“I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me” is the truest Taylor Swift line ever written. This woman once wore a black turtleneck and black pants on tv and people said the outfit was too sexy. She once wore a beanie in a music video and everyone said that was her dissing an ex boyfriend. She posted a picture of her and her friends hanging out and people said she was starting an exclusive clique to make girls feel bad about themselves. She once had a beer at a basketball game and people said she was turning into a “bad” girl. She breathes and people start accusing her of monopolizing Earth’s oxygen
Something interesting I hear in Taylor’s vocal delivery moreso in the lyrics themselves of the joever process songs is a certain… gentleness where the expected tone is bitterness? I really hear it when she sings “you say you don’t understand and I say I know you don’t” — she almost sounds empathetic to the fact that he doesn’t/can’t understand her. “Is it really your anxiety that stops you from giving me everything, or do you just not want to?” written out looks sarcastic or cutting, but it’s sheer vulnerability. She’s really asking. I think this is something we’ll hear more on Poets; there will be anger and resentment and rage and bitterness, as there is to some extent on YLM, but wondering when in the story this thread of continued softness towards him is dropped.