Taylor Swift’s single era on Midnights, a lyric analysis
Here’s the thing: I think Taylor Swift has been in her single era for the past few months and she’s already told us about it on Midnights. Here’s an exploration of this theme on the album. (This is a long post but worth it.)
Dear Reader
Let’s start with Dear Reader because the outro is screaming that she’s single. The way Taylor Swift uses her own motifs that she’s been building across her entire career to really hammer this message home that she is alone just destroys me.
To Taylor, going home is going home to a lover. It’s the physical act of making a house a home. It is this gentle, comforting, cozy kind of love. Her specifying that she’s going a house instead of a home underlines that she’s alone. She is physically in a house, but she is not emotionally at home. And no one would take her word for it because her being alone is counter to the public narrative of her six-year relationship.
ranking taylor’s songs is always hard for me bc there’s the songs that I think are objectively Her Best, then there’s the ones I listen to the most, then there’s the ones I cry over, then there’s the songs I dance to, then there’s the songs I have intricate internal universes I imagine as they play, then there’s the songs that just bring a smile to my face, then there’s the songs that-
