of grad school, and it was, quite frankly, the most concerning time of my life.) I want every single moment to be straight out of a coming-of-age movie or a Disney fairytale. I want things to come full circle; I want signs from higher powers; sweepingly grand gestures, little miracles, and for my memories to all be coated in that warm, hazy, sunshine nostalgia that feels like a country song about your hometown. And as much as I’ve tried to force myself to “be more realistic” because I’m “getting older” and “can’t be this naïve,” but, dear readers, I’m writing this from a pillow fort I constructed in my living room a week ago. The point is, I don’t think my heart is ever going to “grow up” in the way that some people think it “should.”
But when your heart’s built like that, it gets broken more often than you think it will and you have to decide to keep believing that it will all work out like a YA movie.
That’s what I didn’t realize when I graduated high school.
My high school friend group were the first people to break my heart.
When we graduated, we were all going different places—as you do when you graduate high school. I was cut up about it literally all of Senior Year. I did the thing I do when I try to make every moment count; everything is heightened and important, and it matters. I started school in August holding on like it was May and they were leaving me the next day. And they laughed at me for it.
“There’s so much time.”
“Where are you even going to college?”
“We’ll always be friends.”
We’ll always be friends. That’s what I wanted, of course. That’s what I had planned. (I do love a good plan, you know.) And I would have done anything to make that happen.
This was Dylan's 18th birthday party. It was a decades themed murder mystery that I wrote.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
I see now why it didn’t work out. We all had growing to do. Most of those friendships were friendships or convenience, of having grow up together, of having a place in the social war zone that is the high school hallways. I still talk to all of them. We like each other’s Instagram posts and respond to Snapchat stories, but I’m only close to one of them, really. And that almost makes my heart break more, because nothing happened. There was no big implosion, so there’s no one to blame. We just…grew apart.
But they told me not to worry. They said we’d always be friends. And, like falling asleep—slowly, then all at once, as the 2014 Tumblr posts said—my worst fear came true, and we…weren’t.
By the end of my freshman year of college, we pretty much weren’t speaking, and we definitely weren’t hanging out. And I was jaded and resentful about that for years.
We were supposed to be in each other’s weddings where they married their high school sweethearts. But, instead, they all broke up. We were supposed to move to New York City and live in the same apartment building. Instead, all but 2 of us are still in Alabama. (Maybe 3; I honestly don’t know where one of the guys is.) And 4 out of the 8 are within 20 minutes of our hometown. We were supposed to live together and fall in love together and have all the quintessential young person sitcom struggles, and we were supposed to reminisce and laugh about it all when we were middle-aged and our children were all best friends. We were supposed to be each other’s go-tos, ride-or-dies forever. Instead, I find out about relationships from updated Facebook statuses instead of giddy midnight phone calls, and I know I’ll find out about engagements and pregnancies and births the same way.
Reading that back, it all sounds a little silly and unreasonable to expect us to stay locked into that high school mentality for the rest of our lives. But, in my defense, every book or movie I saw about high school had the main characters staying friends. So when I realized in undergrad that my friend group was unravelling/had unraveled, I was constantly trying to blame someone for taking away the fairytale that should have been.
One of the highlights of Senior Year was the Piedmont Band Competition where we won all these trophies! I was beyond proud!
I blamed myself for a while: “Maybe I shouldn’t post so much about my new friends. Maybe my old friends feel like I’m replacing them and pushing them away.” (But, if you know me, you know I’m “all in.” I fall in love fast and hard and loud.) Then, I blamed them: “They let it go. They gave up. They abandoned me. They didn’t want this as much as I did.” (The last statement is a sentiment that’s plagued my entire life, and it’s always the sentiment that, regardless of the truth of it, breaks my heart the most.)
And for a long, long time, I carried some cynicism and resentment with me. I realized recently that I didn’t have a single high school picture up in my apartment. The photos had been up in my college dorm room, but stayed packed away when I moved to Kansas. And it didn’t bother me until nearly 3 years later. Because, until I watched Glee, it hurt too much. Because when I looked at those pictures and my smiley, naïve face, all I saw were broken promises of forever. (Dramatic, I know, but very raw and honest and real for what I was feeling at that time of my life.)
So you’re wondering, “How on Earth did Glee give you closure?”
Great question.
The answer hit me like a Lady Gaga group number to the face.
The answer is that: because the Glee kids got what I had always wanted for me and my friends.
Giving myself whiplash the way my tone changed between 1AM and 6PM
In Season 4, Rachel and Kurt move to New York and live together while attending NYADA (fictional performing arts school a la Julliard). Artie is already in Brooklyn for film school. Eventually Santana (who leaves her cheerleading scholarship at the University of Louisville to pursue her dreams of being a star), Mercedes (who convinces her producers to move her to New York from LA to give her album a “more urban” sound), Sam (whose character motivation is to be a male model and see himself half naked on the side of a bus, but is there for the plot purpose of getting back together with Mercedes), and Blaine (who’s also attending NYADA but is also engaged to Kurt by this point) all join them, and they all basically share 2 apartments for Seasons 4-6.
So they got that dream of mine: running away to NYC, living together, and pursuing their dreams.
Screenshot from S5E14 "New York, New York" of Sam, Blaine, Artie, Rachel, and Kurt in the apartment in Bushwick.
They also get to marry their high school sweethearts—not without an unnecessary amount of heart palpitating drama, but still. In a move that I’ve learned is either loved or loathed by fans, there was a Brittany/Santana and Kurt/Blaine double wedding in Season 6. All their friends were there, and they were bridesmaids and groomsmen, and it was everything! And, yes, they’re only 20-21 at that point, and, yes Kurt and Blaine got engaged when they were 18-19, and, yes, I logically know that it’s ridiculous, but my romance-loving, true-love-believing Pisces heart absolutely eats that kind of stuff up.
So they got another dream of mine.
Santana & Brittany and Kurt & Blaine's double wedding in S6E8 "A Wedding"
But what really solidified all of my feelings was the time jump in the series finale. It flashed forward 5 years, to 2020 (big yikes!) making the Class of 2012—Rachel, Kurt, Quinn, Santana, Brittany*, Mercedes, Artie, Mike, Finn**, and Puck—26-years-old, and the Class of 2013—Sam, Blaine, Tina—25-years-old; basically, they were supposed to be the age I am now.
And, in that flashback, we get the most perfect Katie Cline Ending: it all works out for them; their dreams come true. Rachel, now married to Jesse St. James (whom she dated in Season 1, so she also kind of gets to marry her high school sweetheart) wins her Tony while all of her friends watch. She’s also very pregnant, acting as a surrogate for Kurt and Blaine, who are still married and performing together (most recently in the first “LGBTQ version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? at Lincoln Center,” which I would pay so much to see, honestly). Mercedes has had a world tour of her own, and Tina starred in Artie’s film which got accepted to “Slamdance” film festival. (They’re also together, which is wrong, because it should have been Mike and Tina, but whatever. Also, Mike went to the Joffrey Ballet Academy of Dance in Chicago after graduating.)
All of those dreams that people laughed at them for for 6 seasons came true. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted for my friends.
(*Brittany was supposed to graduate in 2012 but had to repeat her Senior Year. **After actor Cory Monteith’s death in 2013, Finn was written off the show, so he isn’t featured in the Season 6 flashback.)
So, you’d think that seeing these fictional characters live out my dreams would make me sadder and angstier—but it didn’t. It strangely gave me a sense of closure. And I can’t explain why unless you also happen to be an unfailing optimist with a romance-loving, true-love-believing Pisces heart colored with warm, hazy nostalgia and a hint of naivety. But, basically, I liked seeing that it was all possible—even if it was just fictional characters on long-finished TV show. Just seeing it made it feel more real and less like a pipe dream.
I honestly think that if I had watched Glee while it aired, I wouldn’t have viewed the finale the same way. It aired in March 2015, the middle of my second semester of my freshman year of college, right when I was realizing that my high school friends weren’t going to be the “forever friend group” I had hoped and begged and fought for. Seeing the finale at that point in my life would have been like rubbing salt in the wound. But enough time has passed that watching it in 2021 didn’t sting (as much; I definitely felt some twinges of jealousy). And I definitely still sobbed, but I was happy—for the characters, because I get ridiculously attached to fictional characters, and for me, because I still want those things to happen to me and my friends, and I still honestly believe we can have it in some way, shape, or form.
I don't think a day has passed in 7 years that I haven't thought about at least one of these weirdos.
I recently told a friend that I go into every relationship expecting to be hurt. (Let’s not try to unpack that now.) That’s something that high school taught me, because I was blindsided when my fantasies didn’t become reality. Now, I still throw myself into friendships. I still come on strong and love too quickly and refuse to let it go until it’s pried forcibly from my hands. But now I do it with the expectation that it will end. Theoretically, that knowledge should make me more reserved and cautious, but I’m not in the habit of depriving myself of good things. I’d rather give everything for 2 years and make the most of that time than sequester myself off in an effort not to get hurt.
I have a soft heart; I’m going to get hurt regardless, so I might as well enjoy every moment that comes before the inevitable heartbreak.
So, to all my artist friends, this has been a very long-winded explanation as to why I’m also so aggressively supportive of your dreams: I want to have our Glee moment. I want to cheer you on when your book is published and wins awards and is made into a blockbuster movie; I want to be backstage at your Broadway debut and sit with you when you get your first (of many) Tony nominations and when you win it; I want to be the first follower on your indie film’s social media so that I can follow it all the way to its Oscar win. It’s why I jokingly ask for your autographs and tell Twitter how big you’re going to be—because I believe in the silliest and most far-fetched things, but because I believe in the most magical and wonderful things, too.
There’s a song in the Glee finale called “This Time.” Darren Criss (Blaine Anderson) wrote it and Lea Michele (Rachel Berry) sings it. And it’s such a me song that I can’t be embarrassed about loving it with every bit of my being. I mean, I dare you to listen to it and not think of me:
“These walls and all these picture frames
Every name they show
These halls I've walked a thousand times
Heartbreaks and valentines, friends of mine all know
I look at everything I was
And everything I ever loved
And I can see how much I've grown”
…
“I think of all the things I did and how I wish I knew what I know now
I see how far I've come and what I got right
When I was looking for that spotlight
I was looking for myself
Got over what I was afraid of
I showed 'em all that I was made of
More than trophies on a shelf
For all the battles that we lost or might have won
I never stopped believing in the words we sung, we sung”
…
And the chorus:
“This time no one's gonna say goodbye
I keep you in this heart of mine
This time I know it's never over
No matter who or what I am
I'll carry where we all began
This time that we had, I will hold forever”
This song is how I feel about every friendship I’ve ever been a part of, about every school I’ve left (with varying degrees of jaded cynicism and resentment—because I’m definitely not on good emotional terms with my undergrad yet).
“I never stopped believing in the words we sung” is an obvious reference to “Don’t Stop Believing,” which I think Glee was contractually obligated to perform once a season, but the line resonates with me because I have never stopped believing in these dreams and the possibility of reaching a “coming-of-age movie level of happiness.”
I also keep coming back to the lines “When I was looking for that spotlight / I was looking for myself,” because, while I’ve never had hyper-specific, Rachel-Berry-level dreams of the spotlight, I do have a performer’s personality (but not really the talent), and I definitely see “spotlight” as translating to “being the best in your discipline” and publishing articles and writing books and winning awards and being liked wherever you go. And, to an extent, I think we all have our own definition of what that spotlight looks like—it’s whatever our dreams are—and while we’re getting there, we do have to find ourselves.
Okay, maybe I was a little bit of a ham. (These are all the Senior cast and crew members of The Secret Garden--just the straight play, not the musical, unfortunately...or fortunately if you knew my high school's relationship with musicals.)
I mean, what have I learned from this whole post? I want these neat endings all tied up with a bow because I crave certainty and reassurance and control. I want friendships to last forever because I hate conflict and want to be wanted. And I want to, need to, believe that remarkable and magical things can happen to kids from a small town in Ohio or Alabama or Kansas, because being a part of something special makes you special.
Or, as Rachel says in her Tony acceptance speech: “Being a part of something special does not make you special. Something is special because you are a part of that.”
That’s one lesson I’m still learning.
Talk to me 14 years after I’ve graduated high school, and we’ll see.
In the meantime, may the odds be ever in our favor,
Last Song I Listened To: “Bye Bye Baby” by Taylor Swift
Last Person I Communicated With: Dustin Vann on Snapchat
Last Thing I Ate: cereal
Last Thing I Read: Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli
Current Mood: motivated
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: woke up before noon
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: catch up on grading the final projects for my classes
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I have got to clean my apartment because my family is coming into town tomorrow (for graduation!)
One Reason I’m Happy Today: My parents and brother are coming to Manhattan this week!!!!!!!
Dear Apocalypsers,
It’s only fair to warn
you that I’m starting this blog post a 1:58AM on Friday, April 9, 2021. [narrator
voice: Katie had high hopes to publish this the week of the release. For
reasons, that did not happen, and it was published a month later.] I am definitely a little wine buzzed, so I
doubt I’ll finish the post, but I need you to know that Fearless (Taylor’s
Version) dropped tonight, and it’s giving me major feelings.
Obviously, Taylor Swift
always gives me feelings, so that’s no surprise, but there’s something about
this being a re-recording of a 13-year-old album that’s just adding to that.
I want to go over the
Vault Songs individually, and then I’ll hit the high points of the
re-recordings.
But, basically, I think
what we need to understand here is that this re-release (the first of 5) is a
moment in history—not just for Taylor and her fans, but for the music industry.
She’s re-recording music from over a decade ago, music that she loves and
created herself, so that she can own the rights to it. And if the late-night
Twittersphere is anything to go off of, it’s a massive success. Of course, not
every artist has Taylor-Swift-level power, reach, and fan support, but it’s
still a statement. Artists should own the songs they write and record
and perform, even if they switch record labels. So I’m very excited to see how
Taylor continues to revolutionize music. She’s such a special talent, and I think
she’s one of the most genuine celebrities out there. I |got Fearless:
Platinum Edition (and her debut) for Christmas 2009 when I was
13-years-old. I had been listening to her music for a couple of years by that
point, but these were the first of her albums I owned—and I feel so lucky to
exist at a time when I can both remember Fearless (2008) and Fearless
(Taylor’s Version).
So here we go:
“You All Over Me (ft.
Maren Morris) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
Favorite lyric: “So I
lied, and I cried / And I watched a part of myself die / ‘Cause no amount of
freedom gets you clean / I’ve still got you all over me”
This was the first Vault
Song we ever got. Taylor dropped it on March 26, 2021, and I’m going to be
honest: it’s still one of my favorites. I know that’s not a popular opinion
among most, but I love it, and I think I’m starting to piece together why.
I’ve had multiple people
now say to me (in relation to a TS song) something along the lines of, “How do
you connect to it?” (My best friend straight up asked me, “What do you think of
when you listen to one of her breakup songs?”, knowing I’ve never dated
anyone.) Just recently, I was having a Taylor Swift Zoom chat with some friends
and while on the topic of “relatable” TS songs, I said that something that
makes songs grow on me is knowing the story behind them. (I think it was in the
context of thinking about “my tears ricochet” being about her old label.) And
one of my friends kind of shook her head and crinkled her nose and said, “No,
only if it’s my story that I put to the song.” And I blanched for
a minute, and she said, “Not everyone is so empathetic, Katie.” And I’ve had to
process that for a while. There’s objectively no real reason I should relate
to “my tears ricochet” more just knowing that that’s what it’s about; I’ve
never had my life’s work kept from be by a sleazy producer. But, for me, it
means something. It made it click. I pinpoint the source of the pain of that
song and extrapolate more personal meaning from it. It’s about a betrayal of
trust, about thinking someone was there for you only to have the rug pulled out
from under your feet, about feeling like a stranger in a place (or person) you
once considered home. Those are things I can relate to.
So back to “You All Over
Me.” It’s definitely this beautiful prequel to “Clean” from 1989. Just
the parallel of “No amount of freedom gets you clean / I’ve still got you all
over me” and “Rain came pouring down / When I was drowning, that’s when I could
finally breathe / And by morning, gone was every trace of you / I think I am
finally clean.” THAT. GROWTH. From “I can never escape this” to “I’m literally
being suffocated by it all, but it doesn’t bother me” is like *chef’s kiss*.
And, in general, I’m just kind of living for the angst and wallowing in the
pain of this song. I’m a feelings person. I feel a lot, and I’m very vocal
about it. And I firmly believe that sometimes you just need time to feel like
the world’s over; give yourself that time to grieve and then get back up and
keep going. If you don’t give yourself that time, it’ll fester and you’ll actually
never be clean of it.
And, yes, there are things
in my life that I feel are still all over me. Some of them are people, but not
in a “we dated and you hurt me and messed me up” kind of way, but more of a “we
have unfinished business together, and sometimes I feel like I’ll never get
answers” kind of way. And, more holistically, I feel that way about my
hometown. Y’all know I’m a sucker for hometowns and small towns and the way
that they feel either comforting or suffocation (usually a mixture of both!).
And so when Taylor says “So I lied, and I cried / And I watched a part of
myself die / ‘Cause no amount of freedom gets you clean / I’ve still got you
all over me,” that feels like me talking to Jacksonville. Part of me will
always be in Jacksonville, AL. It’s where I grew up, graduated high school,
went to college—there’s so much of “me” there, but it’s not the same me that I
am now. And I’m okay with that most of the time. There are things that happened
there that I want to forget, things that are messy and painful and hard, but
they’re a part of me. And no amount of “escape” or “freedom” (words that are so
often associated with leaving your hometown, especially when it’s small and
southern) will ever separate those things from me. I still talk about the
tornado, my classmate who died freshman year, and all the people my age who
have been diagnosed with cancer even though I’m 900 miles away from the place
it happened. It’s still all over me.
And I don’t know if
that’s supposed to be really sad or really comforting—maybe both.
“Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
Favorite lyric: “'Cause
I hear he's got his arm 'round a brand-new girl / I've been pickin' up my
heart, he's been pickin' up her”
Everyone say, “Thank you, Joe Jonas.” For reference, the fandom
doesn’t really hate Joe. They were teenagers when they broke up, and it was
messy, and Taylor was dramatic about it, but apologies have been made, growth
has happened, and now she sends his baby presents (thank you, “invisible
string”). So, we genuinely thank Joe for inspiring some bops: “Forever &
Always,” “Last Kiss,” and “Better Than Revenge”—and now, “Mr. Perfectly Fine”
(maybe “You All Over Me,” too, but definitely “Mr. Perfectly Fine”).
Sophie chose to be a Swiftie over being a wife and we stan that choice
And, wow, do we like “Mr. Perfectly Fine.” I mean, these are songs
she wrote ~age 18, so we’re not expecting “Do you still miss the rogue who
coaxed you into paradise and left you there?”-level lyrics (that’s from “coney
island” on evermore, btw), but the Fearless era is so iconic for
its storytelling, so we did have certain expectations. “Mr. Perfectly Fine” is
definitely an angsty bop in line with “Tell Me Why” and “That’s the Way I Loved
You,” but it still paints a wonderful picture if this young woman who’s been
blindsided and heartbroken and feels like her ex is woefully unaffected. (What.
A. Mood.) This song made me mad at my friends’ high school exes. I remember
those heartbreaks. The first one always hurts. I remember planning their
weddings, and then it was over.
It’s easy to look back 10 years later and say, “Oh, that was naïve. We were
young. That was never going to be forever.” But at the time, you feel it all so
keenly—and that’s what this song does. It’s very raw and sassy, and it’s what
teenagers feel when they’re grieving. But what I really, really love is when she does her
classic Taylor thing and turns the whole song on its end for the bridge and
last chorus. In this one, she says, “’Cause I was Miss Here To Stay / Now I’m
Miss Gonna Be Alright Someday / And someday maybe you’ll miss me / But by then,
you’ll be Mr. Too Late” and all the “hellos” in the chorus become “goodbyes.”
What I think Taylor Swift does well is that a lot of her breakup songs don’t
stay in the sadness of the breakup. She spins it into “I’m going to be okay.”
We see it in “White Horse” when she changes “I’m not a princess” to “I’m not your
princess” and “This ain’t Hollywood / This is a small town / I was a dreamer
before you went and let me down” to “This is a big world / That was a small
town / There in my rearview mirror disappearing now” (which, by the way, I sing
that line whenever I leave Jacksonville). I like that she’s giving girls the
okay to be sad or mad or hurt by that loss and then saying, “But there’s so
much more for you out there. Your value doesn’t come from an ex. In your life
you’ll do things bigger than dating the boy on the football team.”
“We Were Happy (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
Favorite lyric: “I do
recall a good while back we snuck into the circus / You threw your arms around
my neck, back when I deserved it” or “No one could touch the way we laughed in
the dark / Talking 'bout your daddy's farm / And you were gonna marry me”
What a gut punch of a
song! You can pretty much guarantee that when Taylor Swift puts “happy” in the
title of a song that it’s going to be the saddest thing ever (ie, “happiness").
When Mikayla and I did our Fearless (Taylor’s Version) listening party,
we started with the Vault Songs, and I did my usual “first reaction” notes for
these new ones we’d never heard. My immediate reactions were as follows:
"SAD BALLAD GUITAR”
“like the antithesis of ‘I’m Only Me When I’m
With You’ [from her debut album]”
“definitely wrote it when she was young” [I
could see this on her debut album, tbh
“the last chorus!!! Changes ‘we were gonna’ by
someday’ to ‘you were gonna’ marry me’”
“That was so yeehaw sad!” –a direct quote from
me
In addition to the lyric
change in the last chorus I also noted the other lines from my “favorite
lyrics” section above. Something about the lines “back when I deserved it” just
breaks my heart. I think the strength of this song is that it isn’t just a
breakup song about a relationship that’s ended. Lyrics like “back when I
deserved it” imply that the narrator’s done something to not deserve it
anymore. And that’s confirmed in the bridge (all hail the Bridge Queen!) with
the lines, “Oh, I hate those voices / Tellin' me I'm not in love anymore / But
they don’t give me choices / And that’s what these tears are for.” I’m
absolutely losing my mind at how complex that idea is and that she recognized
it when she was 16-18 years old! Like, the narrator just kind of realizes that
the relationship isn’t working—and there’s not really a reason for it, but they
know they’re not in love anymore the way they should be, the way they want
to be. Those kind of realizations always get me, I think, because I like
being right, and for me to be “right,” someone else has to be “wrong,” and I
like when relationships can be neatly broken down and justified like that.
(Spoiler alert: they never can be.)
And that lyric switch-up
in the chorus is just as bad. First, just the switch from collective
first-person to singular second person (“WE were gonna’ buy someday” to “YOU
were gonna’ marry me”) is a lot. The narrator has taken themselves out of that
fantasy, that fantasy that they’d spent so much time thinking about. And again,
Taylor puts the blame for their breakup on herself. Marriage is our society’s
highest level of commitment; there’s so much gravity and importance put on it,
so when you say something like, “I was going to marry you” or “We were going to
get married,” it means something. But in “We Were Happy,” the narrator wasn’t
the one with big, important dreams that got crushed, it was her significant
other. Like, “you wanted to marry me, but I’m not so sure I wanted to marry
you.” And yikes. Wow. That hurts.
In TV shows and movies,
the worst breakups for me aren’t the cheating or long-distance failures or the
disapproving family—no, it’s always the ones where one party is 100% in love
with the other, but the other party just isn’t feeling it; they care about that
person, and they want to try to make it works—because it should work,
right?—but they know it their heart that it’s not what they want or need, and
it’s no one’s fault. That always hurts me on a deep personal level of my
psyche. (Maybe it’s because I’m terrified of my best not being good enough.
That feels like the reason.)
So, yeah. “We Were
Happy” is just a big old ball of yeehaw feels, and I’m here for it.
“That’s When (ft. Keith Urban) (Taylor’s Version) (From the
Vault)”
Favorite lyric: the
whole outro where “That’s when, when I wake up in the morning / That’s when,
when it’s sunny or storming” is playing and Taylor’s also singing, “That’s when
I miss you / That’s when I want you / That’s when I love you”
This is actually one
that’s grown on me since the album came out. I wasn’t totally sold on it at
first, but the chorus is so catchy! However, I do have to point out that we
have another collab where the collaborator gets a full verse—and that
collaborator happens to be a man. I’ve listed all the female “collabs” she’s
done where the women only sing backup—“Breathe (Ft. Colbie Callait),”“SoonYou’ll Get Better (ft. The Chicks),” and “no body, no crime (ft. HAIM)”—and now
we’ve added Maren Morris’ “feature” of glorified background vocals. Meanwhile,
Ed Sheeran, Gary Lightfoot, Kendrick Lamar, Future, Bon Iver, and now Keith
Urban all get full verses on her songs. It’s so frustrating, honestly.
That being said, “That’s
When” is kind of a bop, and here were my initial notes on it on first listen:
kinda a slow jam??? Grooving???”
“Hello, Keith! He did the ‘I-I-I’ bit!” [I
wasn’t expecting that]
“I see why this song was the duet”
“She’s probs gonna do a big ‘that’s when’
reveal”
OUTRO!!! “That’s when I miss you / that’s when I
love you”
“Opposite of ‘The Moment I Knew’ (Red)”
“Music at odds with lyrics: music = groove,
lyrics = toxic”
If there’s anything to
be said about Taylor Swift, it’s that her ideas about love have definitely
matured since she was writing songs at 18. And while “That’s When” doesn’t make
me panic the way “That’s the Way I Loved You” does, there are still some lyrics
that make me go, “Ooohhh maybe breaking up is the right thing to do.” The whole
song feels a little back-and-forth, on-and-off: “I said, ‘I know’ / When you said, ‘I did you
wrong, made mistakes / And put you through all of this’"—and then it’s
like, “Nah, it’s cool, come back whenever.” I feel like some things need to be
discussed before they just forget it all and get back together. But, hey, at
18, I, too, would have wanted the “quick fix, let it be okay path.”
I also want to comment
on how a lot of people are confused by the lyrics and phrasing, especially in
the chorus, but, to me, it seems to follow a pretty “Taylor Swift-y” pattern.
The verse ends with, “When can I come back?” and the other party is answering
“That’s when” but the full statement is “that’s when you can come back.” And
the fact that the chorus is “That’s when, when I wake up in the mornin' / That's
when, when it's sunny or stormin' / Laughin' when I'm cryin'” is basically
saying, “You can come back whenever.” It’s similar to the lyrics in “CruelSummer” where she inverts the nouns and adjectives in the phrases, “It’s new, the
shape of your body / It’s blue, the feeling I got.” What she’s saying is “The
shape of your body is new” and “The feeling I’ve got is blue.” It’s a process
known as topicalization which is “a mechanism of syntax that establishes an
expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of
the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the
right).”
Anyway, I like “That’s
When,” but I wouldn’t necessarily take dating advice from it. I think it’s a
great addition to the Fearless era, and I love that she got to collab
with Keith Urban, whom she always cited as a big influence during her country
days. It’s kind of also a very sweet personification of country music welcoming
her back into its folds so easily. She said, “When can I come back?” and
country music said, “That’s when.”
“Don’t You (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
Favorite lyric: “Hey, I
knew I'd run into you somewhere / It's been a while, I didn't mean to stare / I
heard she's nothin' like me / I'm sure she'll make you happy”
Full disclosure: this is
my least favorite of the Vault Songs. (Sorry to that one ranking I saw that
listed this one as the best.) It’s not a bop, and it’s not emotionally
resonating enough for a proper TS ballad in my opinion.
What I do like about
this song is how smart it is lyrically. I mean, it’s 2021, let’s stop
pretending that Taylor Swift isn’t the best songwriter we’ve seen in decades
and that she hasn’t always been this talented. I’ve always been a lyrics
person. I honestly can’t understand how people listen to music for the…well,
music. That means so much less to me than the words. (This is probably why I
have 2 English degrees, huh?) And Taylor has been crushing the lyric game since
she was a literal teen.
Hence, “Don’t You.” The
whole chorus is this wonderfully smart play on the phrase “don’t you.” On one
hand, she uses it as an imperative: “Don't you smile at me and ask me how I've
been / Don't you say you've missed me if you don't want me again.” But in the
next lines, she flips it to play off a different meaning: “You don't know how
much I feel I love you still / So why don't you, don't you?”
(For fun, enjoy me listening to "The Other Side of the Door (Taylor's Version) at, like 2AM on April 9th)
And I think that’s
genius for a 16-18-year-old. That play on words reflects a lot of the
back-and-forth tension of Fearless, too. Like, “I’m being contradictory,
but I love you” is so indicative of her writing for this era. We see it in “TheOther Side of the Door” (“I said ‘Leave,’ but all I really want is you / To
stand outside my window, throwin’ pebbles / Screamin’ ‘I’m in love with you!’”)
and “That’s the Way I Loved You” (“I miss screamin’ and fightin’ and kissin’ in
the rain / It’s 2AM, and I’m cursin’ your name / I’m so in love that I acted
insane, / And that’s the way I loved you”). So, in that sense, “Don’t You” fits
perfectly into the Fearless Fam.
But, finally, here are
my initial comments on the song:
“Unless there’s a beat drop, this is gonna’ be a
slow song” [omg, a beat drop in this song would have made my jaw come
unhinged!]
“THIS WAS PLAYING BACKWARDS IN THE VAULT VIDEO”
[for context, see tweet below]
“Production is very OG Fearless, tbh”
“Almost has ‘Clean’ production vibes…Is that a
flute at the end??”
“Plays with ‘don’t you do this’ & ‘why don’t
you?’”
“Bye Bye Baby (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)”
Favorite lyric: “Bye bye
to everything I thought was one my side” or “I see your writing on the dash / Then
back to your hesitation / I was so sure of everything / Everything I thought
we'd always have / Guess I never doubted it / Then the here and the now floods
in / Feels like I'm becoming a part of your past”
Okay, I thought “We Were
Happy” would be my favorite New Vault Song, but then Ms. Taylor Alison Swift
smacked me in the face with “Bye Bye Baby,” and this song is my child. I love
it. I will defend and protect it against all evil. I will not hear nary a word
against it. So, buckle up, because I have thoughts.
First of all, my only
comments for this song were:
“again, less twang”
“I ALREADY LOVE IT”
“DRIVING!!!” [underlined 3 times, taking up 4
lines in my notebook]
“‘I’m driving’” [I honestly blacked out at this
point because I was thinking about my conference paper]
“‘feels like I’m becoming a part of your past’”
“VOCALS ON ‘BABY’ AT THE END”
That’s all she wrote. And
you know that when I really love a song, I don’t analyze it on the first
listen-through. My brain shuts off, and I just have to absorb it—and it takes a
lot to shut my brain off. But that’s what happened when I heard “Bye Bye
Baby.”
I guess I want to start
off by saying that the motif of driving in Taylor’s songs is deeply, deeply
important to me. I’ve been bouncing around ideas for a paper about it for a
couple years now, and I’m finally going to present it at the PCA conference in
June. But, basically, driving has historically been connected to freedom and
independence. When women started driving more around WWI, that’s how car
companies marketed their vehicles to women. When Saudi Arabia lifted its ban on
women driving in 2018, women are quoted as saying that they felt free and
empowered. Think about when you were 16 getting your drivers license and how
excited you were to not have to ask to be taken somewhere; you could just get
in the car and take yourself. Culturally, driving equates to freedom, control,
independence—but Taylor Swift doesn’t do a lot of driving in her songs. (And,
yes, I have a whole theory as to why that is, but you’ll have to wait for my
presentation to find out. 😉)
So the fact that the lines, “I'm driving away and I, I guess you could say / This
is the last time I'll drive this way again” are in a song that was originally
cut from Fearless only to make “Taylor’s Version” that she now owns in
its entirety is really significant to my argument. Because she didn’t have that
control when she was 18, and now she does. It’s also eerie that she says “I
guess you could say this is the last time I’ll drive this way again” because
“Breathe” (on the original cut of Fearless) is the last time she says “I
drive” until Lover in 2019, the first album she owns herself. So it was
kind of the last time she drove.
— Katie Cline (Taylor's Version) (@katiebethbug) April 9, 2021
Besides my personal
infatuation with driving, the lyrics of this song just hit me. I basically cite
the whole second verse as my favorite lyrics: “The picture frame is empty / On
the dresser, vacant just like me / I see your writing on the dash / Then back
to your hesitation / I was so sure of everything / Everything I thought we'd
always have / Guess I never doubted it / Then the here and the now floods in /
Feels like I'm becoming a part of your past.”
Anyone who’s ever met me
I hope sees that I give my all to everything I do; teaching, writing, party
planning, friendships, holidays all get 100+% from me. But over the years I’ve
developed this weird relationship with people, and I’ve stopped expecting the
same from them that I expect from myself, because I’m always disappointed when
I expect people to do things the way I would (we can unpack all of that later).
So I kind of go into relationships expecting to be hurt at some point. I don’t
think it keeps me from giving my all, because that’s not the kind of person I
am, but I think it does make me hold on that much tighter to things. I
refuse to let relationships go until it’s the last possible option.
So I think that’s why
this second verse of “Bye Bye Baby” really strikes a chord with me. She’s
thinking about how sure and naïve she was when he wasn’t on that same page and
how she feels like maybe she should have seen it. But she was too busy living
in that daydream until “the here and the now floods in.” And, boy, do I know
what the here and the now flooding in feels like. It’s when the balloon pops;
it’s when the dam breaks; it’s leaving the popcorn in the microwave a few
seconds too long and then smelling smoke. Sometimes feelings just hit you (or
maybe just me) all of a sudden and you know that you’ll never think about
something the way you did 2 minutes ago.
I guess the here and the
now flooding in doesn’t always have to be bad. Sometimes I take a minute to
look at my life, and I feel so grateful for where I am and what I’m doing that
I’m taken aback by it all. But in the case of this song, the phrase definitely
refers to the unsavory dose of reality that ruins the moment, the rose color
being stripped off your glasses. And that’s a very real and very hard part of
growing up. So, once again, Taylor Swift sees me in these lyrics, and
I’m remarkably okay with it.
OTHER SONGS
Okay, I promised not to
go through each of the other 20 songs, but I do want to make a few notes,
because these are the first re-recordings, and I’m so pumped to see how/if this
trend continues.
First, there are a
couple of seemingly insignificant lyric changes. But, more than that, I want to
address the emotional come-apart I had when rehearing some of these songs after
all the Muchness of the last 13 years.
Let’s move along
chronologically, shall we?
“Fifteen (Taylor’s
Version)”:
As expected, I sobbed to
this song. I was 12 when it was released, and I interpreted it as “Things To
Expect When You’re 15, Katie.” I took it as guidelines, a warning, a way to
protect myself and my friends and our hearts when we got to that age. (Spoiler:
we didn’t listen.) And while that’s a fun way for a young teen to approach that
song, some lyrics just hit differently when you’re 25 and thinking about 15.
When I was 15, I didn’t sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail, but I did
sit in History class next to a boy named Dylan who quickly became one of my
very best friends.
For context, here's me at 15 (pictured left). This must have been Homecoming Week my Sophomore Year of high school. The dress-up day theme appears to have been "Cowboys/Country"
Same week, but Decades Day. This is my attempt at the 80s. I still have this shirt. It's super comfy.
We did laugh at the other kids who thought they were so
cool, and we did say we’d be out of there as soon as we could. At that point, I
was happy to have a friend to get through two years of history class taught by
our particularly crazy history teacher, and I had no idea that we’d still be
friends a decade later—but we are, and I’m so grateful for all our adventures.
But the lyrics that I knew would ruin me are “Back then I swore I was
gonna’ marry him someday / But I realized some bigger dreams of mine” and “In
your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team / I
didn’t know it at 15.” Sure, it’s relevant to me—though I never actually dated
any boy on the football team, but I definitely thought of it as the pinnacle of
High School Culture—but I think about it in terms of Taylor’s life, because I
watched her grow up and I respected her and her music, and I think about all
she’s been through, all the boys she probably thought she was going to marry
and all the dreams she had that actually have come true and all the
things she’s done that she never could have dreamed up. I’ve watched her grow
and struggle and speak up and find herself, and she’s always been professional
and kind and generous. I’m in awe of how she’s kept her head despite everything
that’s been thrown at her. And when she wrote those lyrics at 18, she didn’t
know that the real trial by fire was still yet to come, so I imagine that
signing them again for these re-recordings that she owns in full was even more
emotional for her than it was for me.
“Love Story (Taylor’s
Version)”:
I won’t spend too long
on this one. We all know it’s iconic. I’ve probably heard the song 1000 times
because it was played so much in 2008. So what I want to talk about is the
lyric video she did for it, because if you’ve been living under a rock and
haven’t seen it, it’s a tearjerker. Because she reframes the love story not as
being between a boy and a girl, but as being between Taylor and her fans. It’s
a slideshow of pictures from her Fearless World Tour, the first tour she
headlined. The song starts and ends with the lyrics “We were both young when I
first saw you,” and that’s making me tear up right now, because when you
recontextualize that as being about the fans who have been there since the
beginning, it’s such a beautiful sentiment from an artist to her fanbase. She
was 19 when the tour opened in April 2009; I was 13 and had already been a fan
for a couple years (as much as you can be a fan of something when you’re 10 or
11 in the early 2000s). And I’ve been hooked on her ever since. So many artists
wouldn’t recognize that or act on it, but Taylor did, and it’s either genuine kindness
or a great marketing ploy that led her to re-dedicate one of her biggest songs
of her career to her fans that have been there all this time. I choose to
believe it’s the former.
“White Horse (Taylor’s
Version)”:
Well, you know I love a
reference to a fairytale, so “White Horse” has always had a special place in my
heart. The fans were so ready to hear the re-record, because it’s one of
her first big heartbreak ballads, and knowing that she and Joe Alwyn have been
together for over 4 years now, we just knew “I’m not a princess, this ain’t a
fairytale / I’m gonna’ find someone someday who might actually treat me well”
was going to hit harder, because now she has found someone who treats
her well, and that gives us so much hope for our own love lives. What no one
anticipated was the subtle lyric change to those lines that would rip our
hearts out and leave us changed for life. Because in “White Horse (Taylor’s
Version),” she changed the lyrics to, “I’m not your princess, this ain’t
our fairytale / I’m gonna’ find someone someday who might actually treat
me well.” It broke us. Collectively, we all died in that moment. Because it’s
this beautiful acknowledgement that while that heartache feels so permanent and
raw as a teenager, looking back on it at 31, she can see that it just wasn’t
right for them together, and that doesn’t mean that it won’t ever be
right. The lyric change fits beautifully with the lyrics of that last chorus
where she stops wallowing in that pain a little, picks herself up, and says,
“This is a big world / That was a small town / There in my rearview mirror
disappearing now / And it’s too late for you and your white horse to catch me
now.” That’s always been one of my favorite “Taylor Turnarounds,” and I was floored
to see her make it even more poignant in the re-recording.
“Tell Me Why (Taylor’s
Version)”:
I mostly bring up this
song as a “Mature Taylor Vocals Appreciation Post.” Go on YouTube, look up the
original version of “Tell Me Why,” make sure it’s not he official account (or
just pop in your old CD if you, like me, still have it), and listen for the
lines “And here’s to you and your temper / Yes I remember what you said last
night” in the chorus. Then, repeat for “Tell Me Why (Taylor’s Version).” To me,
it sounds like she’s straining to hit that note in the original. And to be
fair, she was young and pretty green at the time. But she absolutely smashes it
in the re-recording. Like, holy crap, my jaw dropped when I heard it the first
time. She jumps that voice break so smoothly and makes it sounds so easy now.
Like, what a glow up!! Yes, ma’am! Shame anyone who said you can’t sing!
It’s so good that I needed to point it out in this post.
“The Best Day (Taylor’s
Version)”:
I’ve always, always,
always loved this song. One little bragging point I’ve always had is that
Taylor Swift has a younger brother and so do I, so whenever she sings about her
brother, I feel like I can relate to it better than people who don’t. (It’s a
weak argument, I know, but let me have it.) So I think the bridge of this song
is extra sweet: “I have an excellent father / His strength is making me
stronger / God smiles on my little brother / Inside and out, he’s better than I
am.” But so much of what I love about this song is the story behind it. Taylor
wrote it for her mom, Andrea, whom she’s always been close to, and anyone who
knows me knows that my mom is one of my favorite people. I tell her everything.
I run all important decisions by her. She understands how to talk to me and
what I need to hear when I need to calm down or when I’m too down on myself or
when I’m frustrated and just need to vent. We think the same way. We’ve never
really fought like you hear about mothers and daughters fighting sometimes. She
is the Andrea to my Taylor, and I love her so, so, so, so much.
Throwback to March 1998 and meeting my brother for the first time. Clearly, I was more impressed than he was
So the story
goes that Taylor wrote and recorded this song and put together what would
become the original music video out of clips of old home movies. She then
played the video for her mom on Christmas, and her mom thought it was so sweet
and said something to the effect of, “What a sweet song! Who’s singing it?” And
Taylor was like, “Mom, it’s me. I wrote it.” And then Andrea just broke down
and had to re-watch the whole thing. If I had to choose a favorite part, it
would be the lines, “And now I know why all the trees change in the fall / I
know you were on my side even when I was wrong / And I love you for giving me
your eyes / For staying back and watching me shine / And I didn’t know if you
knew, so I’m taking this chance to say / That I had the best day with you
today.” People always tell me I look like my mom, and we do have the same eyes,
so obviously I love that line. (A friend even once told me “You and your mom
are the same person—down to syntax!” and I took it as the highest form of
compliment.)
Me and Brenda, c. 1996
But it’s the “staying back and watching me shine” part that always
gets me. Neither of my parents have ever pushed me in any direction. I was
always allowed to do any combination of activities that I wanted to do. I did
ballet, jazz, soccer, Girl Scouts, and church choir as a kid. In high school, I
was in marching band, concert band, theatre, Youth Group, and every AP class.
Never once did they try to tell me what college I should go to or what I should
major in—even when I begged them to “just tell me what to do!” They always let
me do my own things and follow my own interests, and I’m forever grateful to
them for that. Any shining I’ve achieved is because I had parents who came to
every function and supported me wholeheartedly my entire life. They’ve given me
a lifetime of best days.
“Change (Taylor’s
Version)”:
I retroactively credit
this song with planting the seeds of feminism in my young mind. I mean, lyrics
like, “These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down / It’s a
revolution, the time will come / For us to finally win” simultaneously appealed
to my optimism and stubbornness—and still do! (For the record, I’m not here to
say that Taylor Swift has always been the perfect, says-the-right-thing-at-the-right-time
feminist example, just that, when I was 12, I interpreted this song as being about
a young woman, like myself, overcoming adversity and believing in herself, and
that that was an important message for me.)
This song just hits
differently in 2021. In 2008, it was about her record label (sheesh, that hurts
to say) and her managers and producers who believed in her and trusted her when
so many other labels wouldn’t have. Now, it’s about getting away from what
turned out to be a crappy label and now owning her own masters; it’s about the
2020 election and speaking out against injustice; it’s about coming out of the
Kimye feud and being “vindicated” (from something she never did and anyone with
any common sense knew that); it’s about finding real, lasting love and peace in
a relationship after a series of paparazzi-filled, anxiety-riddled
relationships—and it’s about every time a fan went through a difficult time and
didn’t give up. It’s a song that, for me, has always been on the peripheral of
my mind, and while I can’t say that I’ve ever faced any kind of blatant –phobia
or –ism used against me personally, it’s a song that convinces me to push past
whatever I feel is holding me back (which usually ends up being myself). Great
bop.
“Today Was a Fairytale
(Taylor’s Version):”
So, as many of you know,
“Today Was a Fairytale” was written for the 2010 movie Valentine’s Day,
which Taylor had a role in alongside then-boyfriend Taylor Lautner (who is
currently dating another Taylor, and I feel like we should talk about that
at some point). When Taylor [Swift] first announced that Fearless
(Taylor’s Version) would have 26 songs including 6 ne Vault Songs, I
immediately did more math than I’ve done in years, and I said to my dad (the
only person at home at the time, bless his heart), “But Fearless: Platinum Edition
has 19 songs, so that means she is re-recoding the bonus tracks, but even
when you add the 6 Vault Songs, that’s only 25 tracks—what’s the 20th
song?!?!?!?!) My question was answered when I went to pre-order the album
about an hour later: “Today Was a Fairytale.” And I freaked out. It’s been
brought to my attention recently that a lot of people liked this song when they
were young but then grew out of it because they realized the production was “bad.”
Some never even liked it when they were young because of the production. Now, I’ve
said before, I’m a lyrics girl through and through, but I didn’t realize how
much of a lyrics girl I am until this conversation, because I’ve never thought
“Today Was a Fairytale” was poorly produced. I love this song. There’s
an adorable fan-made “music video” for it that I probably watched 100 times
back in the day. And, to be fair, it appeals to everything about my
personality: fairytales, happily ever afters, love. To me, this song illustrates
an ideal romance. (And, yes, logically, I have had a fairytales class,
so I know that the original fairytales were not sweet and fluffy and
romantic, but I’m using the Disneyfied definition, and you can pry that
idealism from my cold, dead hands.)
Now, while I have personally
been unsuccessful in my “Today Was a Fairytale” mission, Taylor has not. And
because I’m a Pisces and a 2 and a generally very empathetic and soft person, I
can’t help but think of Taylor singing this to Joe and finally having that
fairytale—and I really kind of cry every time I do. What’s interesting to me is
that when you look at songs that are canonically about Joe—“Delicate,” “Lover,”“Paper Rings,”“invisible string,” etc.—there are lyrics in those songs that
could make “Today Was a Fairytale” fit seamlessly into the I wrote this about
Joe Alwyn post-2016” category and not the “I wrote this as a teenager”
category. For instance, in “Gorgeous,” we get, “I can't say anything to your
face / 'Cause look at your face (look at your face),” which echoes “Nothing
made sense ‘til the time I saw your face” in “TWAF,” and that makes me very
emotional. And we know that Taylor has been very adamant about being into Joe
from the moment they met—“The moon is high, like your friends were the night
that we first met / Went home and tried to stalk you on the Internet” (“Paper
Rings”); “Saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent / They say home is
where the heart is / But that’s not where mine lives” (“London Boy”); I don't
wanna look at anything else now that I saw you (I can never look away) / I
don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you (Things will never
be the same) / I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night (Now I'm wide
awake) / And now I see daylight” (“Daylight”)—so the line “Fell in love when I
saw you standing there” is just an extension of all those sentiments.
The idea of Taylor singing "Nothing made sense til the time I saw your face" to Joe (Alwyn) has me coming undone, thank you. She found someone who will actually treat her well.#TodayWasAFairytale#TaylorSwift#FearlessTaylorsVersion
— Katie Cline (Taylor's Version) (@katiebethbug) April 9, 2021
My conspiracy: 2021
Taylor Swift traveled back in time to tell 2008-2010 Taylor Swift all about Joe
and inspired “Today Was a Fairytale.”
More likely scenario: Adult
Taylor refused to settle for a lackluster love and held out for the fairytale
she deserves.
Okay, that’s over 7300
words. I’m done. I won’t say any more, except that I (very obviously) love
Taylor Swift.
