Saturday, December 26, 2020

Captain's Log, Day 27: This Track-by-Track Review Will Go On For "evermore"-- Part 2: "no body, no crime," "happiness," "dorothea," "coney island," and "ivy"

Date: December 26, 2020

Time of post: 2:37 AM

Quarantine Day: 276

Last Song I Listened To: “ivy” by Taylor Swift

Last Person I Communicated With: my parents when I said "goodnight" 

Last Thing I Ate: some Ritz crackers and jalapeño dip 

Last Thing I Read: an old article about Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris

Current Mood: pretty sleepy, actually

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today (technically yesterday): Had a lovely, quiet Christmas with my parents and brother; gave gifts; laughed a lot; ate good food

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: maybe finish a book I brought home so I can start a book I got for Christmas

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I've weirdly started to worry that other people will start publishing Taylor Swift academic articles and then "the world" won't want mine--this is pretty false, but idk, 2020 messes with your head, and academia already does that

One Reason I’m Happy Today (technically yesterday): CHRISTMAS!!!!


Dear Apocalypsers,

I hope you all had a very Merry-As-Can-Be Christmas if you celebrate it, even if it may have looked different this year. And, if you didn't, that sucks, but it's okay. It's a sucky year, and you don't have to perform joy just for the sake of it. If things are safe in, like, July, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be having a "Christmas in July" to compensate for this weird, unChristmasy time. 

Anyway, though, welcome back to Part 2 of 3 of my track-by-track review of evermore! If you enjoyed my rantings, ravings, and ramblings for the first 5 tracks, boy oh boy, will you be weirdly excited about these 5! This post takes you through Tracks 6-10: "no body, no crime," "happiness," "dorothea," "coney island," and "ivy." There's a lot of nonsense, a lot of links, a lot of videos, and a lot of fun, so thank you for reading!

Let's go!

I was truly unprepared for both of these songs.


Track #6: “no body, no crime ft. HAIM”

Favorite line(s): “Good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen / And I've cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene / Good thing Este's sister's gonna swear she was with me (She was with me, dude)”



Initial thoughts and feelings: Okay, who doesn’t love a good old fashioned “woman kills adulterous man” country song? Well, probably cheating husbands, but they deserve it, sooooo….*shrugs.* This song isn’t new; Carrie Underwood’s “Two Black Cadillacs,” Miranda Lambert’s “Gunpowder and Lead,” The Chicks’ “Goodbye, Earl,” Vicki Lawrence’s “The Night the Lights Went Out inGeorgia” (which was re-recorded by Reba McEntire in 2009)—even Loretta Lynn threatened to take her lover’s mistress to “Fist City” back in 1968. There’s a fairly long history of badass women not tolerating adultery, and I’m so glad that Taylor Swift has joined those ranks. It was time for another chart-topping country murder song.

And “no body, no crime” really does check all the boxes of a classic “country murder song”: cheating husband, unapologetic murderess, very specific reference to something that wouldn’t ordinarily be in a song (here, it’s Olive Garden), and a little bit of wine. This song is a bop. Multiple people told me it reminded them of me, and I took that as the highest form of compliment. It makes me want to seek vengeance on every man who has ever wronged me or a friend of mine. Singing along makes me feel cool, like I’ve figured out who the killer is before the end of the episode. And, like, every set of female best friends in the country has texted each other some version of “I’d kill your husband if he cheated on you” since this song dropped. It’s a little bit chaotic, a little bit empowering, and a lotta bit iconic. #nobodynocrime4ever


My one complaint about this song is that there isn’t enough HAIM. I know she wrote the song herselfand only asked HAIM to sing on it after it was basically finished, but I feel like every single one of her female collabs leaves me wanting more. She gives full verses to Ed Sheeran, Gary Lightbody, Bon Iver, and The National—even rappers like Future and Kendrick Lamar get significant time for their features—but when she “features” women on songs, they’re basically relegated to backup vocalists. You wouldn’t even know The Chicks were on Lover’s “Soon You’ll Get Better” if it wasn’t listed on the tracklist. I just feel like it’s really unfortunate, because she’s friends with so many women in the industry. And maybe that’s why she doesn’t feature them as much; she might be worried about mixing business and friendship. Or maybe she likes the contrast of a male voice. And, let’s be honest, a lot of female artists today could out-sing Taylor; she’s grown astronomically as a vocalist, and she’s good (so, so, so much better than me) but her songwriting is her biggest strength—so maybe she’s at least subconsciously worried about a woman showing her up on a feature. I don’t know. But, if she’s dipping her toe back into country, I would really, really like to see her and Kacey Musgraves do something together. I think that could be really fun.

Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

“Should’ve Said No” (Taylor Swift, 2006): After the police siren and initial ominous “He did it,” there’s a little guitar riff that sounds very similar to what I’d call the iconic “Should’ve Said No” riff, which is fitting, because “Should’ve Said No” and “no body, no crime” are both “angry cheating songs.” I guess I understand why 16-year-old Taylor didn’t suggest murder on her debut album, but I’m really excited that we finally got to that point. “Should’ve Said No” was a statement in 2006 that said, “You really shouldn’t cheat on Taylor Swift because she’ll probably turn it into a banger, embarrass you, and make money off of it,” and “no body, no crime” is a 2020 statement that Taylor Swift has binged enough true crime drama during quarantine that you shouldn’t cheat on her or her friends.



My most ridiculous theory involving this song: To elaborate on the theory I introduce in “‘tis the damn season,” I’m somewhat convinced that Este’s husband is Dorothea’s ex-turned-mistress—and it’s all because of Taylor’s sudden preoccupation with truck tires. In “‘tis the damn season” there’s the line “Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires,” and in “no body, no crime” there’s the line “And I noticed when I passed his house / His truck has got some brand new tires.” Now, Taylor hasn’t talked about trucks and truck tires in a while, so for the phrase to pop up on the same album after years kind of forces my hand here. In “‘tis the damn season,” the reference to truck tires is cute and small-towney, but, 2 tracks later, the implication is that Este’s husband got new tires to obscure evidence of murder (probably his tires got messy while dumping the body and/or he knew he left tire tracks at the scene). So, I’m not saying that you should turn all this into a CSI episode, but I am definitely saying that you could.

 

Track #7: “happiness”

Favorite line(s): “There’ll be happiness after you / But there was happiness because of you / Both of these things can be true / There is happiness”



Initial thoughts and feelings: The roller coaster from “tolerate it” to “no body, no crime” to “happiness” is unreal. How dare Taylor sandwich such a bop between two of her saddest songs ever written?!?!? It’s just cruel. And “happiness” is, well, not happy, but, wow, is it beautiful. I’m just stunned by the growth we’ve seen in Taylor over these last 2 albums (and, really, even since Lover, if I’m being real). I know “happiness” is a fictionalized story probably about a divorce (or at least the end of a serious relationship), but Taylor’s found some serious self-awareness. This song doesn’t just blame or villainize the other person, and I think that’s part of what makes it. Hurt. So. Much. I mean, I don’t know when I started crying, but it was probably when she said, “There’ll be happiness after you / But there was happiness because of you, too, / Both of these things can be true” and it continued through “There’ll be happiness after me / But there was happiness because of me / Both of these things I believe,” and really got into sobbing territory by “No one teaches you what to do / When a good man hurts you / And you know you hurt him, too,” and then I was rendered inconsolable by the time we got to “There is happiness in our history.” And, like, yes, all those things can be true, but that’s almost an uncomfortable thing to admit, because you want to be able to blame the other person in a breakup; you don’t want to admit that you messed up—even though it’s probably true. You don’t want to think about all the good times, because that hurts knowing you won’t get that again (at least with that person). I think this narrator shows an incredible amount of strength in being able to say, “I’ll be happy again, and you’ll be happy again, but right now this hurts.” That’s a level of post-breakup maturity that I don’t think I have. I’m willing to admit that my breakup persona is way more “no body, no crime”—and we can unpack what that says about me as a person later.


The iconic and concerning "beautiful little fool" line

And we haven’t even talked about the 
Great Gatsby references! I’d have to return my English degrees if I didn’t bring those up! So the obvious ones that I caught of the first listen-through were “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool / who takes my spot next to you” and “All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness.” The “beautiful fool” line references a pretty iconic Daisy Buchanan line, where she says of her daughter, Polly, “And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” The “green light of forgiveness” references the literal green light that hangs on Daisy and Tom’s dock in East Egg that Gatsby can see across the bay from his home in West Egg. It’s—uh—highly symbolic to say the least, and it’s pretty cool to think about in terms of the song. In the novel, the green light is what Gatsby fixates on at night—it’s so far away that he can’t reach it, which is symbolic of how he can’t have Daisy, can’t fit in with the “old money” of East Egg, and can’t really have that coveted “American Dream” (real question: Has anyone ever achieved the American Dream? Because every novel about it is just really sad.) In the song, “the green light of forgiveness” could be read as something else that’s just an unattainable, pretty thing. Some less obvious references could be “the great divide,” which could refer to the bay between East and West Egg, and “the dress I wore at midnight,” could refer to the lavish parties Gatsby threw to get Daisy’s attention. Honestly, someone should write this paper. Taylor’s got some legit classic lit references on this album.




Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

“closure”: I am super convinced that “closure” is a response to “happiness.” There’s one line in “happiness” that references “across the great divide,” and then in “closure,” there’s a line “reaching out across the sea that you put between you and me.” You also have the parallel between “All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness” in “happiness” and “I know I’m just a wrinkle in your new life / Staying friends would iron it out so nice.” Obviously the other party is reaching out to (at least pretend to) make amends, so they’re looking for the narrator’s forgiveness here, too. And, thematically, the songs fit together in a way that chronicles a broken relationship from the moment of the breakup (“happiness”) to some later point where the narrator is clearly doing better (“closure”). And, despite being called “closure,” the song is actually about not getting closure and finding a way to be okay with that, which fits nicely with the message from “happiness” that “there’ll be happiness after you.”



Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

“Afterglow” & “Daylight” (Lover, 2019): These songs are “sisters” for me, so I have to group them together. For me, “Afterglow” is just this beautiful moment of self-awareness (“Hey, it’s all me, in my head / I’m the one who burned us down”), and you see that same self-awareness reflected in “happiness.” I think “Afterglow” and “happiness” have the same tone, too; they’re both in the middle of a mess, but where “Afterglow” is saying “we can make this work,” “happiness” knows it’s not going to work, but that’s okay…or, it will be okay, eventually.



For me, you need “Afterglow” (the song) to get to “Daylight” (the song), meaning you can’t get to the good without that kind of painful self-awareness. I know “Daylight” is a love song on the surface. Like, “I don’t wanna to look at anything else now that I saw you (I could never look away/ I don’t wanna think of anything else now that I though of you (things will never be the same)” very much situates the song as being about a love interest. But I’d argue that “happiness” has a “What if ‘Daylight’ was about yourself?” kind of spin. Because after a breakup, I think you do have to relearn how to find happiness in a lot of ways, and I think, a lot of times, you have to reckon with yourself and learn how to find happiness with yourself. So, when the narrator says, “There’ll be happiness after you,” I like to think that she’s finding happiness with herself first. And then on a more literal level, “happiness” does reference “the glorious sunrise” which feels a lot like “Daylight.”



Track #8: “dorothea”

Favorite line(s): “This place is the same as it ever was / But you don’t like it that way” or “The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo / And if you're ever tired of being known for who you know / You know, you'll always know me, Dorothe—ee—a”



Initial thoughts and feelings: “dorothea” is a fun little song, and thank God it follows “happiness,” because we all needed something light after that one! I immediately thought of The Lumineers when I head this song, and I’m not sure if it’s because the names “Dorothea” and “Ophelia” (also a popular song by The Lumineers) sound similar enough in my head or if it’s the bouncy piano and muted drum or if it’s the way she does the “oohs,” but something just reminds me of them—and I’m not complaining at all! This song makes me feel like I’m down in the park making a lark of the misery, just sitting in sunshine with an old friend and catching up. It’s a very “wheat-field-at-sunset” colored song in my mind. Make of that what you will.

I still want to know who the "me" is in "dorothea"


I really like the idea of “knowing” that’s presented in this song. Like, the narrator says, “And if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know / You know, you’ll always know me.” They’re obviously referencing the exhausting cycle of “knowing the right people” in the entertainment industry (or, honestly, any industry, but especially in entertainment), but they’re also saying that they haven’t changed; they’re still the same person they were when Dorothea was last in their life—which seems to be high school. Now, let’s hope that’s not literal, because we want to see growth past the age of 18, but the implication is that there’s a familiarity and comfort and homey-ness and maybe even love that they can bring to her life that L.A. can’t. And then that certainty is contrasted when they ask, “But are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers / Well, I guess I’ll never know.” They probably feel like they “lost” her when she moved, and that’s a valid feeling to an extent, but I hope they trust this “soul” (that they obviously have a connection with) enough to allow them to grow without assuming the “right” version of Dorothea is the one they personally liked.

Now there are a few little things (that maybe I’m overthinking; feel free to let me know) that just don’t quite sit right with me: 1) I don’t like the line “It’s never too late to come back to my side”; it feels a little condescending, like they’re saying, “It’s okay to quit and come back and be part of my life again,” because the statement assumes she wants to come back and be with them 2) I don’t like the implication that going off to the big city (whether you eventually return permanently or not) fundamentally changes you and that, if it does, that’s a bad thing. The narrator clearly wants Dorothea to come back to Tupelo where they claim her eyes shined brighter, and they bribe her with…what?...a high school ex who never left their hometown? What if neither of them are the same? What if she’s changed her mind about ideas they were raised with? What if she’s had life experiences that her ex can’t understand? What if she is different and she’s happy about that? Okay, now I’m definitely projecting. (Can you tell that  I identify with Dorothea a little?) And I don’t want to say that you have to leave your hometown to grow as a person…but I’d highly advise it, at least for a few years. As someone who’s left her hometown and come back, you don’t come back the same person. And, I, for one, am okay with that. It doesn’t mean I don’t still love my hometown and where I came from and the experiences I had here; it just means I can better put my hometown and my upbringing in a bigger context, for better and for worse.

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:


“‘tis the damn season”—We know that these two songs are connected because Taylor straight up told us as much, writing that some of the songs talk about “Dorothea, the girl who left her small town to chase down Hollywood dreams—and what happens when she comes back for the holidays and rediscovers an old flame.” Now, Tupelo isn’t exactly the “small town” I pictured when I listened to “‘tis the damn season” the first time—it has over 38,000 residents as of 2018—but it’s also smaller than the college town I currently live in, so maybe it’s small enough. It’s definitely Southern, so that helps the “dorothea” line “this place is the same as it ever was” stick a little harder.

And to emphasize my earlier point about “knowing,” in “‘tis the damn season,” Dorothea also explains that the narrator of “dorothea” the song also knows her pretty well: “And wonder about the only soul who can tell which smiles I'm fakin' / And the heart I know I'm breakin' is my own.” He knows her well enough to know when she’s really happy (as she hints that she is in L.A. with her “so-called friends”), and she also knows herself well enough to know that she finds a not insignificant amount of comfort with this person.



“betty” & “august”—In the YouTube chat before the “willow” music video premiere, Taylor said that while “dorothea” isn’t a continuation of the Betty/James/Augusta storyline from folklore, she does imagine that they all went to high school together. And, if that’s the case, that means a few things: 1) “betty” is canonically set in Tupelo, MS and 2) that high school must have been wild. Now, I also need to know if Este went to their high school, because, if you choose to believe my conspiracy theory, that would make for one hell of a small town high school reunion!





Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

“The Lucky One” (Red, 2012)—this is a pretty distant connection, but when the narrator says, “the tiny screen’s the only place I see you now” and “You’re a queen selling dreams, selling makeup in magazines” and “If you ever get tired of being known for who you know,” I think about the protagonist from “The Lucky One,” which is another song about a young woman finding fame in the big city. From “‘tis the damn season,” we know that Dorothea doesn’t love the “glamor” of L.A., but to her old flame in Tupelo, it sure looks like she’s living the dream, even if he seems to realize that being known for who you know could get exhausting, a fact that ends up being the main point of “The Lucky One.”



My most ridiculous theory involving this song: As I stated in Part 1 in the “‘tis the damn season” entry and earlier in the “no body, no crime” entry, I have a headcanon/conspiracy that Dorothea is the mistress from “no body, no crime.” If you want to make it even more elaborate, maybe Este’s husband (who, using this theory, would be narrating “dorothea”) is just a real sociopath who was seeing a different woman with no connection to these songs when he killed Este, and just got with Dorothea when she came home for Christmas to cover it all up. So maybe Dorothea doesn’t know Este’s dead. Tbh, I don’t even know if this works at this point. I need to write down the whole timeline/plot somewhere. I’ll get back to you all on this one.

 

Me plotting out the Dorothea/Este's husband/Este conspiracy theory


Track #9: “coney island ft. The National”

Favorite line(s): “And do you miss the rogue / Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?” or “And if this is the long haul / How’d we get here so soon?”



Initial thoughts and feelings: I might lose my Swiftie card for this, but “coney island” was evermore’s “exile” for me…and I don’t mean that in a “omg this is my favorite song” kind of way. To be completely honest, I didn’t love “exile,” but hearing the Long Pond Studios version has given me an increased appreciation for it. Similarly, “coney island” wasn’t my favorite on the first listen through, and I doubt it ever will be. But I did come up with/read some interesting theories that make me like it more (see below for said theories). My immediate impression was that it does a great job of painting a picture. The lyrics are sad and gray and lonely. I’m not from New York, and I’ve never been to Coney Island, but I picture it very bright and lively with colors and cotton candy—and this song is the opposite of that. So I do think the juxtaposition of those visuals is really interesting.  

I guess I appreciate the craft in this song more than I can say I like this song as a whole. I think some of the lyrics are just jaw dropping. I mean who thinks to write “And do you miss the rogue / Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?” into a song???? That is some straight up Romantic poet stuff, but Taylor will have me singing it with my whole chest for the rest of my life.

My most ridiculous theory involving this song: Okay, so I have 2, and I actually need you to read them before you read about the connections to other songs. The first conspiracy theory is actually all mine: I think the love interest is dead. “Okay, Katie, but why?” A variety of reasons, but I think the lines “And if this is the long haul / How’d we get here so soon?” could definitely be read as someone feeling like they came to the “til death do we part” bit of marriage too soon. Like, when you get married, you know, rationally, that you’ll die someday, but you kind of assume you’ll have 40 or 50 or 60 years before that happens—but what happens when you only get 2 or 3 or 5? “Where did my baby go?” doesn’t just have to be about a breakup; they died. “How did they die?” you ask. Why, in the accident referenced in the bridge, of course! And the podium that’s referenced then refers to the podium at the funeral where the lover/spouse gave a eulogy. If I could do a music video for this song, I’d have one person sitting on a sad, lonely bench on Coney Island during the off-season, and the whole music video is interspersed with a mixture of happy moments of the couple (probably a lot at Coney Island), them fighting, and then one of them driving off and getting into The Accident. I don’t know. I feel like it would hurt.



My second theory is that the bridge is referencing other songs that reference former/lost loves. It’s kind of meta, because this theory doesn’t imply that the song is about any exes, but rather that she’s referencing old songs that are about exes. I saw this on Twitter. But I’ll add to it that it’s interesting to interpret it this way because all of the songs are from albums that she currently doesn’t own the Masters to, so, in a sense, they’re lost/dead, too. (See below for a breakdown of the bridge.)


Other T. Swift songs it evokes: Below is the “coney island” bridge followed by the previous Taylor Swift song that it probably references.

Top: Big Ben clock tower in
London, home of several of
Taylor Swift's exes
Bottom: The clock in Grand
Central Station in NYC,
where Taylor Swift has a
residence
“Were you waiting at our old spot

In the tree line by the gold clock

Did I leave you hanging every single day?

Were you standing in the hallway

With a big cake, happy birthday

Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?

A universe away

And when I got into the accident

The sight that flashed before me was your face

But when I walked up to the podium

I think that I forgot to say your name”

 

 “gold clock”—could refer to Big Ben and just be a general reference to her multiple English exes. There’s also a large gold clock in Grand Central Station in New York, where Taylor has also been seen with former love interests.











“Were you standing in the hallway / With a big cake, happy birthday?”—“The Moment I Knew” (Red, 2012): Jake Gyllenhaal infamously missed Taylor’s 21st birthday party, and this includes the lyrics “And they're all standing around me singing "Happy birthday to you" / But there was one thing missing / And that was the moment I knew”



“Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?”—“Dear John” (Speak Now, 2010): Cleverly putting John Mayer on blast in the form of a Dear John letter (which he did not take kindly to, thereby basically confirming that the song was, in fact, about him), Taylor wrote the lyrics, “You paint me a blue sky then go back and turn it to gray.” In “coney island,” the narrator is asking if they hurt the other in a very similar way.



“And when I got into the accident / The sight that flashed before me was your face”—“Out of the Woods” (1989, 2014): In what is personally my favorite bridge of hers, Taylor says, “Remember when you hit the brakes too soon? / Twenty stitches in the hospital room” which references a very real snow mobile accident that she and then-boyfriend Harry Styles got into. Harry even tweeted pictures of the aforementioned twenty stitches.




“But when I walked up to the podium / I think that I forgot to say your name”—the 2016 Grammys: When 1989 won Album of the Year at the 2016 Grammys, Taylor didn’t attend with her then-bf of almost a year, the DJ Calvin Harris, but, instead, brought her longtime best friend Selena Gomez as her date. Calvinposted his congratulations on social media at the time, but Taylor didn’t thank him in her acceptance speech (side rant: why would she? They weren’t together when the album came out; he didn’t work on the album; the songs aren’t about him; she doesn’t owe him a “thank you” just because she happened to be dating him when her album won an award). Anyway, after their kind of messy and weird breakup, there’s been all kinds of debate about whether bringing Selena was meant to be shady, if her speech was meant to be shady, if his Instagram post was passive aggressive. Whatever the case, I’m not mad that she “forgot” to say his name at that podium.



 

Track #10: “ivy”

Favorite line(s): “How's one to know / I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones / In a faitah forgotten land” or “And the old widow goes to the stone every day / But I don't, I just sit here and wait / Grieving for the living” or “Oh, goddamn / My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand” or “Oh, I can’t / Stop you putting roots in my dreamland”



Initial thoughts and feelings: How is this song so chill but I want to scream it so badly???I mean, the bridge on this one is *insert somewhat feral choking sound that indicates my obsession.* C’mon, how do you not absolutely lose your mind over, “Yeah, it’s a fire / It’s a goddamn blaze in the dark / And you started it / Yeah, it’s a war / It’s the goddamn fight of my life / And you started it” is just asking to be screamed at someone who’s done you wrong. I don’t even have anyone in mind, but I want to scream this in someone’s face.

And the imagery! The scene! The tone! This is another song that’s just so rich and vivid, and it feels like watching a period drama in my head whenever I listen to it. Here’s the scene: Taylor’s playing a rich lady living in her husband’s family mansion in the Welsh/Scottish/English countryside; it’s isolated and lonely, because he’s away in London for “business.” One cold winter day, a young traveler shows up at their door looking for work in exchange for a place to stay. Taylor hesitates, but her loneliness and the traveler’s charming looks win out, and she invites him in where they ultimately fall in love. What I love/am still mystified about “ivy” is that it’s another affair song, but I love it and 100% will bop to it. I love how the beginning of the song is basically like, “Yeah, I’m just waiting for my husband to die so I can perform grief by visiting his gravestone when I’m actually ecstatic that I’m finally able to marry the real love of my life.” What a mood.

Please enjoy this very quick mood board I made for "ivy"

Because “ivy” is such a standalone song for me—meaning I don’t really see any strong connections to other songs—I’ll wax poetic about it for a minute longer. Specifically, can we talk about the words? Like “coney island,” who thinks to open a song with lines like “How’s one to know / I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones / In a faith forgotten land?”??? I’m a little flabbergasted—like, that’s poetry, pure and simple! I could (and kind of want to) write essays on it. Another reason that “ivy” should be considered modern poetry is the plant symbolism, and we know how poets love plants! Ivy is symbolic of fidelity—oh, the irony!—and eternity. She also talks about “putting roots in my dreamland,” which could be a reference to this lover grounding her or anchoring her dreams and making them real. But it’s also worth pointing out that ivy can be a pain. English ivy, in particular, will choke out other plants and is actually poisonous. Pretty rough stuff, and not exactly romantic—but again, kind of fitting for an affair song, because you could definitely argue that the lover “choked out” the narrator’s other relationship, which is emphasized by the repeated lines “My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I’m covered in you.” Ivy is also fast-growing, much like the relationship in the song that starts when he came “in from the snow” and comes to a head in the spring.

Then, she references “Clover blooms in the fields / Spring breaks loose, so does fear.” Spring, in literature, has always been symbolic of newness and rebirths, so this could represent her new love. The clover, though, is where my interest lies. When we think about clover, most people’s brains go straight to the four-leaf variety emblazoned on everything from socks to sunglasses to beads to t-shirts every March—and there’s a sprig of truth to that connotation, according to the internet. Four-leaf clovers are considered lucky, and, in flower language, they mean, “be mine,” so that’s a sweet meaning when applied to this song. (And maybe we should start giving out clover on Valentine’s Day, too?) But clover is also distinctly Irish, so there’s some history to unpack there, too. In Victorian England, Irish regiments were forbidden from displaying the shamrock because it was viewed as an act of rebellion—and this double meaning could also be applied to “ivy,” since having an affair is definitely not socially acceptable, especially for a woman.

(And, not to go on another tangent, but why is ivy so romanticized and regal when it grows on old English mansions or expensive New England private schools, but kudzu is a dangerous invasive species primarily found in the South? Here’s a cool article that argues that kudzu just has a bad rep, much like Taylor did in 2016.)

Okay, academia aside, I love this song. It feels like a story pulled from some aristocrat’s diary. Taylor’s vocals are stunning. Her emphasis on “old,” “goes,” “stone,” and “don’t” in the lines “The old widow goes to the stone every day / But I don’t, I just sit here and wait” are so lovely, and her descending runs on “hand” and “dreamland” leave me speechless every time. I know she’s not a powerhouse vocalist, but her lower register is enviable.

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

“illicit affairs”—“ivy” is another song about an affair, but these two songs evoke very different feelings; the couple in “illicit affairs” are already having a rough time, so we know they won’t last, but, for some reason, I find myself cheering for the couple in “ivy.” Maybe I’ve been reading too many fanfics, but I think they could work. There are also lines that are evocative of one another; the pairing that sticks out for me is “And that's the thing about illicit affairs / And clandestine meetings / And stolen stares” and “How’s one to know / I’d live and die for moments that we stole / On begged and borrowed time?” Stolen moments are a pretty common trope in “affair literature,” so it makes sense that it’d appear in both songs. Maybe the relationship in “ivy” crashes and burns and turns into the relationship from “illicit affairs”? Who knows? Just Taylor probably.



Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

“Dress” (reputation, 2017)—Along the line of “stolen moments,” you could also think about “Dress,” where she says, “Our secret moments in a crowded room / They got no idea about me and you.” “Dress” is also pretty sexy and scandalous, and you could apply those adjectives to affairs, too—at least fictional ones. I don’t think any real-life affair has ever been sexy. 



Well, thank you for joining me on that 5600-word journey! I apologize again for my inability to be concise, but there's just so much to say about Taylor Swift, so I hope that you were at least entertained by my "murder board conspiracy theory." If you haven't read Part 1 of this series yet (and want to for some reason), it's available here, and Part 3 (the final part!) will be up before the New Year! I'd like to say it'll be shorter, but it won't be.

Here's to being in it for the long haul,

Katie

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