Time of post: 12:33PM
Quarantine Day: 410
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 |
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.
The way she sings "baby" at 3:27 in #ByeByeBaby is my favorite musical moment from the Vault Songs & I just want it on repeat forever.#TaylorSwift #FearlessTaylorsVersion @taylorswift13 @taylornation13 pic.twitter.com/50RGSEnixX
— 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" |
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.
Same week, but Decades Day. This
is my attempt at the 80s. I still have
this shirt. It's super comfy.
“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.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
May the odds be ever in
our favor,
Katie
