Glitch
We were supposed to be just friends…/…Depending on what kind of mood and situation-ship I’m in/And what’s in my system/I think there’s been a glitch, oh, yeah…/…And I’m not even sorry/Nights are so starry, blood moonlit/It must be counterfeit…/…A brief interruption, a slight malfunction/I’d go back to wanting dudes who give nothing/I thought we had no chance/And that’s romance, let’s dance
Midnight Rain
…I wanted that pain…/…All of me changed like midnight/My town was a wasteland/Full of cages, full of fences/Pageant queens and big pretenders/But for some, it was paradise/My boy was a montage/A slow-motion, love potion…/…I broke his heart ’cause he was nice…/…It came like a postcard/Picture perfect, shiny family/Holiday, peppermint candy/But for him it’s every day/So I peered through a window/A deep portal, time travel/All the love we unravel/And the life I gave away…/…I guess sometimes we all get/Just what we wanted, just what we wanted…/…I guess sometimes we all get/Some kind of haunted, some kind of haunted/And I never think of him/Except on midnights like this (midnights like this)
Question…
Big city, wrong choices/We had one thing going on/I swear that it was something/’Cause I don’t remember who I was before you/Painted all my nights/A color I’ve searched for since/But one thing after another/Lost in situations, circumstances/Miscommunications…/…Did you leave her house in the middle of the night?/Did you wish you’d put up more of a fight?/When she said it was too much?/Do you wish you could still touch …her?/Half-moon eyes, bad surprise/Did you realize, out of time/She was on your mind/With some dickhead guy/That you saw that night/But you were on something/It was one drink after another/Caught in politics and gender-roles/And you’re not sure and I don’t know/Got swept away in the gray/I just may like to have a conversation…/…Does it feel like everything’s just like second-best after that/Meteor strike?/And what’s that, that I heard, that you’re still with her/That’s nice, I’m sure that’s what’s suitable/And right
champagne problems
Because I dropped your hand while dancing/Left you out there standing/Crestfallen on the landing/Champagne problems/Your mom’s ring in your pocket/My picture in your wallet/Your heart was glass, I dropped it/Champagne problems/You told your family for a reason/You couldn’t keep it in/Your sister splashed out on the bottle/Now no one’s celebrating/Dom Pérignon, you brought it/No crowd of friends applauded/Your hometown skeptics called it/Champagne problems/You had a speech, you’re speechless/Love slipped beyond your reaches/And I couldn’t give a reason/Champagne problems…/…”This dorm was once a madhouse”/I made a joke, “Well, it’s made for me”…/…I never was ready, so I watch you go/Sometimes you just don’t know the answer/’Til someone’s on their knees and asks you/“She would’ve made such a lovely bride/What a shame she’s fucked in the head, “ they said
I interpret this song as Taylor rejecting a marriage proposal from a woman (Dianna and/or Karlie?) in favor of living a single, straight life (even though she’s sapphic):
the lakes
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…/…I want auroras and sad prose…/…I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet/‘Cause I haven’t moved in years
Samuel Coleridge
William Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth
Robert Southey:
Here’s another song in Kelsea’s catalog where I think she is talking about Taylor, and purposely inserting certain words, themes, and images to reference Taylor. You decide:
Legends
We were golden, we were fire, we were magic
Is Kelsea intentionally using key words from Taylor’s songs?
Taylor modifies how she sees love from passionate, burning red, to golden like daylight. She wants to step out of the woods into the warmth of daylight.
Deep blue, but you painted me golden
The fire is a spark, or a comforting light in the darkness. It’s both warming and dangerous (if not controlled). Taylor also sees fire in a negative light, as being outed, burning the room down. And fire turning to ashes is like a relationship that ends, enkindling both people.
It seems Kelsea is alluding to comforting and warming, as she Wedges “fire” between golden and magic.
Magic is Taylor’s realization of what attraction and love feel like (vs. comp-het). Magic is also the disappearing act her and her sapphic lover are able to pull off thanks to heteronormativity [best friends!].
Yeah and they all knew our names all over town
Taylor and Kelsea are both big names in Nashville.
They have both toured the world and topped the music charts.
Taylor’s description of Nashville:
To Taylor, Nashville has become limiting and artificial, entrapping her in a disingenuous image. Kelsea moved to Nashville as a teen because she had seen Taylor do it. Kelsea wanted to emulate Taylor’s career, and was excited to be in a place where it could happen. So many eager hopefuls travel to Nashville, seat of country music, to make it in the industry.
We had it made in the middle of the madness
A music star has a crazy schedule.
“Celebrity” could be a chaotic life.
Sapphic affairs might cause a stir.
Madness could be rebelling against social norms.
We were neon in a gray cloud
Taylor uses bright color to describe sapphic love (vs. the black and white of straight love):
Taylor is chronically sad and depressed (in part due to being closeted):
Both cheating and sapphic love put Taylor’s relationships in a gray area:
The clouds might signify Taylor pining for Karlie, or trying to get her back:
But Kelsea says they were colorful and gay in the midst of Taylor’s depression, in a confusing situation, and when Taylor’s head is still in the Kaylor clouds.
Yeah, we wrote our own story
They paved their own way because what other two (country) music stars are in a sapphic relationship?
They each literally wrote their story in their songs.
Full of blood sweat and heartbeats
Full of blood?
Is it talking about working toward careers: blood, sweat, and tears? But there were no tears, so the heartbeats are a reprieve from that? The heartbeats signal excitement and passion.
Or is it talking sexy time (pitter patter of the heart then getting sweaty) under a blood moon?
They might have had their affair during the month of a lunar eclipse.
Or the blood moon may signal an infrequent and intermittent affair (twice a year).
Additionally, it could be some October as the full moon that month is called Blood-Moon due to hunting season.
Can we use the moon to pin down the time frame the Taylor and Kelsea might have had a fling?
Months of blood moons:
Based on the Delicate cover and Taylor’s response to it:
and the towels pic:
I think their affair could have happened at least in 2018. March-May 2018 seems more than friends, possibly. Due to the on/off Kelsea’s discography alludes to it could have also been intermittent in years prior or after this too.
Counterfeit:
Taylor wants to resolve Kaylor, but she is anxiously waiting for things to align. While Taylor waits for the perfect timing with Karlie there’s a glitch and she gets with Kelsea.
Beating hearts/heartBEAT:
We didn’t do it for the fame or the glory
Kelsea is contrasting the very public Kaylor to KelSwift. Karlie and the models might have been hired as PR to eliminate the boy-crazy image Taylor hated. Taylor needed a best friend to take away mention of men. Karlie signed on to play the BFF to get more exposure and recognition to bolster her own career.
And Kaylor accidently fell in love.
But Kelsea and Taylor are not together for PR or careers. There was never money exchanged between the two.
They came together more organically.
But we went down in history
Yeah we were legends
That sounds a lot like a closeted sapphic relationship! There are rumors, but no pictures.
It also sounds a lot like the premise of the folklore album.
But notice Kelsea is talking in past tense.
Loving you baby it was Heaven
Another past tense line.
In Cruel Summer, Taylor describes her relationship with (I’m pretty sure) Karlie. The relationship is delicate and fragile for many reasons: Taylor feels conflicted because society taught her that sapphic love is sinful, and she brings up religious figures to show her concern. The relationship is also fickle because Kaylor started out friends with benefits, no strings attached, and Taylor and Karlie caught stronger feelings on antithetical timelines. Thirdly, the Kaylor relationship feels precarious because Karlie can’t commit fully–partially because she had a long-term boyfriend/beard.
During KelSwift, Taylor is still apprehensive about her sexuality, especially in a public forum. Now Taylor treats Kelsea like Karlie treated her at first. She doesn’t want to be serious, and is just looking for a fun fling. Kelsea, however, has strong feelings for Taylor, just like the strong feelings Taylor had/has for Karlie. Taylor has been on both sides of the equation between Kaylor (pining/wanting more) and KelSwift (distracted/non-committal).
What everyone wondered we’d never question/Close our eyes and took on the world together
This line is more strong evidence that this is a different (gay) type of relationship. Why would other people wonder about this couple? Why does the pair need to take on the world?
I think “take on the world” is also talking about their music careers. Kelsea and Taylor and both striving to get their music out to the world.
Do you remember?
We were crazy
Tragic and epic and so amazing
Interesting choice of words…
I’ll always wear the crown that you gave me
The crown. We talked about how Taylor has at least 3 songs that mention a crown specifically in the Homecoming Queen analysis.
Out of Kelsea, her husband, and Taylor who was the first to move to Nashville, and who got signed first?
Kelsea’s husband was signed after she had already been signed for a year.
We will always stay lost in forever
And they’ll remember
We were legends
Like we were written down in permanent marker
KelSwift leaves an indelible mark on Nashville and music. And the couple will always have good memories of their relationship. This line also might be a call back to an early Taylor Swift performance in Nashville:
Kelsea uses “permanent marker” possibly to contrast the word “paint” that Taylor often uses in her own songs. Paint can be RE-painted, or covered up easily. Permanent marker is more difficult to remove or modify.
Not even the brightest sun could ever fade
In Peace, Karlie tells Taylor she is sunshine/fire/friend, and would take away Taylor’s depression and die for her:
To Kelsea, sunshine is Karlie. She is saying even Karlie at her brightest, can’t take away the memories of KelSwift.
Come whichever hell or high water
Taylor thinks fiery hell would be getting outed in a gay relationship:
And the water is Taylor’s team putting out the fire with their damage control:
Kelsea is saying KelSwift could survive despite the closeting (for fear of fire/hell) and the PR damage control (water/flood) that also comes with bearding. Kelsea is also in the industry so she knows how important it is to be descreet. She even wrote a song about keeping secrets, If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too). Kelsea is commenting that Taylor wouldn’t be outed with her. And Kelsea is saying she already knows the industry and the PR damage control doesn’t bother her.
It was always me and you either way
Hey we wrote our own story
Full of blood sweat and heartbeats
We didn’t do it for the fame or the glory
We just did it for you and me
And that’s why we were legends
I’m not the only one who noticed similarities between Kelsea and Taylor in this song. Unlike the hater that wrote the following article, I don’t think Kelsea is doing a cheap remake of Taylor’s work. I think Kelsea is intentionally referencing Taylor in order to furtively tell the audience who the subject of this song is–Taylor.
Logistical Info:
Remember we’re looking at words in the lyrics of Question… to try to decipher who and what and when.
We’ve almost gone through the entire song, pulling lyrics containing the same words to get a sort of consensus or feeling about Taylor’s intention.
Now that we’re toward the end of Question… lyrics, we need to address the central part of the song: Kiss in a crowded room. And the kiss really brings to mind Dancing with our Hands Tied and maybe Kissgate.
We will analyze Dancing with our Hands Tied to see if it parallels Question….
Except this particular line within Dancing with our Hands Tied got a bit long because I really don’t know for sure and there was no solid direction to take the analysis. I will go into it in detail in this post so the guesses don’t overwhelm the analysis of the song as a whole.
And I’ll spell out my conclusions from this post in the full analysis of Dancing with our Hands Tied. But that post was getting very long and I was afraid nobody would read it. So to make things even more confusing each line in DWOHT is going to be its OWN post. But then I’ll do a main DWOHT post with just links to each different post. It’s a whole big thing.
Then we’ll get back to the end of Question…
Was that explanation as confusing as trying to guess who Taylor’s songs are about?
Oh, how was I to know that
“The rest of the world was black and white but we were in screaming color” from Out of the Woods describes Taylor overtly recognizing that sapphic love (vs. comp-het) and rouses her from the twenty year dark night.
Afterward, Taylor sees the world with new eyes. The blue is brighter and more unique in Delicate (Question… [Part 3]). Taylor had an awakening because of this novel love she felt for this new type of person (a woman). Taylor further conveys this new knowledge that she’s queer in Me! When she describes herself as not like the others and mentions the rainbow of colors (pride flag, LGBTQQAA all represented).
When Taylor moved to New York City to be with this woman, her priorities changed from boys and money–to love. She sings that sapphic love feels like freedom and home (Question… [Part 2]). Taylor even dares to dream of her future with a woman in It’s Nice to have a Friend. Though the song seems to be about a childhood friendship, it also applies to this situation because Taylor had a twenty year pause in her development. In her twenties, Taylor is right back at 7 years old just learning to love authentically. She has trouble crossing the boundary into queerness because of her heteronormative conditioning. But in both that childhood song and in NYC, the female best friend dares to touch her romantically and it sends Taylor’s thoughts to a future wedding. She is coming around to the idea that, though gay love is not traditional or fully accepted, she might be able to be happy anyway (Question… [Part 8]).
I could’ve spent forever with your hands in my pockets
Taylor is wistful here, saying could have been with this person forever, if only she had reacted differently to the dancing in public. “Your hands in my pockets” could mean Taylor and her girlfriend are hiding their figurative hand. As in keeping poker cards close to the chest/vest (a secret) in order to win and make money. Taylor could be saying that she wanted to stay lovers with this person forever, but hidden away from prying eyes. YOUR hands in MY pockets also shows that these two were connected to each other. Other songs tell us that sapphic love feels otherworldly to Taylor, becoming permanent like a tattoo. But Karlie feels just as strongly. Putting her hands in Taylor’s pockets is an intimate (if not awkward) way to stand. Going out of her way to hold Taylor, indicates how their love was reciprocal.
In Ivy Karlie says Taylor is like clover and ivy, covering her. In the song, Karlie also mentions how Taylor’s eyes are all she wishes to see. In Peace Karlie assures Taylor that she can be the one to soothe Taylor’s depression, sit in the trenches with her, and she tells Taylor that her train could take Taylor home. Furthermore, in both Peace and Ivy Karlie tells Taylor she would die for her.
Unfortunately, Taylor’s priorities pertaining to her love-life are misaligned, and that hurts all of her girlfriends. Taylor is already afraid she will age out of being an A+ pop star. She already fears another backlash. But Taylor’s biggest fear of all is being outed and losing her career (Question… [Part 11]). Which is why despite truly loving her woman, when Taylor is put in a corner about her sexuality, she always panics and denies it.
Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer hurts her lovers. It makes Taylor’s lovers feel depressed, neglected, lonely, awkward, and forgotten when Taylor does her celebrity thing (and the closeting that goes with it).
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