swiftrrys
no other sadness in the world would do.she/her
113 posts
Latest Posts by swiftrrys
Rebecca Fergusonas Chrissy Eriksson in Episode 09 of ‘Ocean Ave’ (2002)
likeeee. the serve. scientology must be destroyed
Backstage at the Capital Fm Jingle Bell Ball 8 December in London. (link) Capital Fm article. In the interview before the show the band is asked Cats or Dogs, Harry says love the cats with a proud look to someone off screen.
You can see Taylor on the side during One Thing (0:51). She left before WMYB, Harry was looking for where she went throughout.
Their whole timeline this year is confusing. TR came into the picture end of June and TK end of July/beginning of Aug (around the time TS/HS seemed to be having issues?). It's also suspected HS/TS could've met up or had something sometime in the Summer. Before that the MH thing was crazy too.
Oh it's all very organic.
what’s with m4ylors wanting m4ylor to be like haylor so bad 😭 first trying to steal our songs and now twin flame
A few comments (with some likes) on that reading you posted about TF are saying it's ratty. what's with all the maylor shippers 🤢
He’s not an air sign lol
I think there's a lot to be said about Clean and how Taylor was writing songs like Style and Is It Over Now? at the same time. The shaming by the media and public made her put on a face and say she was over her hurt when she wasn't.
The Lakes
The lakes is about escaping the challenging aspects of Taylor Swift's life with her muse to form an artist community like Wordsworth and Keats had in the Lakes district in the 19th century.
Above, the Lyric video shows wildflowers, LK has referenced this song and Harry also has for a Pleasing campaign. In the vertical video Taylor is on a swing, reminiscent of the swing in Seven, possibly about Harry. Finally a photo with a swan in The Lakes District.
In the Long Pond Session Taylor said (I've shortened it)
'The Lakes is a testament of what I wanted to escape from and where I saw myself escaping to. We'd gone to the Lake District in England a couple years ago. In the 19th century you had a lot of poets like William Wordsworth and John Keats. There was a poet district. They had their own community of other artists, which I've always in my career.' Jack: 'it's not just I've found something worth escaping to it’s a person to escape with.” Taylor agreed "That's a huge sincere statement of hope, everything I'm naming is completely small compared to this love.” “Hoax as the ending song was interesting for a couple weeks but then I wanted the real last song. The Lakes shows you exactly what the overarching theme of the whole album of trying to escape and having something you want to protect, protect your own sanity and saying look they did this hundreds of years ago, I'm not the first person who's felt this way.
Taylor said they had gone to the lakes "a couple of years ago", and she described a poet district with an artist community, meaning fellow songwriters. She had been to the Lakes with a couple of years ago with on her first trip there with Harry Styles on her birthday in 2012. At the time Taylor said it was her best birthday since she was 6. Like Taylor, Harry has a similar experience of fame and is a lyricist. Harry has also sung about being in an artist community with Taylor, in Canyon Moon, which has a very similar idea as The Lakes.
I have seen people refer to the Invisible String Lyric "Our three-year trip / Getting lunch down by the Lakes" to point to Joe. While not photographed, their 3rd anniversary was October 2019, or 6 months before this song was recorded. 'A couple of years ago' rather than 'last year' implies the earlier trip. Joe is also not a lyricist, she spoke about an artist community. He is credited as a producer on Folklore. Taylor described how William Bowery wrote the melody's not lyrics.
Lyrics
Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me? I'm not cut out for all these cynical clones These hunters with cell phones
An elegie is the speech at a funeral, her songs, particularly those she is reclaiming are like diary. She lost her eulogie, the story of her life.
The last line refers back to 'I Know Places' "They are the hunters, we are the foxes" where she and Harry ran from paparazzi, now they hide from every person with a cell phone.
Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry I'm setting off, but not without my muse
Taylor is saying she is not cut out for the music industry life, she lost the rights to her diary, constantly photographed. In the Long Pond she referred to having this plan for years, which she foreshadowed for Lover, and I think Harry's Peace ring. I think they may have shared this plan when they first visited for when she turned 30 and into 2020. Folklore is about communication and how life differs to what a 23 year old planned.
The final line is so lovely, her muse is Harry Styles. No other partner has inspired so much work or so much success, they have inspired and encouraged each other to do their best work. Even when they are with others for years they still write about each other. When they see each other they are prolific. Harry has even sung about how he writes too much about her. I could list what proportion of awards and hits are about this relationship, but let's stay in the Windermere peaks.
Despite their success Taylor does not think they are cut out for this life. Taylor has sung about Harry's anxiety in New Years Day and Now that we don't talk, it's also apparent watching him at award shows in his solo career. This song and many (Mirrorball, I know places, Slut!, You're on your own kid) are about how fame impacted Taylor.
What should be over burrowed under my skin In heart-stopping waves of hurt I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze Tell me what are my words worth
The first line I think could have 2 meanings, one that the relationship should be over but it is not and the waves are hurt of not being together. Or, and I think this because of the second half, Taylor cannot let her masters go. The last line is a pun on the worth of her words and the poet William Wordsworth.
I want auroras and sad prose I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet 'Cause I haven't moved in years And I want you right here A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground With no one around to tweet it While I bathe in cliffside pools With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief
I want auroras and sad prose, refers to Harry Styles. She describes his eyes as “aurora borealis green” in Snow on the Beach. She also describes him as sad boy in Question..?, he does write sad prose.
In the Long Pond Session Taylor said "I could see this you know you you live in a cottage and you've got Wisteria growing up the outside of it and you just why you know of course they escaped like that." William Wordsworths cottage (below) has wisteria growing on the side, which is a slow growing purple plant, almost a lavender haze!
I love the imagery of 'Red rose grew out of rose in frozen ground', because it refers to Rose, which is a Haylor theme. But also because it refers to the track before Hoax: "My winless fight, this has frozen my ground" It also refers to a theme of hiding their love, "I would die for you secret" in Peace, that something beautiful and no one needs to know about it.
The last lines are so poetic and dramatic I love them. Calamitous love refers to a love that’s “built to fall apart (and back together)” in OOTW or "a crooked love in a straight line down” in IWYW. Taylor used a similar word discussing SOTB, calling it cataclysmic love. Taylor describes her dramatic and passionate relationship with Harry rather than staide and safe one described with Joe.
Her insurmountable grief is all she’s lost, her masters, the things she gave up in your own your own kid and things she has to pine about.
Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry I'm setting off, but not without my muse No, not without you
Love this chorus, such beautiful poetry about poets and love.
Some Haylor Tracks at 1989 (x/x)
So it goes
So it goes tells the story of the 2014 Victoria Secret After Party: ''All eyes were on Harry and Taylor when they turned up. [...] The drinks were flowing until 3am, when they snuck out of a rear exit five minutes apart to avoid being pictured together." In context of the 2015 timeline 1989 (I know places established they wanted their relationship to go private) and 1D’s Four (with Stockholm Syndrome) had just been released. They were photographed the after party:
This was a pivotal night:
this outfit from that VS Show is also at 3 mins in I don’t wanna live forever (and cardigan refers to this sequin smile) and
In Only Angel Harry says he doesn't have eyes for the VS angels “She's an angel, My-my-my only angel”
So it goes has only been played live 8 times and not yet on the Eras tour. The last time it was played was in the last Rep show in Tokyo, (9:38) with 2 other rare songs for the Rep Tour: I Know Places and Wildest Dreams. Harry Styles was in Japan that month and wrote Little Freak before he left Tokyo.
It was most likely recorded in September 2016 with Shellback in Sweden along with other reputation tracks. Shellback had the melody and Taylor addd lyrics:
Fun fact: Taylor's only lyrics "so it goes" are in Haylor songs, the very first night, So it goes, Style and You are in Love.
Lyrics
[Verse 1] See you in the dark All eyes on you, my magician All eyes on us You make everyone disappear, and Cut me into pieces Gold cage, hostage to my feelings Back against the wall Trippin', trip-trippin' when you're gone
The first verse sets the scene, similar to the articles Harry and Taylor are the focus of many, drawn to each other and wanting to keep their connection secret.
In Hoax, Taylor has a similar lyric to magician "Your sleight of hand"
'Gold cage, hostage to my feelings' refers to being trapped by love. Similar to Stockholm Syndrome, which was released only 2 weeks before the VS party, Taylor is trapped in a gold/gilded cage (a luxurious prison) by love.
[Pre-Chorus] 'Cause we break down a little But when you get me alone, it's so simple 'Cause, baby, I know what you know We can feel it [Chorus] And all the pieces fall right into place Getting caught up in a moment Lipstick on your face So it goes I'm yours to keep And I'm yours to lose You know I'm not a bad girl, but I Do bad things with you So it goes
So it goes is a lyric in Style. In the chorus Taylor lets us know that when they are away from others they have great chemistry. She also refers to lipstick, referred to in many 1989 songs. Taylor is described as a 'bad/good girl often, she talks about it in Miss Americana and also in:
Style: And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt
Question...?; Good girl, sad boy
Only Angel: That she's gonna be an angel, just you wait and see, When it turns out she's a devil in between the sheets
[Verse 2] Met you in a bar All eyes on me, your illusionist All eyes on us I make all your gray days clear And wear you like a necklace I'm so chill, but you make me jealous But I got your heart Skippin', skip-skippin' when I'm gone
The afterparty was in Basement bar. The illusionist/magician references are enjoying knowing that she and her muse will leave together without others knowing. 'Make all grey days clear' tells us the muse is British.
[Bridge] You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? I did a number on you But, honestly, baby, who's counting? You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? Who's counting? (One, two, three)
The bridge tells us more about her relationship with her muse, they have a history, have hurt each other before and are wanting to move on. Though she says she is letting it go she is also keeping score. At this point the events of Red, 1989 and most of the one direction songs about TS had transpired between them.
but the theory doesn’t insist on the song being about calvin or joe tho especially joe because it’s before they met? i think maybe she had some parts done in 2015 here but redid it later in 2016 and changed it obviously
Rep Timeline-ish?
Part Two Part One here
2016 cont..
August 29 - "This summer is the apocalypse" Nashville, TN [Lover Journals], Taylor attends jury duty in Nashville
August 31 - Taylor seen in NY
September 2 - Taylor begins writing Gorgeous in Cornelia St apartment
September 6 - Taylor papped leaving gym in NY, writing King Of My Heart
September 9 - Taylor papped leaving gym in NY
September 16 - Still writing Gorgeous - Now in Nashville
September 17 - Taylor attends Music City Wine and Food Festival in Nashville. Writing Gorgeous after festival (same outfit)
September 19 - Taylor flies to NY and attends Max Martin & Shellback studio. (The Swift Life video) Works on Gorgeous, I Did Something Bad, Delicate & King Of My Heart
September 20 - King Of My Heart bridge in LA
September 21 - Records King Of My Heart at Max Martin & Shellback studio.
September 27 - Taylor attends dinner in NYC at the Waverly Inn with Cara, Jack, Lorde, Suki Waterhouse and Sienna Miller
October - November - Harry recording HS1 in Jamaica
October 12 - Taylor & Joe attend Kings of Leon concert at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, afterparty at The Bowery Hotel. October 15 - Taylor attends Elliot Sumner's party. Delicate is written/recorded somewhere here - See Taylors neck tattoo in making of:
October 21 - "Someday" is released.
October 22 - Taylor performs at F1 in Austin
October 23 - Taylor attends Drakes birthday with golden tattoo
October 28 - Taylor flies to London, MIA
October 31 - Taylor returns to NYC, Deadpool halloween
November 12 - Taylor attends Joe's movie screening at Arclight Theatre: "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" November 23 - Taylor papped in NY
December 09 - I Don't Wanna Live Forever released.
December 28 - Unconfirmed haylor sighting.
2017
January 03 - "Living in London, hiding out. Joe and I have been together 3 months" [Lover Journals]
January 08 - I Don't Wanna Live Forever video filmed in London.
January 11 - Taylor papped leaving gym in LA, attends Conway Studios. (Don't Blame Me recorded at Conway) She's also wearing her "J" necklace in these vids
February 18 - Taylor spotted in London
April 04 - Taylor recording reputation in Nashville (The hair around this time seems to be matching that in the Jack tracks from rep. He's wearing the same T-shirt in Getaway Car & This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. Call It What You Want is also around here
April 18 - Harry's Rolling Stone interview
April 29 - Harry celebrates the anniversary of April 29.
May 12 - Harry releases HS1
May 14 - Taylor papped in Nashville, leaves for London
Mid May - …Ready For It? recorded at MXM Studios in Sweden
May 18 - Harry on Carpool Karaoke, wears Haylor ring.
May 20 - Haylor anniversary. Harry emotional on stage, sings Landslide with Stevie Nicks.
June 01 - Taylor & Joe leave London for LA, then Nashville
June 03 - Joe & Taylor papped in Nashville
June 11 – Joe disembarks Taylor’s jet in London.
June 18 – Taylor in London for fathers day.
June 30 – Taylor & Joe disembark Taylor’s jet in Rhode Island
July - Harry & Camile
July 15 – End Game written. Ed Sheeran confirms that they started working on it when he was in Mohegan Sun, Connecticut for his Divide Tour and Taylor was staying in RI.
July 19 - Dunkirk released
July 24 – Joe & Taylor papped leaving gym in NYC
August 21 - Taylor films …Ready For It? music video
August 28 - Taylor deletes Instagram
September 03 - …Ready For It? released
Mid September - Taylor writes and records So It Goes. (Final track recorded with Martin & Shellback) Rep mag track listings don't match up indicating last minute adjustments
October 20 - Gorgeous released
October 26 - …Ready For It? MV released
November 02 - Call It What You Want released
November 10 - reputation released
wasn’t so it goes written/recorded in march 2nd 2015?
Rep Timeline-ish?
Part Two Part One here
2016 cont..
August 29 - "This summer is the apocalypse" Nashville, TN [Lover Journals], Taylor attends jury duty in Nashville
August 31 - Taylor seen in NY
September 2 - Taylor begins writing Gorgeous in Cornelia St apartment
September 6 - Taylor papped leaving gym in NY, writing King Of My Heart
September 9 - Taylor papped leaving gym in NY
September 16 - Still writing Gorgeous - Now in Nashville
September 17 - Taylor attends Music City Wine and Food Festival in Nashville. Writing Gorgeous after festival (same outfit)
September 19 - Taylor flies to NY and attends Max Martin & Shellback studio. (The Swift Life video) Works on Gorgeous, I Did Something Bad, Delicate & King Of My Heart
September 20 - King Of My Heart bridge in LA
September 21 - Records King Of My Heart at Max Martin & Shellback studio.
September 27 - Taylor attends dinner in NYC at the Waverly Inn with Cara, Jack, Lorde, Suki Waterhouse and Sienna Miller
October - November - Harry recording HS1 in Jamaica
October 12 - Taylor & Joe attend Kings of Leon concert at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, afterparty at The Bowery Hotel. October 15 - Taylor attends Elliot Sumner's party. Delicate is written/recorded somewhere here - See Taylors neck tattoo in making of:
October 21 - "Someday" is released.
October 22 - Taylor performs at F1 in Austin
October 23 - Taylor attends Drakes birthday with golden tattoo
October 28 - Taylor flies to London, MIA
October 31 - Taylor returns to NYC, Deadpool halloween
November 12 - Taylor attends Joe's movie screening at Arclight Theatre: "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" November 23 - Taylor papped in NY
December 09 - I Don't Wanna Live Forever released.
December 28 - Unconfirmed haylor sighting.
2017
January 03 - "Living in London, hiding out. Joe and I have been together 3 months" [Lover Journals]
January 08 - I Don't Wanna Live Forever video filmed in London.
January 11 - Taylor papped leaving gym in LA, attends Conway Studios. (Don't Blame Me recorded at Conway) She's also wearing her "J" necklace in these vids
February 18 - Taylor spotted in London
April 04 - Taylor recording reputation in Nashville (The hair around this time seems to be matching that in the Jack tracks from rep. He's wearing the same T-shirt in Getaway Car & This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. Call It What You Want is also around here
April 18 - Harry's Rolling Stone interview
April 29 - Harry celebrates the anniversary of April 29.
May 12 - Harry releases HS1
May 14 - Taylor papped in Nashville, leaves for London
Mid May - …Ready For It? recorded at MXM Studios in Sweden
May 18 - Harry on Carpool Karaoke, wears Haylor ring.
May 20 - Haylor anniversary. Harry emotional on stage, sings Landslide with Stevie Nicks.
June 01 - Taylor & Joe leave London for LA, then Nashville
June 03 - Joe & Taylor papped in Nashville
June 11 – Joe disembarks Taylor’s jet in London.
June 18 – Taylor in London for fathers day.
June 30 – Taylor & Joe disembark Taylor’s jet in Rhode Island
July - Harry & Camile
July 15 – End Game written. Ed Sheeran confirms that they started working on it when he was in Mohegan Sun, Connecticut for his Divide Tour and Taylor was staying in RI.
July 19 - Dunkirk released
July 24 – Joe & Taylor papped leaving gym in NYC
August 21 - Taylor films …Ready For It? music video
August 28 - Taylor deletes Instagram
September 03 - …Ready For It? released
Mid September - Taylor writes and records So It Goes. (Final track recorded with Martin & Shellback) Rep mag track listings don't match up indicating last minute adjustments
October 20 - Gorgeous released
October 26 - …Ready For It? MV released
November 02 - Call It What You Want released
November 10 - reputation released
It's so annoying to check the Haylor tag and see (mostly Gaylors and Larries) saying dumb shit like "did you even read the prologue of 1989?" Idk babe, did YOU? Because if you're still a Gaylor after that and the other multiple times she's said she's straight, an ally, and to stop shipping her with women then are you even truly a fan of hers? She was saying, in the nicest way possible, AGAIN that she is straight and tired of people shipping her with her FRIENDS. She dated Harry, so linking songs to him is not what she is talking about in the prologue. For the males, she was referring to her male FRIENDS - ie. Ed Sheeran and honestly I have no idea now who her other male friends are because she's kept them so secret but, I know she was also linked with Cory Moneith back in the day as well as Zac Efron who were clearly just friends with her.
The other thing I have seen is "you have no proof Haylor ever happened outside of 2012 besides their song lyrics". Yes, no shit. Did you hear Harry? I'm not even a huge Harry fan and even I know he specifically did an interview (maybe multiple) where he said lyrics/songs were "the best unspoken dialogue between people". Like, he gave you the proof right there. So if you can't put 2 + 2 together then idk what to tell you.
All of 1989 indicates a relationship that failed mostly due to the paparazzi/media influence. Firstly, I have no idea how anyone could ever link that to Dianna Agron when IF they had been in a relationship it was secret so it could not possibly have failed due to the media/paparazzi. I'm assuming those who believe this just do not get metaphors? Because in "I Know Places" she's not talking about hiding a queer relationship, she's talking about the paparazzi hounding her and Harry early into their relationship (he also talked about this and how at the time it was overwhelming for him and he hated it) - I know she also made comments about this back then as well - and she was trying to be his safe place and saying "I know places we can hide from them". The hunters with their guns are literally paparazzi with their cameras. Literally the entire song:
"It's a scene and we're out here in plain sight I can hear them whisper as we pass by It's a bad sign, bad sign Somethin' happens when everybody finds out See the vultures circlin', dark clouds Love's a fragile little flame, it could burn out It could burn out"
"Lights flash and we'll run for the fences Let them say what they want, we won't hear it Loose lips sink ships all the damn time Not this time"
"They take their shots, but we're bulletproof"
All of this is about a public relationship.
"Out Of The Woods" is referring to both the relationship "are we out of the bad parts of our relationship?" and "being out of the media's spotlight causing them issues".
"Wonderland" talking about flashing lights (paparazzi) and them getting lost away from it. Again, media and paparazzi and needing to run/hide from them.
"But there were strangers watchin' And whispers turned to talkin' And talking turned to screams, oh"
That's literally explaining people watching them then running wild in the media and it turned to them fighting.
Haylor was photographed quite a few times but, there were also tons of instances where they were together that was not reported by the media - but fans saw them out and about. So clearly she did know places they could hide from the media.
As for "Slut!" it literally ties in perfectly with every other 1989 song, so again - how is ANY of that about Dianna? She's saying "everyone wanted him that was my crime", aka I get called a slut because everyone wants him and hates me for having him. I'm sorry but, as pretty as Dianna is - she was never someone "everyone wanted". And if their relationship was a secret, then why would Taylor fear being called a slut and how "it'd be worth it for once"?
there’s just no possible way that end game is about joe lmao.. not ONE of those lyrics scream joe and it’s actually insane to think so many swifties just brushed it off because they didn’t take haylor seriously as a couple. and they still kinda don’t because they’re making jokes now about how taylor can “finally” sing end game and the lyrics actually fitting because she’s with travis 💀
While we’re at it, ‘Ready For It’ is so blatantly about Harry. At this point I think a lot of Swifties turn a blind eye to the lyrics because deep down they know it’s not about Joe.
My short ‘…Ready For It?’ lyric analysis and how it’s definitely about Harry:
The line about the girls he had loved and left fits her description of him in the 1989 vault songs, especially ‘Is It Over Now?’ with the models and Taylor clones he has been sleeping with.
The haunted and ghost line?!?! That is a 1989 staple line, on reddit I saw someone making a whole ass data sheet about the amount of times she says ghosts-related terms in all of the albums and 1989 had the highest ratio/percentage compared to the rest. Also, Harry’s ‘Two Ghosts’?!?!?
Ghosts = haylor.
“Some boys trying to hard, he don’t try at all” = similar to lyrics in ‘Slut’, “In a world of boys, he’s a gentleman”.
“Younger than all my exes but is such a man” = Harry is her youngest ex (let’s pretend she forgot about Conor Kennedy and it wasn’t a true ex anyway). Joe is older than Harry. Checkmate.
Wildest dreams tea, also I had this theory that they secretly went to an island in 2016, when they still had their situationship going on.
Idk about that robber and heist line but it’s definitely not about Joe lol. Sounds like she’s painting herself as a criminal and him gladly joining along. Like… eloping. Or running away from a crime.
Burton and Taylor is about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, known for their on-off intense relationship that spanned years. Is she talking about Joe, who she only knew at best for 6 months? (album was released Nov 2017 but she only got with Joe in Sept 2016 and she probably wrote the song earlier). OFC NOT.
The themes in this song does not match all the Joe-confirmed songs about him later too. We can only surmise, she’s singing about another dude.
‘Every love I’ve known in comparison is a failure, I forget their names now’ - Taylor’s being annoying and hyperbolic when she wrote this (don’t take her seriously) but yeah that’s why you are still writing about Harry in 2022 with Question..? and Maroon. Also I’m pretty sure she forgot about Conor, Calvin, Tom Hiddleston, and most of the dudes she dated before Harry.
Games = their on-off situationship. I said what I said.
There it is, my 5 minute song lyric analysis. Hope y’all are enlightened.
The vaults songs are amazing in the sense that they showcase so perfectly how back and forth their relationship was. They can be almost ruthless, because that was the feeling in the heat of the moment… and then things were good again. For all that she blames him, she also lays her part on it. They both suck at communicating back then.
By the time 1989 was as out they were on good terms, and while I think a big part of letting it be publicly known she was on good terms with him during 1989 initial promo was because the message and image she wanted to project, it was also because she never really saw him as the sole villain in the story… as charged as their story was the fact that they remain friendly nowadays? A true testament of how they really see each other. Theirs wasn’t a story of unforgivable mistakes but a sad story of really bad timing and not being ready for something so striking
One of my fave bits in Question…? Was how she called them a meteor strike. It was a before and after moment in their lives.
It’s a deep thing when a person does that to you, because life moves on, you move on and yet there are these moments when one little thing takes you back and you reminisce and you wonder..
I always find it interesting that after 1989 when songs were no longer about Harry there were songs that made me think of him so strongly even if they were about someone else… because the way she describe the spark or the heartbreak was one that had a taste of Harry and their story. I always thought that was just me being a Harrie but now… i guess some feelings hit you so strongly that they change you…and color how you see the world after.
And she said it all in Question a year ago. It ended up being one of her more telling songs… 10 years in the making
Meteor strike indeed
I know nobody here really cares that much, but since 1989 (Taylor’s version) came out my fyp has been all about her & Harry, and so many of the videos are like “GASP was Harry one of the bad boyfriends?!”
And as someone who’s never felt any type of way about Harry, I think I like or at least respect him a little bit more after the vault tracks? Especially “is it over now?” Because I’ve seen a lot of clips of this man talking about Taylor over the years, and I’ve never seen or heard him say something disparaging or complaining about her writing songs about him. In fact, I’ve only ever seen him be like “hey, it’s her life and if she’s written anything about me, I’d be flattered. She’s so talented.” And this isn’t a new reaction, like there are interviews from that year where he says something to that effect and honestly?? Pop off, Harry.
They’re friendly enough that I’m sure he’s heard these songs before, or at least knew that she had some less than flattering ones in her back pocket, and was still like “yeah, no, I’d be honored. Are you kidding?” Like he was 20 or something when they were together and 20 year old boys are awful and shitty and apparently he’s talked about the fact that he’s a bad boyfriend before, so I love that this entire time he’s shown a level of emotional maturity and respect for her that fucking John Mayer refused to. It would’ve been so easy for him to be a dick about it, and he never was! It seems like he just went “I treated you like shit. You’re totally valid in this. Go off, queen.”
I’ve been laughing imagining him listening to the vault tracks and the “if she’s got blue eyes I can surmise that you’ll probably date her” line and being like “fuck, bro. She really called me out like that on main? Damn. I should send her flowers or something.” And then “now that we don’t talk” I can literally see him hearing the line about her mom and going “aw, Andrea. I always liked her. I hope she’s well. Fuck it, somebody send her flowers too.”
As somebody who knows nothing about him and never really got into 1d or paid close attention to his career, only passively enjoyed his music, I think these song’s coming out vastly improved my opinion of him 😂
“haylor was just a publicity stunt”
1989 tv: 🧍🏼♀️
So it goes
So it goes tells the story of the 2014 Victoria Secret After Party: ''All eyes were on Harry and Taylor when they turned up. [...] The drinks were flowing until 3am, when they snuck out of a rear exit five minutes apart to avoid being pictured together." In context of the 2015 timeline 1989 (I know places established they wanted their relationship to go private) and 1D’s Four (with Stockholm Syndrome) had just been released. They were photographed the after party:
This was a pivotal night:
this outfit from that VS Show is also at 3 mins in I don’t wanna live forever (and cardigan refers to this sequin smile) and
In Only Angel Harry says he doesn't have eyes for the VS angels “She's an angel, My-my-my only angel”
So it goes has only been played live 8 times and not yet on the Eras tour. The last time it was played was in the last Rep show in Tokyo, (9:38) with 2 other rare songs for the Rep Tour: I Know Places and Wildest Dreams. Harry Styles was in Japan that month and wrote Little Freak before he left Tokyo.
Lyrics
[Verse 1] See you in the dark All eyes on you, my magician All eyes on us You make everyone disappear, and Cut me into pieces Gold cage, hostage to my feelings Back against the wall Trippin', trip-trippin' when you're gone
The first verse sets the scene, similar to the articles Harry and Taylor are the focus of many, drawn to each other and wanting to keep their connection secret.
'Gold cage, hostage to my feelings' refers to being trapped by love. Similar to Stockholm Syndrome, which was released only 2 weeks before the VS party, Taylor is trapped in a gold/gilded cage (a luxurious prison) by love.
[Pre-Chorus] 'Cause we break down a little But when you get me alone, it's so simple 'Cause, baby, I know what you know We can feel it [Chorus] And all the pieces fall right into place Getting caught up in a moment Lipstick on your face So it goes I'm yours to keep And I'm yours to lose You know I'm not a bad girl, but I Do bad things with you So it goes
So it goes is a lyric in Style. In the chorus Taylor lets us know that when they are away from others they have great chemistry. She also refers to lipstick, referred to in many 1989 songs. Taylor is described as a 'bad/good girl often, she talks about it in Miss Americana and also in:
Style: And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt
Question...?; Good girl, sad boy
Only Angel: That she's gonna be an angel, just you wait and see, When it turns out she's a devil in between the sheets
[Verse 2] Met you in a bar All eyes on me, your illusionist All eyes on us I make all your gray days clear And wear you like a necklace I'm so chill, but you make me jealous But I got your heart Skippin', skip-skippin' when I'm gone
The afterparty was in Basement bar. The illusionist/magician references are enjoying knowing that she and her muse will leave together without others knowing. 'Make all grey days clear' tells us the muse is British.
[Bridge] You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? I did a number on you But, honestly, baby, who's counting? You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's counting? Who's counting? (One, two, three)
The bridge tells us more about her relationship with her muse, they have a history, have hurt each other before and are wanting to move on. Though she says she is letting it go she is also keeping score. At this point the events of Red, 1989 and most of the one direction songs about TS had transpired between them.
Say Don’t Go: Why’d you whisper in the dark, Just to leave me in the night?
Question…?: Did you leave her house in the middle of the night? Did you wish you put up more of a fight?
I swear Harry is an angel 👼
I need y'all to understand that the loudness of her fame being a problem in a relationship that really meant something to her was not such a central concern and fear of hers until haylor
she really hid her heartbreak in the 1989 vault
someone please help a fellow haylor in need!! i’ve been trying to find “evidence” of when taylor said she played 1989 songs to harry but i can’t find anything about it anymore :( does anyone know which interview it was or has pics of the interview or something saved and can send it to me
"everyone wanted him, that was my crime"/"you were so magnetic it was almost obnoxious, flushed with the currency of cool"
the whole song of is it over now/"you had people who called you from unmarked numbers"
"I can't be your friend" "I can't pretend it's platonic"/"I didn't come here to make friends"
"I broke my own heart cause you were too polite to do it"/"I walked out and said I'm setting you free" "when she said it was too much, do you wish you could still touch her"
"this love came back to me" "i watch us go round and round each time" "is it over now"/"when you told me we'd get back together"
like idk how to explain it guys but suburban legends is literally so consistent and easy to understand
She’s also pointing out that the girls he’s publicly sleeping with all look very much like her — she’s not shaming him for sleeping with people, she’s getting irritated because it feels like he’s trying to replace her when he could just come back to her and save himself the trouble. The point isn’t “you’re a bad person because you sleep with a lot of people,” it’s “you are sleeping with everybody remotely resembling me and rubbing my face in it and I’m frustrated”
YEAH!!!! and with the added layer of “and as you do all this, i am the one who is getting heat for it.” why shouldn’t she be allowed to say that? it’s her own experience! it’s her own relationship with intimacy and sexuality and love and coming of eye in the public age!
i’m so serious the way she talks about love in 1989 being imperfect but blazingly beautiful and having to navigate life before, during, and after that because yeah how do you go back to ‘normal’ life after something so worthwhile all while trying to navigate a world full of so many societal pressures as a young adult on your own and how because of those pressures and outside loneliness the world was black and white and dull and so that love was like a meteor and colorful and big and bright
Writing Of 1989 Timeline
1989 changed Taylor's career forever. If Red had just sprinkles of pop sounds, 1989 was marketed as a pure pop album from the get-go.
While many fans and critics kind of expected that, it seems like:
Taylor didn't have a clear direction from the start (except for the cohesiveness): “I wanted it to be a sonically cohesive album, and it ended up really being the first I’ve done since Fearless. I also wanted the songs to sound exactly how the emotions felt. I know that’s pretty vague, so I really didn’t know where it was going to go, but I knew that I wanted to work with the collaborators I had such crazy electricity with on Red, like Max Martin. I wanted to do some things that sounded nothing like what we had done before.”
She knew that she didn't want another Red: “When people say that they like one of my albums, like when people told me that Red was their favorite album I'd done, I didn't take that as, 'So, I should make that again'. I took that as, 'Great, awsome, now I wanna make them like this new album just as much if not more than the last album.' But I want them to like it for different reasons.”
She was worried about the change of direction of her music: “I worry about everything. Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.”
October 17, 2012: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor writes This Love in LA. This will be the last song produced by Nathan Chapman and the only one recorded in Nashville.
“The last time I wrote a poem that ended up being a song, I was writing in my journal and I was writing about something that had happened in my life – it was about a year ago – and I just wrote this really really short poem. It said, 'This love is good /this love is bad / this love is alive back from the dead / these hands had to let it go free / and this love came back to me.' And I just wrote it down, closed the book and put it back on my night stand […] All of a sudden in my head I just started hearing this melody happen, and then I realized that it was going to be a song.”
Handwritten lyrics:
November 18, 2012: Taylor meets Jack Antonoff and his band, fun., for the first time in Frankfurt, Germany, while at the MTV Europe Music Awards. They bond over 80s music.
January 4, 2013: Taylor is seen in a boat without Harry Styles, ready to return to LA from the Virgin Islands.
She will wear the same dress in the Out Of The Woods music video (and also in Look What You Made Me Do)
January 10, 2013: Taylor tweets "Back in the studio. Uh oh...". She will confirm that the song was All You Had To Do Was Stay on October 27, 2014 on Tumblr.
Candids here;
“There’s a song on my album called 'All You Had To Do Was Stay.' I was having this dream, that was actually one of those embarrassing dreams, where you’re mortified in the dream, you’re like humiliated. In the dream, my ex had come to the door to beg for me to talk to him or whatever, and I opened up the door and I went to go say, 'Hi,' or 'What are you doing here?' or something — something normal — but all that came out was this high-pitched singing that said, 'Stay!' It was almost operatic. So I wrote this song, and I used that sound in the song. Weird, right? I woke up from the dream, saying the weird part into my phone, figuring I had to include it in something because it was just too strange not to. In pop, it’s fun to play around with little weird noises like that.”
January 11, 2013: Taylor is seen again at Conway Studios, likely to continue working on All You Had To Do Was Stay.
January 15, 2013: Taylor posts a picture of herself in the studio, with the caption "Somewhere in LA". She'll later reveal that she was writing How You Get The Girl.
“The song ‘How You Get The Girl’ is a song that I wrote about how you get the girl back if you ruined the relationship somehow and she won’t talk to you anymore. Like, if you broke up with her and left her on her own for six months and then you realize you miss her. All the steps you have to do to edge your way back into her life, because she’s probably pretty mad at you. So it’s kind of a tutorial. If you follow the directions in the song, chances are things will work out. Or you may get a restraining order.”
March 6, 2013: Taylor is seen going to a studio in LA.
March 23, 2013: Taylor posts a picture of herself playing guitar, which might mean that she was working on a new song: "Pre show. Columbia, South Carolina". This could be either Wonderland, New Romantics or a vault song.
May 27, 2013: While in Rhode Island for the Memorial Day weekend, Jack plays Taylor an instrumental track that will later become I Wish You Would.
“'I Wish You Would’ is a song that I wrote with Jack Antonoff and it was the first song we ever worked on together. I think, for this song, we wanted to create a sort of John Hughes movie visual with pining and, you know, one person’s over here and misses the other person but is too prideful and won’t say it. Meanwhile this other person is here and missing the same person; they’re missing each other but not saying it. And I had this happen in my life and so I wanted to kind of narrate it in a very cinematic way where it’s like you’re seeing two scenes play out and then in the bridge you’re seeing the final scene, where it resolves itself. So it says, 'It’s a crooked love in a straight line down, makes you wanna run and hide but it makes you turn right back around.’ It kind of is like that dramatic love that’s never really quite where it needs to be and that tension it creates.”
[Voice Memo Intro Transcript] “This is another way I’ve written songs recently. This is a song I did with Jack Antonoff, and Jack is one of my friends and so were hanging out and he pulled out his phone and goes ‘I made this amazing track the other day. It’s so cool, I love these guitar sounds.’ And he played it for me and immediately I could hear this finished song in my head, and I just said ‘Please, please let me have that. Let me play with it, send it to me.’ And so he sent it to me and I was on tour and this was me playing the track on my laptop recording me singing the vocal into my phone and it ended up being a song called 'I Wish You Would', because Jack wrote back and said ‘I love that’. So this is another way of writing, it’s writing to track.”
[Secret Sessions] “Taylor said that she wrote ‘I Wish You Would’ a couple of months after her and Harry Styles broke up, and 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. She said he told her about how, after they broke up, he bought a house literally one road adjacent to hers. Every day he would drive home, and accidentally turn into her street, and he told her how he just wanted to stop at her house and see her, but he never did. She said this song is about while he was in the car making the decision to get out the car and see her, she was sitting in her bedroom, wishing he would make the move and go back to her and just pitch up at her house. She compared it to a classic John Hughes movie where both parties want the same thing but neither has the guts to say anything. Honestly, she spoke so fondly of that relationship.” [this is from a secret sessioner and therefore it should be taken with a grain of salt]
Between May 28 and June 2, 2013: Taylor writes I Wish You Would. She settled in Rhode Island basically all summer, so it's possible that she went to Jack's studio in New York by car without being seen and especially photographed, cause I couldn't find any pictures with the same outfit. Conway Studios are also credited but it's possible that she recorded background vocals there. Taylor was in LA in late August.
June 7, 2013: During an interview at the CMA Music Festival, Taylor confirms that she has started writing her next album.
[Transcript by me] “[The new album] is starting, all the anxiety is starting and when the anxiety starts, then the writing happens right afterward usually. I like to write for about two years before I'm finished with an album because at this point I kind of know that whenever I read in the first year is going to get away, because I'm going to like it but it's going to sound a little bit like the last project I had, and the second year usually ends up sounding like the next project. So I think at this point I feel like staying the same is the easy way to go but it's not the way that I want to go creatively. I think you need to challenge yourself, I think you need to change up your influences, I think you need to be inspired by different things that you've been inspired by before. It's harder to call people you don't know, it's harder to think of topics you haven't covered and think of new ways to say old emotions that everyone feels. I think one of the things that I'm happiest with in the last year is the acceptance level in country music for me experimenting and for me trying to evolve and challenge myself musically because I think it's never felt better to be on that stadium stage performing knowing that and so welcoming of change.”
July 13, 2013: After a show in New Jersey, Taylor has an interview with Rolling Stone, where she says that she has been writing a lot.
“The floodgates just opened the last couple weeks,” she says of the songwriting process. “I’m getting to that point where I’m irritating to be around because I’ll be with you for half the conversation and then the second half of the conversation I’m clearly editing the second verse of whatever I’m writing in my head. I really loved collaborating: you work with a lot of different people and you find the people you have this dream connection with in the studio. I know those people and I know the ones I want to go back to. But I also have a really long list of the people I admire and I would really love to go and contact. So that’s kind of where that is. I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point? It’s so overwhelming that when you’re starting a project there are such endless possibilities if you’re willing to evolve and experiment. If you’re willing to become a different version of yourself, you can really go anywhere with it. And that’s kind of where I am. The kind of the laboratory experimental stage of really catching onto a new thing that I’m liking.”
Somewhere around June and early September 2013: Taylor and Jack write Sweeter Than Fiction. No credits are available but we know that it's the second song on which Taylor and Jack worked, so that places it before I Wish You Would and Out Of The Woods.
In 2014, Lena Dunham (Jack's girlfriend at the time) posted this photo of Jack and Taylor working on the song at Jack's house.
September 15, 2013: Jack completes the instrumental track that will later become Out Of The Woods, after his show was cancelled.
[Jack Antonoff] “When I did the track for Out of the Woods, which is a Taylor song that I'm really proud of, there was some issue at a venue and our show was canceled that night and I didn't have my stuff, I had left it on the bus, so I only had these old samples on what was on my laptop, and caught up that 'oh oh'' thing, and I only had one drum kit on there, and these dumb little things sometimes turn into a great song.”
Somewhere around September and October 2013: Taylor writes Out Of The Woods.
Voice memo here;
[Jack Antonoff] Although Antonoff and Swift shared studio time for some of their other 1989 songs while working throughout 2014, “Out of the Woods” was completed as a long-distance collaboration. “She’s very natural -— when she gets an idea, it just happens very quickly. I would send her these tracks, and when an idea would happen, we’d be 5,000 miles apart or whatever, but she would start emailing me these voice notes like crazy and it would just be happening so quickly that there’d be this excitement. There’s a frantic feeling in the song,” he says. “What’s interesting about ‘Out of the Woods’ is that it doesn’t really let up. It starts with a pretty big anthemic vocal sample that’s me, and then there’s a drum sample that kicks in that’s kind of huge, and then you don’t really know how you’re going to get any bigger, but then the chorus hits and it just explodes even larger. And then the bridge hits, and it gets even more huge.“When I was working on the track, I was thinking a lot about My Morning Jacket,” Antonoff continues, “and how everything they do, every sound is louder than the last, and somehow it feels like everything is just f—ing massive. And that’s the feeling that I went for. It started out big, and then I think the obvious move would have been to do a down chorus, but the idea was to keep pushing.” Antonoff is excited to share the rest of his work with Swift on 1989, but he views “Out of the Woods” as a highlight on the project. “This song means a great deal to me. On a production level, on a writing level, Taylor’s lyrics and her melodies — there’s something very important about this song.”
[Jack Antonoff] “After 'I Wish You Would' and 'Sweeter Than Fiction', we did 'Out Of The Woods'. So it was the third thing we worked on together, and probably the easiest. I sent her the track for it, and she sent back a voice note with the verse and chorus in what felt like five seconds. And it was just perfect. It's eerie how similar it is to what the final product is.”
“It kind of conjured up all these feelings of anxiety I had in a relationship where everybody was watching, everybody was commenting on it. You’re constantly just feeling like, ‘Are we out of the woods yet? What’s the next thing gonna be? What’s the next hurdle we’re gonna have to jump over?’ It was interesting to write about a relationship where you’re just honestly like, ‘This is probably not gonna last, but how long is it gonna last?’ Those fragile relationships... It doesn’t mean they’re not supposed to happen. The whole time we were having happy memories, or crazy memories, or ridiculously anxious times, in my head it was just like, ‘Are we okay yet? Are we there yet? Are we out of this yet?’”
“That line is in there because it's not only the actual, literal narration of what happened in a particular relationship I was in, it's also a metaphor. 'Hit the brakes too soon' could mean the literal sense of, we got in an accident and we had to deal with the aftermath. But also, the relationship ended sooner than it should've because there was a lot of fear involved. And that song touches on a huge sense of anxiety that was, kind of, coursing through that particular relationship, because we really felt the heat of every single person in the media thinking they could draw up the narrative of what we were going through and debate and speculate. I don't think it's ever going to be easy for me to find love and block out all those screaming voices.”
October 21, 2013: Sweeter Than Fiction is released. Big Machine was originally not on board with the release since they wanted a dormant period between album releases.
Late 2013: Taylor writes Bad Blood, after Katy Perry announces her Prismatic World Tour.
“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends,or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?’ Then last year, the other star crossed a line. She did something so horrible. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational – you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”
“That was about losing a friend... But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant. I never said anything that would point a finger in the specific direction of one specific person, and I can sleep at night knowing that. I knew the song would be assigned to a person, and the easiest mark was someone who I didn’t want to be labeled with this song. It was not a song about heartbreak. It was about the loss of friendship.”
October 20 to 22, 2013: Taylor is in Cape Town (South Africa) shooting The Giver. One of the members of the cast is Alexsander Skarsgård. He is said to have inspired Wildest Dreams (or at least he's the most popular theory, as far as I know), because the music video is set in Africa and it features Clint Eastwood's son Scott as love interest, just like Alexsander is actor Stellan Skarsgård's son, but we don't actually know more about the song.
“I think the way I used to approach relationships was very idealistic. I used to go into them thinking, ‘Maybe this is the one – we’ll get married and have a family, this could be forever’. Whereas now I go in thinking, ‘How long do we have on the clock – before something comes along and puts a wrench in it, or your publicist calls and says this isn’t a good idea?’”
Note: Selena Gomez was present when Taylor wrote this song.
November 19, 2013: Taylor records Blank Space. This is based on the wall behind her on an Instagram post from this day, the credits, and the behind the scenes clip.
Voice memo here;
Behind the Scenes here;
“Every few years, the media finds something they unanimously agree is annoying about me. 2012-2013 they thought I was dating too much, because I dated two people in a year and a half. ‘Oh, a serial dater. She only writes songs to get emotional revenge on guys. She’s a man-hater, don’t let her near your boyfriend.’ It was kind of excessive and at first it was hurtful, but then I found a little bit of comedy in it. This character is so interesting, though. If you read these gossip sites, they describe how I am so opposite to my actual life: I’m clingy, and I’m awful, and I throw fits, and there’s drama. An emotionally fragile, unpredictable mess. I painted a whole picture of this character. She lives in a mansion with marble floors, she wears Dolce & Gabbana around the house, and she wears animal print unironically. So I created this whole character and I had fun doing it.”
November 21, 2013: While at the American Music Awards, Taylor tells Billboard that she has around seven or eight songs ready.
[Transcript] “We got a lot already,” says Swift. “There are probably seven or eight songs that I know I want on the record. It’s really ahead of schedule for me. I’m just stoked because it’s already evolved into a new sound, and that’s all I wanted. And I would have taken two years to make that happen, but it just kind of happened naturally, so that’s all I could really ask for.”
2013: Taylor writes New Romantics and Wonderland. Not much is known about these songs, except that they were both written in 2013.
[About New Romantics] “People will say, 'Let me set you up with someone', and I’m just sitting there saying, ‘That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not lonely. I’m not looking.’ They just don’t get it. I’ve learned that just because someone is cute and wants to date you, that’s not a reason to sacrifice your independence and allow everyone to say whatever they want about you. I’m not doing that anymore. It’d take someone really special for me to undergo the circumstances I have to go through to experience a date. I don’t know how I would ever have another person in my world trying to have a relationship with me, or a family.”
January 6, 2014: Taylor decides to look for a house in New York.
[Lover Journal] LA. So I've decided I want to look at places in New York. I know I went through this phase months ago, but it has to mean something that i've circled back to it, right? You know what they say, if you love something let it go and if it comes back... blah blah blah. so I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. Dating is awful. Love is fiction/ a myth. I'm over it all.
January 21, 2014: Taylor sends Ryan Tedder the I Know Places Voice Memo.
January 22, 2014: [From the 1989 Booklet] Taylor and Ryan finish and record I Know Places.
“I had this idea of like, when you’re in love, along the lines of 'Out of the Woods’, it’s very precious, it’s fragile. As soon as the world gets ahold of it, whether it’s your friends or people around town hear about it... it’s kind of like the first thing people want to do when they hear that people are in love is just kind of try to ruin it. I kind of was in a place where I was like, ‘No one is gonna sign up for this. There are just too many cameras pointed at me. There are too many ridiculous elaborations on my life. It’s just not ever gonna work.‘ But I decided to write a love song, just kind of like, ‘What would I say if I met someone really awesome and they were like, hey, I’m worried about all this attention you get?’ So I wrote this song called ‘I Know Places’ about, ‘Hey, I know places we can hide. We could outrun them.’ I’m so happy that it sounds like the urgency that it sings.”
January 23, 2014: Taylor and Ryan Tedder write Welcome To New York. Ryan produces a demo in three hours. This demo is the one included in the album.
“I wanted to start 1989 with this song because New York has been an important landscape and location for the story of my life in the last couple of years. I dreamt and obsessed over moving to New York, and then I did it. The inspiration that I found in that city is hard to describe and to compare to any other force of inspiration I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s an electric city.”
[Ryan Tedder] “I thought we were going to walk in and start something from scratch because that's what I was used to. Then she calls me and says, 'Is it cool if I already have an idea?' I said, 'Sure.' She said, 'I have this song, I'm obsessed with New York and I just moved there, I want to write an ode to New York because no one's done it in a long time.' And then she sent me a voice memo. She's like, 'I want it to sound like the 1980s.' So the next day I brought in a Juno-106, which is a very 1980s keyboard, and I literally programmed that entire song right in front of her. It was very much on the fly, and that song was done in about three hours. And I did the rest of the production I think later that week.”
Handwritten lyrics:
January 26, 2014: Night of the 56th Grammy Awards. Taylor delivers a legendary performance of All Too Well, but loses the Album Of The Year Award to Random Access Memory by Daft Punk. This will prompt Taylor to make a "sonically cohesive" pop album.
[Lover Journal] January 25th. LA. It's the middle of the night and I was at the Clive Davis Party tonight which means... the Grammys are tomorrow. Never have I felt so good about our chances. Never have I wanted something as badly as I want to hear them say 'Red' is the Album of the Year.
“It was the night of the Grammys this year. I remember going home and playing a lot of the new music I had recorded for some of my backup singers and one of my best friends. We were all sitting in the kitchen and I was playing them all this music, and they were just saying, ‘You know, this is very eighties. It’s very clear to us that this is so eighties.’ We were just talking and talking about how it’s kind of a rebirth in a new genre, how that’s a big, bold step. Kind of starting a part of your career over. When they left that night, I just had this very clear moment of, ‘It’s gotta be called 1989.’”
“I woke up one morning at 4 a.m. and I decided the album is called 1989. I’ve been making ‘80s synth pop, I’m just gonna do that. I’m calling it a pop record. I’m not listening to anyone at my label. I’m starting tomorrow. I liked the idea of collaborating. But with 1989 I decided to narrow down the list. It wasn’t going to be 10 producers, it was going to be a very small team of four or five people I always wanted to work with, or loved working with. And Max Martin and I were going to oversee it, and we were going to make a sonically cohesive record again.”
January 2014: Taylor writes You Are In Love. This is actually speculation but it's based on (1) Taylor going to NY in early January and (2) Jack Antonoff confirming that it was the fourth song they did and (3) it's the only Antonoff-produced song that is copyrighted in 2014. Based on the credits, I'm pretty sure that Taylor and Jack worked on the song separately, with Jack recording the instrumental at the Jungle City Studios in NY (which is a studio that Jack used in 2014 to record Bleachers' first album Strange Desire) and Taylor recording the vocals at Conway Studio in LA.
“I wrote it with my friend Jack Antonoff who’s dating my friend Lena. Jack sent me this song, it was just an instrumental track he was working on and immediately I knew the song it needed to be. And I wrote it as a kind of commentary on what their relationship has been like. So it’s actually me looking and going, ‘This happened and that happened, then that happened and that’s how you knew you are in love.’”
“I’ve never had that, so I wrote that song about things that Lena Dunham has told me about her and Jack Antonoff. That’s just basically stuff she’s told me. And I think that that kind of relationship — God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful — would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times.”
“We first worked on that song together and realized we kind of have a good thing, and the next thing we did was ‘Sweeter Than Fiction,’ which was on the [One Chance] soundtrack, and after that we did ‘Out of the Woods’ and another song called ‘You Are in Love.’
January 26, 2014: At the Grammy's, Diane Warren reveals that she and Taylor wrote a song together.
[Transcript] “I worked with Taylor Swift on a great song. I don't even know what she's done [for her next album], I'm excited about the one that we did, it's pretty cool.”
[Billboard 2016 Interview] “I know [Swift] likes it, so hopefully it will see the light of day. I know she really likes the song. She didn’t want me to give it away, so hopefully that means she wants it.”
February 9, 2014: [From the 1989 Booklet] While in London, during the European leg of the Red Tour, Taylor and Imogen Heap write Clean in just 9 hours at Imogen's home studio. Taylor will sing the song just two times.
Voice memo here;
“'Clean' I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date – it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, ‘Oh, I hope he’s doing well’. And nothing else. And you know how it is when you’re going through heartbreak. A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours. It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, ‘Hello, beautiful. Good morning.’ You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was. You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day, and planning fun dinner parties, and going out on adventures with your girlfriends, and then all of a sudden one day you’re in London and you realize you’ve been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you’re fine. And you hope he’s fine. The first thought that came to my mind was – I’m finally clean.”
“'Clean' is the last song on the album for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it felt like the complication of this emotional process I’ve been going through for the last couple of years. You know, I feel like my personal life was really, really discussed, and criticized, and debated, and talked about to a point where it made me feel almost kind of tarnished, in a way. And the discussion wasn’t about music. It broke my heart that I had made an album that I was proud of, and I was touring the world, and playing sold-out stadiums, and still they managed to only want to talk about my personal life. At a certain point I felt a switch and it was at the end of recording this album that I began to feel like my life was mine again and my music was at the forefront again. I was living my life on my own terms and I really no longer cared what people were saying about me. That was when I started so see people talk less about the things that didn’t matter.”
“I had this metaphor in my head about being in this house, there’s been a drought but you feel like there’s a storm coming. Instead of trying to block out the storm you punch a hole in the roof and just let all the rain come in, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s washed away.”
[Imogen Heap] “We met at my studio in London. She had the bare bones of “Clean.” She had the lyric, the chorus and the chords. I thought it was brilliant.I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises, played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great. I knew she loved it. She said she loved it and her mum loved it. But I wasn’t sure it would be included on the album. But everyone felt it had something special. It came together really magically.”
Imogen's detailed blog entry about this songwriting session.
[Taylor about Imogen Heap] “The coolest thing about Imogen for me was that there was no one else in the studio. There was no assistant; there was no engineer. It was her doing everything.”
February 11, 2014: Taylor gets a haircut. (I'm including this for funsies)
February 15, 2014: Taylor, Max Martin and Shellback write Shake It Off.
Voice memo here;
[Lover Journal] LA. This week I've been in the studio with Max and Johan every day and it has been the most creatively successful and fulfilling time. The first day, Johan just made a really up tempo drum beat because we decided we needed something up and light. We worked at it for a few hours before i just started singing "shake it off, shake it off, shake it off" And then the best way i know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky. It ended up being this song about doing your own thing even though haters are gonna hate, and you just have to dance to your own beat. We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE. We spent all day doing vocals and the next day recording the background vocals. I think it'll end up being the first single and Max said it's his favorite song he's ever been a part of.
[Max Martin during the lawsuit] “Shellback started out with a drumbeat. Shellback, Taylor, and I then collaboratively developed the melody and other lines of ‘Shake It Off’ to Shellback’s drumbeat. I did not write or provide any input into any lyrics in ‘Shake It Off,’ which were written entirely by Taylor.”
“I've had every part of my life dissected – my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music. When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it. And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off.”
“The message in the song is a problem I think we all deal with and an issue we deal with on a daily basis. We don’t live just in a celebrity takedown culture, we live in a takedown culture. People will find anything about you and twist it to where it’s weird or wrong or annoying or strange or bad. You have to not only live your life in spite of people who don’t understand you, you have to have more fun than they do.”
February 19, 2014: Taylor, Max Martin, Shellback and Ali Payami write Style. This is the last song made for the album.
“I loved comparing these timeless visuals with a feeling that never goes out of style. It's basically one of those relationships that's always a bit off. The two people are trying to forget each other. So, it's like, 'All right, I heard you went off with her, and well, I've done that, too.' My previous albums have also been sort of like, 'I was right, you were wrong, you did this, it made me feel like this' – a righteous sense of right and wrong in a relationship. What happens when you grow up is you realize the rules in a relationship are very blurred and that it gets very complicated very quickly, and there's not a case of who was right or who was wrong.”
“This song is about those relationships that are never really done. You always kind of have that person, that one person who you feel might interrupt your wedding and be like, ‘Don’t do it cause we’re not over yet.'”
February 19, 2014: While on tour, Ryan Tedder produces another three versions of Welcome To New York.
[Ryan Tedder interview] “I was in Switzerland on a tour bus, and I did four versions of 'Welcome to New York,' one of which I liked personally more, but the thing about artists is they become very obsessed with the demo. She was in love with the demo so no matter how hard I fought, she brought it back to the demo, so really what you hear is what I did on the first day.”
March 24, 2014: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor moves to New York.
[Lover Journal] So in the last few weeks, I've completely moved into my apartment in Tribeca. That's right, I'm writing this from my new bed in my new place, watching Law and Order with Meredith. Strangely, I've never felt more busy.
May 29, 2014: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor chooses another photo for the cover, after having a nightmare of the previous one being not enough.
May 30, 2014: Taylor chooses the album cover.
[Lover Journal] Shanghai. So we got to China at around 2pm and I knew it would completely ruin me if I slept when i got to the hotel, so I decided to work out. WHY IS THIS PEN RUNNING OUT?! Just went to my purse and got my pen. So a crazy story unfolded in the last 24 hours. Last night, I had this vivid dream where the photo I'd chosen for the album cover wasn't good enough, intriguing enough, artful enough. it woke me up. I couldn't shake it and it stayed with me all day. Because that nagging feeling I'd been pushing back for weeks was now confirmed in my gut... it wasn't good enough. I went to the venue, mind racing, wandering if I'd have to do an entirely new photo shoot... I got to my dressing room with newer versions of the "cover" I looked at it and felt nothing. The team pulled up this new scanned file of the polaroids we had taken during the shoot. I saw it within 10 seconds. The shot. The cover. It's a polaroid of me sitting against a beige wall with a blue seagull sweatshirt on. You can see my red lips but the photo cuts off my eyes. For some reason unknown to me it's the most intriguing photo i've seen. I think it's the mystery of not seeing my eyes. Maybe it just looks effortlessly cool. The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not. I played a sold out show in Shanghai tonight and the crowd was amazing. Tomorrow we go to Tokyo, where they'll have the whole ticker tape parade at the airport. Smile and wave...
Conclusive notes
What 1989 represented for Taylor:
“The 1980s was a very experimental time in pop music. People realized songs didn't have to be this standard drums-guitar-bass-whatever. We can make a song with synths and a drum pad. We can do group vocals for the entire song. We can do so many different things. And I think what you saw happening with music was also happening in our culture, where people were just wearing whatever crazy colors they wanted to, because why not? There just seemed to be this energy about endless opportunities, endless possibilities, endless ways you could live your life. And so with this record, I thought, 'There are no rules to this. I don't need to use the same musicians I've used, or the same band, or the same producers, or the same formula. I can make whatever record I want.'”
“In the past, I've written mostly about heartbreak or pain that was caused by someone else and felt by me. On this album, I'm writing about more complex relationships, where the blame is kind of split 50–50 ... even if you find the right situation relationship-wise, it's always going to be a daily struggle to make it work.”
Bonus: Secret Messages
Author's note: I wrote this timeline around 2 years ago. While I found some dates later on, this is 100% my research. If you use this timeline for your posts, research or whatever, PLEASE, credit me! I'd be very thankful. This is 2 years of work.
Links to my other Timelines:
Writing of Fearless Timeline
Writing of Speak Now Timeline
Writing of Red Timeline
My Spreadsheet with a timeline overview
Credits:
Most of the quotes have been copy-pasted from Taylor Swift Switzerland.
Taylor Swift Pictures for the candids.
Heather from Nerdy by Nature for the WTNY handwritten lyrics picture.
whats your take on the first verse of is it over now? i don’t really get it
it's her listing all the moments that the relationship should have/could have been over! once the flight flew, once the flowers died, once she slept alone...all of those could have been relationship enders, but they weren't. this comes back in the second verse too: when he lost control, when they both got hurt, when she was all alone on that boat, when his new s/o looked exactly like taylor. but it isn't over! there's takeout coffees, she sees him everywhere, he dreams of what it was like before she got mad about the fucking around, he's sleeping with everyone to get past her, they're going on blind dates with other people, she's sleeping with other men, he's still sleeping with more other women, he's dreaming of her and yet......still not done. and she's mad about it! she's mad that he's doing the same thing she's doing and getting away with it while she's getting shamed for less—and making her watch this. she's mad that he's looking everywhere for an answer when the answer is her. she's daydreaming about doing crazy fucking things to get his attention because her matching his sleeping around isn't working. what a good song.
the thing about haylor is i dont want them together i dont think they were the pinnacle of a perfect relationship i just find their dynamic and the way they write about each other SO ENDLESSLY INTERESTING. like i am a fan of the art of haylorism not shipping these two humans together as actual end game. does this make sense?