Taylor's Originals
Welcome to New York (Taylor's Version)
Secret Message:
"We begin our story in New York"
"We begin our story in New York"
The opening of this BANGER album, “Welcome to New York” marks Taylor’s long awaited move from Nashville to New York and really embodies her transition from country-pop to a more glitzy electronic-pop. Taylor writes “took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer” showing the fans that we’ll be saying goodbye to the past heartbreak and baggage we saw in Red, and hello to a world where Taylor asserts her girl boss dominance.
Blank Space (Taylor's Version)
Secret Message:
“There once was a girl known by everyone and no one.”
“There once was a girl known by everyone and no one.”
This is a sentence of text. In every sentence there is a noun and a verb. Occasionally, you will also find adjectives which make the sentence burst with beautiful colours. And if I keep adding a few more sentences it will eventually become a paragraph.
Style (Taylor's Version)
Secret Message:
“Her heart belonged to someone who couldn’t stay.”
“Her heart belonged to someone who couldn’t stay.”
Taylor clues us in that “Style” is about her past relationship with Harry Styles when she writes about “that James Dean daydream look in [his] eye” which closely resembles Harry, and even shows in the music video the paper aeroplane necklace that the two wore when they dated. Taylor makes an effort to never explicitly say who her songs are about… but… it’s not subtle at all Miss Swift. Taylor explains in an interview that the lines,
I say, "I heard, oh
That you've been out and about with some other girl"
Some other girl
He says, "What you heard is true, but I
Can't stop thinking 'bout you and I"
I said, "I've been there too a few times"
are about “two people [herself and Harry Styles] trying to forget each other and they both have been out with other people and they both tried to forget the other,” however, they both feel the need to come back to each other. In that sense, though the relationship is a crooked love, the thrill was rushing and they never saw each other as going out of style any time soon.
In addition, the song shows the struggles of keeping their relationship discreet, writing “You come and pick me up, no headlights” and “The lights are off, he's taking off his coat”.
Out Of The Woods (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“They loved each other recklessly.”
“They loved each other recklessly.”
This is a sentence of text. In every sentence there is a noun and a verb. Occasionally, you will also find adjectives which make the sentence burst with beautiful colours. And if I keep adding a few more sentences it will eventually become a paragraph.
All You Had To Do Was Stay (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“They paid the price.”
“They paid the price.”
Taylor preaches that “your two real options in a relationship are you either leave, or stay”. “All You Had To Do Was Stay” is the entirety of Taylor’s relationship philosophy here, and we’ve seen this in multiple other albums such as “Stay Stay Stay”, and “New Year’s Day”.
In this tune, Taylor provides her response to an indecisive lover who one day leaves, and the next day wants to stay again. In an interview with Ryan Adams, Taylor says the songs response to the indecisive lover is simply “All you had to do was stay, sorry about it, I don’t miss you”.
And so, the ex-lover has paid the price of leaving and Taylor’s never coming back for him.In a way, this is really the 1989 version of Red’s “We Are Never Getting Back Together”.
Style (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“She danced to forget him.”
“She danced to forget him.”
This is a sentence of text. In every sentence there is a noun and a verb. Occasionally, you will also find adjectives which make the sentence burst with beautiful colours. And if I keep adding a few more sentences it will eventually become a paragraph.
I Wish You Would (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“He drove past her street each night.”
“He drove past her street each night.”
In her voice memo, Taylor says
“It's about this guy who’s driving on the street in the middle of the night, and he passes his ex-girlfriend's house and he thinks she hates him, but she’s still in love with him. Very dramatic.”
We see so much of what she wishes would have happened in the past, writing “I wish I never hung up the phone like I did”. She also writes about her wishing to be much closer, “I wish you would come back”.
A user on Tumblr writes:
Taylor wrote the song a couple of months after her and Harry broke up. They decided to become friends again, and she said this was the first time she had become friends with an ex, to the point where they were comfortable enough to talk about why the relationship didn't work out. He said how, after they broke up, he bought a house literally one road adjacent to hers, and every day he would drive home, and accidentally turn into her street, and told her how he just wanted to stop at her house and see her, but he never did. [...]
She compared the song to a classic movie where both parties want the same thing but neither has the guts to say anything. That’s why the song has the lyrics of "driving straight ahead", opposed to taking the left turn to see her.
You could consider this one like more upbeat version of Red’s “I Almost Do” and “Come Back… Be Here”.
Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“She made friends and enemies.”
“She made friends and enemies.”
This is a sentence of text. In every sentence there is a noun and a verb. Occasionally, you will also find adjectives which make the sentence burst with beautiful colours. And if I keep adding a few more sentences it will eventually become a paragraph.
Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“He only saw her in his dreams.”
“He only saw her in his dreams.”
Before I say anything about the meaning of this song, the distinct beat in the background is Taylor Swift's ACTUAL HEART BEAT. God she is iconic.
In this banger of a song we see Taylor continuously predicting the impermanence of their relationship, writing “Nothing lasts forever / But this is gonna take me down” and “I can see the end as it begins”.
Regardless of whether the relationship ends or not, she asks her lover to remember the best parts of their relationship, including
Standin' in a nice dress
Starin' at the sunset, babe
Red lips and rosy cheeks.
A theme in the song is the struggle to escape media attention as a high-profile couple, opening the song with “He said, ‘Let's get out of this town / Drive out of the city, away from the crowds’.” I mean, Taylor’s description of her and Harry in this song are SO idealistic, just how the media likes it. I think a possible interpretation of the song is saying, if you can’t escape the media, focus on the parts the media captured best when it’s over.
To get even wilder, this is one of the first songs we see with sexual references, singing “No one has to know what we do / His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room”, really distinguishing Taylor’s transition to a mature soundtrack.
How You Get The Girl (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“Then one day he came back.”
“Then one day he came back.”
This song is a guide on what ABSOLUTELY NOT to do if you want to get back with an ex-lover. And in this guide, we see a wonderful array of tricks and mind-games her ex-lovers have used to try and win her back.
The first mind game Taylor sings is that ex-lovers say all this nice shit which has no sincere meaning behind it, such as:
I want you for worse or for better
I would wait forever and ever
Broke your heart, I'll put it back together
I would wait forever and ever
Or another trick if that they’ll guilt trip you into forgetting their toxic behaviour, and to only remember the good times, such as
Remind her how it used to be
With pictures in frames of kisses on cheeks
Or (and this is my favourite) they’ll tell you that it wasn’t their fault that they decided to leave you.
Say it's been a long six months
And you were too afraid to tell her what you want
[...]
Tell her how you must have lost your mind
And so, in this song Taylor basically gives all of us a response to say if one day that ex-lover comes back, and that is: okay, I don’t care and I'm not falling for your tricks, we are never getting back together *mic drop*.
This Love (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“Timing is a funny thing.”
“Timing is a funny thing.”
“This Love” begins with the imagery of “clear blue water” and “high tides” which “brought you in”. Then in a complete 180 degrees, “Skies grew darker / Currents swept you out again”.
Immediately, we see that the song is about the different cycles that love goes through.For Taylor, the love she had for some person was not this or that, but a mixture of both, writing
This love is good, this love is bad
This love is alive back from the dead
[...]
This love left a permanent mark
This love is glowing in the dark
The song uses a crazy amount of repetition with the “oh-oh, oh” backing vocals, as well as an echoing sound effect to emphasise how much the different cycles of love also repeat themselves. Every time she has let the love go free, she finds that “this love came back to me”.
Altogether, I feel this song teaches us that if a lost love is strong enough it’ll come back to you when the time’s right.
I Know Places (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“And everyone was watching.”
“And everyone was watching.”
This is a sentence of text. In every sentence there is a noun and a verb. Occasionally, you will also find adjectives which make the sentence burst with beautiful colours. And if I keep adding a few more sentences it will eventually become a paragraph.
Clean (Taylor’s Version)
Secret Message:
“She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything.”
“She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything.”
Before performing Clean during her 1989 World Tour, Taylor performed a speech about finding yourself being a consequence of making mistakes.
“I think that we mistake our mistakes for damage, and we think other people will judge us for them. But I want you to know that the way I see mistakes, they don’t make you damaged, they make you clean.” (Manchester Tour)
“After you make mistakes, when you go through something awful and you lose someone, you feel like your mistakes are written all over your clothes and your skin or something. And then I think, if you continue to move through your life and replace old habits with new ones, you can erase that feeling. And that’s when you know, you’re finally clean.” (Salt Lake City Tour)
The poem opens the metaphor of water, singing “The drought was the very worst / When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst” signifying the couple’s passion had dried up after multiple arguments, or the “perfect storm”.
However, from the storm “Rain came pouring down”. In a way, the metaphor of rain isn’t about sadness as we would expect, but a metaphor of being clean, revived, and revitalised. Sure, Taylor writing “When I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe” is a tad paradoxical, but it perfectly captures the way struggling with mistakes helps to make us better people once we’ve dealt with them.
To add to the complexity of this whole sitch, she reminds us that even if you’re clean “doesn't mean you don't miss it” however, she’s wiser now to know she’s “never gonna risk it”, i.e. won’t be going back to that relationship.
It really is nice to see this motif of indecision wrapped up at the end of the album!
For Taylor, we see that in the process of losing her ex-lover she was cleansed of burden and so she found a better version of herself.
