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.

taylor swift and haim - no body, no crime (2020) pic.twitter.com/fGJZnF6ClT

— comrade carlos (@szacut) December 11, 2020

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

If you've ever wondered why I am the way I am, my mother just told me that she "giggled the whole way through 'no body, no crime' because it's so much fun." God, I love her.#TaylorSwift #evermorealbum #nobodynocrime pic.twitter.com/UGu75A27Sa

— Katie Cline (@katiebethbug) December 12, 2020

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.)

nbd but @katiebethbug and I are detectives pic.twitter.com/vQjWHCrQh9

— LN ..VOTE OSSOFF & WARNOCK.. (@what_the_elle__) December 11, 2020

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 21^st 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

Captain's Log, Day 26: This Track-by-Track Review Will Go On for "evermore"--Part 1: "willow," "champagne problems," "gold rush," "'tis the damn season," and "tolerate it"

Date: December 21, 2020

Time of post: 4:20PM

Quarantine Day: 271

Last Song I Listened To: “tolerate it” by Taylor Swift

Last Person I Communicated With: group text with Jacque and Mikayla

Last Thing I Ate: Jack's chicken biscuit

Last Thing I Read: something a friend wrote (that’s all I can say)

Current Mood: content

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: finished this blog

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: probably help Mom bake Christmas cookies

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: Aren't we all perpetually stressed about COVID?

One Reason I’m Happy Today: I currently have three cats (Minnie, Toothless, and TomTom) napping on my bed with me.

 

Dear Apocalypsers,

I'm grateful for evermore; really, I am. But releasing an album 3 days before I was meant to drive home for Christmas (a very busy and involved holiday in my family), means that I haven't had the time to both process the album and write up all my feelings on it. And once I did start writing, I couldn't be stopped. I literally wrote 1000 words about "'tis the damn season."

So, I've broken this post up into 3 posts, each one discussing 5 of the 15 songs from the standard album. For fun and posterity, I've included my handwritten notes from my first listen-through. ("I shouldn't be surprised you're taking notes," Dustin said to me when he saw my pen and notebook during our Zoom call.) I've also given some brief connections between the evermore song, other evermore and folklore songs, and any other Taylor Swift songs, because she really seems to be revisiting ideas from older songs in a lot of these tracks. Every once in a while, I even throw in a fun conspiracy theory because I can.

Now, I by no means am claiming that my connections are correct or that the connections I've made are the only connections. I listened to her entire discography on my drive home, and I tried to make mental notes when things stood out, but I was also trying to not to cry and/or crash.

So, if you're ready for a more-detailed Taylor Swift journey than you've ever been on, let's go! The rest of this post will discuss the first 5 tracks: "willow," "champagne problems," "gold rush," "'tis the damn season," and "tolerate it."

I took "real-time" notes while doing my initial listen-through of the album, so here they are in all their shorthand, unfinished thought glory.

Track #1: “willow”

Favorite line(s): “I come back stronger than a 90s trend”

Initial thoughts and feelings: I watched the music video first, and I was floored by it! The white dress and mandolin echoed her “Mean”music video so painfully—because that’s the scene where she gets stuck and can’t get to her love. The “‘Mean’ scene” is also where we get the iconic, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend” line, and that smirk to the camera is art! And I love that we’re starting to see her acknowledge her own past accomplishments. Her comeback with “Look What You Made Me Do” is going to be a historic pop music moment. It’s iconic—and the way she went about deleting and recreating her whole social media aesthetic ahead of the video dropping is also iconic—and I love that she knows that and is embracing it, even if it’s in a kind of cheeky way. And then the witches!!! I would join Taylor Swift’s coven in a heartbeat! I’m so glad that she has more input in her music videos now, because she’s legitimately brilliant. The different scenes that she walks in the “willow” music video represent different songs from folklore: the two kids in the tent are “seven”; what I’ve been calling the “‘Mean’ scene” is “mirrorball” (also the scene that represents how she feels about celebrity—trapped and on display); the witches represent “mad woman” (“women like hunting witches, too”), and the “exile” reference—which didn’t come as readily to me, honestly—could be a few different things. The opening scene (which is exactly the same as the “cardigan” music video) could reference the lyric “I think I’ve seen this film before.” Her escape from the glass cage of fame could reference the lyric “So I’m leaving out the side door,” and there’s something about the end of the witch scene where Taylor is walking away and her love interest pulls off his mask that reminds me of “exile”—just the whole watching your love walk away thing. And, of course, there’s the “single thread of gold” tying them together the whole time. It’s like we got a bonus “invisible string” music video, too!

Top: a scene from Taylor Swift's "Mean" music video from her album Speak Now (2010)
Bottom: a scene from the "willow" music video from her album evermore (2020)

I love the guitar in this song. It gives the song a wistful, almost fantasy-like vibe. I want to be a fairy dancing in the woods casting morally gray love spells on beautiful men just for the heck of it. The music also reminds me a lot of “Safe andSound,” which is another wistful, woodsy folk-ish song. I think “willow” does a great job of leading us into another chapter of Taylor’s fantasy world of characters and stories, and given that evermore, I’d argue, is even more fictionalized than folklore, it feels like a good gateway into this magical world.

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

“cardigan”: As we know by now, Taylor released a cardigan as part of her folklore merch and as a tribute to her lead single “cardigan.” The cardigan—which, I did buy, and I love so much—has 3 stars on each elbow as a reference to the lyric “You drew stars around my scars / and now I’m bleeding.” In “willow,” then, we get the line, “Show me the places where the others gave you scars.” I don’t know if the implication is that the narrator wants to draw stars around those scars, but I definitely can’t hear the word “scar” without thinking about “stars” ever again.

“hoax”: In the same vein as “cardigan,” “hoax” also references scars in the line “You know it still hurts underneath these scars from when they pulled me apart,” so, in “willow,” her love’s scars could be from a similar pulling apart.

Track #2: “champagne problems”

Favorite line(s): “Your mom's ring in your pocket / My picture in your wallet / Your heart was glass, I dropped it ” or “You had a speech, you're speechless / Love slipped beyond your reaches / And I couldn't give a reason” or "Sometimes you just don't the answer til someone's on their knees and asks ya"

Initial thoughts and feelings: Well, I have some strangely personal connections to this song, but since it's about a close friend, I won't share them on the very public Internet. But just know that as soon as I saw what this song was about, I immediately thought of her. There was definitely some screaming involved.

I will, however, relate a story from 20 or so years ago that has subconsciously shaped my life. I have a vivid memory of being around 6 or so and asking my mom, "If a boy asks you to marry him, do you have to say 'yes'?" And my mom, already raising a strong-minded, independent feminist, was like, "No. But usually that's something two people talk about before it happens." Cue "champagne problems," where it doesn't look like they had that conversation.

Me hearing the line
"Your mom's ring in your pocket"
for the first time, probably

Y'all. This might be one of Taylor's saddest songs. From the references to mental illness--""This dorm was once a madhouse" / I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me" and "'What a shame she's fucked in the head' they said"--to the narrator's sadness at rejecting her lover. I'm going to forever be thinking about the lines "And I couldn't give a reason" and "Sometimes you just don't the answer until someone's on their knees and asks ya." It's not like her now-ex did anything wrong; she just couldn't say "yes." And that's so painful to me--that some things just don't work, and there's not really a reason. I also think that one of my biggest fears in life would be someone proposing to me and suddenly realizing that that wasn't what I wanted. 

There's something about this album that just feels like it could be set in my hometown. Something about the "hometown skeptics" gossiping about the rejection and making fun of mental illness and the dorms being decorated after it all. I don't know what it is, but evermore is a "small town album"-- even more so than her debut album. 

A friend recently asked me what I think about when I hear Taylor Swift songs about breakups and exes, because I don't have any experience with that--and it's a valid question. It helps that I'm really empathetic, but I usually think about friends who have gone through these things. Not having firsthand experience really doesn't deter me much. Sometimes, though, I hone in on one or two lines that do fit my life, but in a different way. For instance, I will never get over the lines, "How evergreen our group of friends / Don't think we'll say that word again / And soon they'll have the nerve to / Deck the halls that we once walked through." Living in a college town has always felt very transitory; people would always come and go, but I would be always be here. Then I went to college in my hometown, and I felt like I had an even deeper claim to the city and the school--until I left, too--and then life just kept going and what had been mine for 22 years cycled through to another group of people, and it almost felt like it wasn't ever really mine to begin with. And I made incredible friends in college, friends that I swore I'd have forever; if you had asked me, say, sophomore year, I would have sworn we were evergreen. And that's not always the case. I still talk to most of the individually on occasion. A couple of them regularly. But we're not the unit we once were. And the another group of friends probably lives in our dorms room, never knowing about the nights we stayed up until 3AM contemplating life or finishing term papers. It's kind of hard to cope with the idea that maybe we were transitory, too. 

So that's a fun example of how I can relate to Taylor songs that I have absolutely no real-life connection to.

Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

"New Year's Day" (reputation, 2017): The Internet has already mashed these two songs up, and I'm MAD ABOUT IT. I get it. The piano is very similar. I made a note of that on my first listen-through. But do not corrupt my sweet, innocent, lovestruck "New Year's Day" with your heartbreaking "champagne problems." I'm aggressive about this. "New Year's Day" is about wanting the glitz and glamour and good parts of relationships and being willing to do the hard stuff, too, and "champagne problems" is just...sad. I don't want them together. I am a toddler, and these songs are two different foods on my plate--they shouldn't touch.

"Tim McGraw" (Taylor Swift, 2006): The last time Taylor specifically mentions a Chevy truck was in her debut single: "Just a boy in a Chevy truck that had a tendency of gettin' stuck on backroads at night." And then she brings the brand back in "champagne problems": "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door / November flush and your flannel cure." Now, this is either a clever ad for the Midas auto service chain or a reference to the Midas myth and how her love could turn even the worst things (like an old Chevy that maybe got stuck on backroads) into something good--and, like Midas, this story has a tragic ending.

My most ridiculous conspiracy theory about this song: Quite simply, it's that the boy from "Tim McGraw" reads the letter left on his doorstep, and they get back together and date throughout college, only to become the couple from "champagne problems." Conversely, you could set "Tim McGraw" after the events of "champagne problems," and then the lines, "But in a box beneath my bed is a letter that you never read from three summers back" could be about the proposal, and all the "When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think my favorite song / The one we danced to all night long, the moon like a spotlight on the lake" could definitely parallel to "I dropped your hand while dancing." You're welcome for that pain.

My initial thoughts on Tracks 3-5

Track #3: “gold rush”

Favorite line(s): “I don’t like that falling feels like flying til the bone crush” or “My mind turns your life into folklore”

Initial thoughts and feelings: Can you say “relatable”? “gold rush” is a daydream montage straight out of a teen movie…or my middle school diary. I picture her walking the crowded streets of New York (post-COVID), bumping into a beautiful stranger, and in the space of a few seconds, Taylor daydreams about their whole life together, only to realize that he’s literally walked away. When I first listened, I was skeptical about the opening lines; I wasn’t sure what the vibes were going to be, but then it got “boppier,” and I immediately recognized it as a Jack Antanoff tune—it’s super catchy in the way that the Taylor x Jack collabs are, and I think it’s one that people will really gravitate to even as the album ages. I think the dreaminess of the intro and outro work so well to transition the listener (and narrator) in and out of the daydream (almost like the transition music from Hannah Montana), and I think the pep and bop of the verses and choruses really reflect the excitement of the fantasy. I mean, who hasn’t casually noticed a stranger and subsequently planned out your entire lives together? Oh, wait, just me? Is this another Pisces thing?


And the lyrics: "everybody wants you / but I don't like a gold rush." I'm thinking about the actual gold rush when people flocked to the West Coast, and it was frenzied and chaotic and dangerous, and most people didn't actually find the riches that were supposedly there. And that's not what this narrator wants. She doesn't want to be caught up in something just because everyone else is, especially if it may end up being "fool's gold" (if I could extend the gold metaphor a little). That's why she snaps herself out of the daydream. I think we're all guilty of talking ourselves out of a crush because we're a little bit afraid of it--and that probably is for the best most of the time; like, I don't think many people have honestly missed out on the love of their lives just because they decided not to pursue someone for whatever reason (because love is a team effort and takes two people working together and communicating with each other, so you shouldn't be the only one pursuing it)

In a YouTube chat leading up to the premiere of "willow," Taylor answered some fan questions, including telling us that "gold rush" is Jack Antanoff's favorite song on evermore.

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

*Okay, she’s used “gold/golden” a lot since the reputation era—“you left your mark on me, a golden tattoo” (“Dress”); “my love had been frozen, deep blue, but you painted me golden” (“DancingWith Our Hands Tied”); “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden like daylight” (“Daylight”); “one single thread of gold tied me to you” (“invisible string”), just to name a few moments—so I’m not going to reference each of those songs; just know it’s a continuing trend.* 

“evermore”: The ending track is painfully beautiful, but the second I heard the line, “And I was catching my breath / Floors of a cabin creaking under my step” I thought back to the “gold rush” line “I see me padding across your wooden floors.” And I just really love the idea of love moving from a daydream to a possibility. That feels like a good arc. Because there's been pain this whole album, but there's also been growth and healing--and it's all bee real, as opposed to daydream of "gold rush." And I especially like the connection is made in the third verse when she changes the lyrics from "I had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore" to "this pain wouldn't be for evermore." It makes it all retroactively feel more hopeful, like maybe that daydream is possible after all.

Other T. Swift songs it evokes: 

"Lover" (Lover, 2019): In her title track from Lover, Taylor famously said, "And I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you," and, to be honest, the knowledge that Joe Alwyn sings, plays piano (very well!), and writes some absolutely beautiful songs does make me want him a little bit. Those are some great skills! Twitter likes to make fun of these "everyone wants him" lines, but Twitter's full of jerks. Joe's attractive, talented, and treats Taylor well, so he seems like exactly the kind of partner you should want. But no one should want to break them up. That's rude.

“Jump Then Fall” (Fearless: Platinum Edition, 2009): This isn’t the first time Taylor Swift talks about a love interest’s hair. In a bonus track from her first Album-of-the-Year-winning-record, she says, “Well, I like the way your hair falls in your face,” and it’s honestly one of my favorite lines in the song because of the way she delivers it. “Jump Then Fall” is criminally underrated, by the way. The opening and closing lines of “gold rush” also evoke this song: “Gleaming, twinkling eyes like sinking ships on waters so inviting, I almost jump in.” In “Jump Then Fall,” she’s encouraging her love interest to jump into a relationship with her; in “gold rush,” she’s saying, “I almost want to, but I won’t”—because, let’s face it, sinking ships aren’t exactly a place you want to be.

My most ridiculous conspiracy theory about this song: I don’t want to say this—but I think Twitter probably already has, because Twitter is pretty relentless—but I think people will say this is about Harry Styles. I mean, the man has perfect hair that often falls into place; he definitely knows what it’s like to grow up that beautiful, and his latest music video was for his song “Golden,” which, besides the obvious similarity to “gold,” was also filmed in a coastal town in Italy. It’s also fairly common knowledge that the pop-rockstar likes the Eagles, reflected in the lyric “my Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door”—heand One Direction bandmate Niall Horan went to a concert last year—and, he’s British, so any reference to “day-old tea” will evoke her love-affair with England, even if it’s not about her ex. Also, the whole idea of “I don’t like a gold rush” reminds me that Harry has had an incredible year even with the pandemic. His late-2019 album Fine Line is Grammy-nominated, and he’s really just exploded recently—I don’t think it’s wrong to say that everybody wants him. Again, I don't believe this is the case AT ALL, but it's 2020, so enjoy a completely wild conspiracy theory since there are no rules anymore.

Left: Harry Styles performing at the 2020 virtual iHeartRadio Jingle Ball, his hair clearly falling into place like dominoes
Right: Harry Styles during the filming of his "Golden" music video on the Amalfi Coast of Italy.
Both images show that he has certainly grown up beautiful

Track #4: “‘tis the damn season”

Favorite line(s): “We could call it even / You could call me ‘babe’ for the weekend / ‘Tis the damn season” or “I parked my car between the Methodist / And the school that used to be ours” or “Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires” or “I escaped it, too / Remember how you watched me leave”

Initial thoughts and feelings: I write all this while back in my hometown for the holidays, and, write this down, staying at my parents’ house: “’tis the damn season” might be my favorite. While I’ve come to love the first 3 tracks probably by the second listen through, there was something about the way she says, “We could call it even” that made me gasp on that first listen—and let’s be real, I was predisposed to like it because of the title. It’s not a love song’ it’s kind of a hookup song, but, at its core, I think it’s about wanting to be loved—especially at Christmas, and it’s just a little sassy with the “’tis the damn season” hook. Like, I want this song to be used during the dramatic climax of a sad Hallmark movie! It’s a whole story about coming back to your hometown and trying to reclaim something that you know deep down isn’t there anymore. Something about coming home always makes me a little uncomfortable about coming home; businesses close and open; people move away, but some things stay resolutely the same. I’m the same; I’ve changed in so many ways that coming home sometimes feels like putting on an old pair of pants that are just a little too short and tight—but I also fall right back into old friendships and find comfort in the familiarity of the roads I used to travel every day.

Top: The Jacksonville First United Methodist Church (where my family are members)
Bottom: "The old" Kitty Stone Elementary School, which I attended as a child; it's no longer in use because of the asbestos in the building; the city built a new school across town.
The two buildings are literally across the street from each other.

For me, the strength of this song is that the setting is just so real and vivid, something I’ll be saying about a lot of these songs. I mean, the line “I parked my car between the Methodist and the school that used to be ours” could literally be about Jacksonville. The Methodist church is literally right across the street from the now-empty old elementary school. When I was in school, we used to walk to the church for Wednesday-night-church-kid-things. The character is so rich, too. She’s [see next point for why I’m using feminine pronouns] making this after choice to have a fling with her old love (yay for women making decisions about their bodies and embracing their sexuality), but the songs also laced with so much melancholy, from her reference to Robert Frost’s “The RoadNot Taken” with the line “and the road not taken looks real good now” to the bridge: “So I’ll go back to L.A. / and my so-called friends / Who’ll write books about me if I ever make it / and wonder about the only soul who knows which smiles I’m faking.” I feel like she must be in her mid-to-late 20s, because that kind of regret and “what if?” mentality has big quarter-life-crisis vibes.

Drunk in the middle of the night feels like the only way to write a song about going home for the holidays as an adult. https://t.co/AF1K4JDgbQ

— Katie Cline (@katiebethbug) December 19, 2020

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

The way I desperately want a High School Musical-esque movie-musical about this high school and these students!

“dorothea”: In her album letter, Taylor says, “Before I knew it, there were 17 tales, some of which are mirrored or intersecting with one another […] 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.” The narrators in both “’tis the damn season” and “dorothea” refer to their loves as “soul” (“and wonder about the only soul who knows which smiles I’m faking” and “Are you still the same soul that I met under the bleachers?”). Using “souls” just makes them feel connected on a deeper level, like maybe they’re constantly being pulled back to each other in a never-ending “right person, wrong time” scenario.

“betty”: In the YouTube chat prior to the “willow” music video premiere, Taylor said that she imagined that Betty, James, August Girl (also called Augustine or Augusta, according to the Long Pond Sessions on Disney+), and Dorothea all went to school together—which would mean “betty” is canonically set in Tupelo [see “dorothea” entry in "Part 2" for more]

Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

“Babe” (Bigger by Sugarland, 2018): This song was considered for Taylor Swift’s Red (2012) album, but she ultimately sold it the country duo Sugarland and was featured on the track when it was released in 2018. The line in “’tis the damn season” that says, “You can call me ‘babe’ for the weekend” evokes the title of this track, which details the fallout of a relationship when one party cheats.

“Blank Space” (1989, 2014): In her massive 2014 hit that parodies the media’s view of Swift’s “serial dating” habits, Swift sings “I can make the bad guys good for a weekend.” Like “’tis the damn season,” the narrators know the relationship won’t last, but “Blank Space”’s woman takes a sick amount of joy in her manipulative ways, while Dorothea’s weekend fling makes the listener…sad for her.

"The Outside" (Taylor Swift, 2006): Throwing it all the way back to her debut, "The Outside" also reference's Frost's poem in the lines "I tried to take the road less traveled by / but nothing seems to work the first few times / Am I right?" Anyone who's studied this poem in a poetry survey course (like I did my sophomore year of undergrad) has had this conversation: we always interpret the last lines (And I--/ I took the one less traveled by, / and that has made all the difference) as meaning the road less traveled by is the better one and that the difference is a good difference, but that's not necessarily the case, as the narrator/Dorothea touches on in "'tis the damn season." It more means, "You made your choice, and that's affected your life--for better or for worse." And it's really cool to me to see those two interpretations reflected in different songs at opposite ends of her discography. "The Outside" very much feels like she's trying to do the right thing, but it doesn't always work, and she feels like an outcast because she's taking the "wrong" road, and then "'tis the damn season" shows that doubt and uncertainty, like, "Maybe the road less traveled by was less traveled by for a reason; maybe I messed this up."

My most ridiculous theory involving this song: I don’t think this is an actual connection, but there’s the line in “no body, no crime” that goes, “And I noticed when I passed his house / His truck has got some brand new tires” I’m not saying that Este’s husband cheated on her with Dorothea and then murdered Este and dumped the body, thereby making his tires “messy” like is mentioned in “’tis the season,” but I am saying that that’s a wild conspiracy theory, and I won’t tell you not to entertain it.

Track #5: “tolerate it”

Favorite line(s): “I know my love should be celebrated / But you tolerate it” and also the entire bridge into the second chorus, but especially "What would you do if I / Break free and leave us in ruins / Took this dagger in me and removed it / Gain the weight of you, then lose it? / Believe me, I could do it"

Line that hits way too close to home: "Always taking up too much space or time"

Initial thoughts and feelings: Okay, so there are a lot of fan theories around "tolerate it," from it being  about Princess Diana and Prince Charles to it being about someone coming out as LGTBQ+ to their family--but, frankly, I couldn't pay attention to any of these theories because I was too busy SOBBING. I'll be honest, "my tears ricochet" didn't hit me as hard as I expected it to the first time I heard it (it's grown on me since), so I wasn't super sure what to expect from this track 5, BUT WOW. This is what a "Taylor Swift Track 5 song" means to me. This song takes every nerve ending in my body and exposes it. This song physically rips me open and feeds my heart to the wolves. This song reads my diary, emails it to the whole school, and takes out space in the local paper to publish it. 

I love it. 

Me and Jennie, summer 2015
 (just after our freshman year of college)
Sorry, Jennie! It was already on
Facebook, thought!

So, I've been slowly getting my friend/college roommate Jennie (yes, one of the ones I talk to regularly) into Taylor Swift. It didn't necessarily start out that way, but, eventually, everyone I know finds at least one Taylor Swift song they like. So Jennie messaged our group chat not long ago to inform me that she "really likes evermore" and gave me a list of her favorites, including "tolerate it," which she said "definitely brought a young freshman Katie to mind." And I'm simultaneously like, "That's terrifying," but also like, "It's true." 2020, in particular, has been a year of working on setting personal boundaries, because I do tend to give too many chances, especially to friends. And while this song is absolutely heartwrenching, I'm obsessed with the fact that she knows her love should be celebrated. Like, "Yes, girl! Know your worth!" And I've definitely given my love to people who haven't celebrated it, and I'm trying to stop doing that. 

Connection to other songs on folklore & evermore:

"invisible string": Like with "New Year's Day" and "champagne problems," I don't want to make this connection, but Taylor doesn't exactly write about barbed wire very much, so when the line in the bridge goes, "Where's the man who threw blankets over my barbed wire?" I immediately thought of the bridge of "invisible string" where there are the lines "Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire / Chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons / One single thread of gold tied me to you." I also don't want to mention that both songs open with lines about reading: "Green was the color of the grass where I used to read in Centennial Park" in "invisible string" and "I sit and watch you reading with your head down" in "tolerate it." However, for personal reasons, I refuse to believe that that beautiful song about Joe and Fate and true love being real and everything working out the way it's supposed to could ever devolve into a cold, loveless relationship like in "tolerate it."

Other T. Swift songs it evokes:

"Paper Rings" (Lover, 2019): Listen. I'm aware that I probably need therapy for drawing connections between two of her happiest love songs in her catalogue and this heartbreaking song, but hear me out. In "Paper Rings," she says, "Now I wake up in the night and watch you breathe," and in "tolerate it" she says, "I wake and watch you breathing with your eyes closed." How am I not supposed to draw those parallels??? Again, "Paper Rings" is clearly about Joe, and "tolerate it" is a story about characters--maybe people she knows, maybe characters from books or TV shows or movies, maybe historical figures. I refuse to pair them together. But wouldn't it make for the saddest movie soundtrack ever if you started out with songs like "Paper Rings" and "invisible string" and then transitioned into songs like "tolerate it"???? 

"All Too Well" (Red, 2012): Possibly her best song up to 2020, and definitely a fan fixation, "All Too Well" has been the pinnacle of vulnerability for 8 years. And maybe it's not actually that similar to "tolerate it" except that they both make me cry and happen to be Track 5 songs, but I think they complement each other. "All Too Well" is definitely a "I want to sit in my sadness and be sad because how could you do this to me" kind of song; it has some anger and frustration to it for sure. And "tolerate it" is a quiet kind of resignation and despair, but the second chorus (referenced in my "favorite line(s)") shows the listener (and maybe the narrator, too) that she is capable of breaking free and leaving this relationship. "All Too Well" is about being left and not knowing why you weren't enough and fixating on it, and "tolerate it" is leaving and not knowing why you weren't enough and accepting that you deserve better. And it's that bridge and second chorus that makes all the difference for me. In my opinion, "All Too Well" says a lot about the ex, while "tolerate it" says more about the narrator, and I think that's something really important to acknowledge.

So those are my many, many thoughts (only about 4800 words! #whoops!) on the first 5 tracks of evermore! Part 2 (Tracks 6-10) coming soon! (Update: It was posted on December 26th, so you can view it here.) If you made it this far, I'm impressed. Let me know if you have anything to add or if you want to co-write a Taylor Swift book with me!

May we all come back stronger than a 90s trend,

Katie