Cardigan by Taylor Swift: My Analysis (out of my Folklore = Plausible deniability post)

I thought I might do a redundant post of each song from my bigger post, in order to give readers a more bite sized chunk.

 

Cardigan

Things start happening in this song.  The lyrics seem to tell of Taylor’s real life, as I can pick out actual moments from pictures given the lyrics here.  But Taylor, herself, confuses the issue and introduces plausible deniability.  She says in a chat there are 3 songs that describe a ‘high school love triangle’ in different perspectives.  Each is supposed to be from one of the 3 people in this love triangle.  I think Taylor Swift does this for a few reasons:  This creates an alternate universe where the song descriptions may or may not be real life.  Fans can’t automatically attribute these stories to Taylor’s personal life.  It discourages the wild theories and guessing who each song is about in real life, because, after all, these are just characters in a story.  Secondly, this storytelling narrative saves Taylor from any real life lawsuits.  She can tell real events, but obfuscate them by mixing names, places, and facts with fiction.  Taylor tells us that the narrator in Folklore is unreliable.  So nobody can pinpoint any breaking of non-disclosure agreements.  For instance, the names of these 3 people are the children from Ryan Renolds’ and Blake Lively’s actual kid’s names. But I suspect these “characters” are a real people and events, buried in a story.

This particular song is the one that’s supposedly from Betty’s (a.k.a Karlie according to “Betty” later in the album).  But I question that because the voice (voice in the writing sense, not the singing, that’s obviously Swift) in this story sounds an awful lot like Taylor herself.

Except “heartbeat on the highline” is where I heard Karlie’s work loft is located?  The song talks about in cars and downtown bars. Which makes it not a high school song anymore. Sounds more like the time period after “Delicate” in NY.And draw stars around my scars is definitely bringing up when Karlie drew gold stars on Taylor’s collar bone and wrist.

When you’re young assume you know nothing…  I knew everything when I was young.”  It’s a very gay line that describes having awareness of sexuality at a young age, but other people saying you’re too young to know, it’s just a phase, wait until you are older to decide.  Taylor is telling us she had an inkling when she was just a kid that she was gay (bi?  I think lesbian without knowing all the details, but think if she comes out it’ll be softer like pan, or bi.).