Don’t worry, I’m still working on the gay moments for each track on evermore. I’m at Ivy and it’s very research heavy, so enjoy another snippet while I compile everything.
The songs on Reputation are packed with meaning, and there are many rabbit holes to go down. As such, this post would be too long if I included each song as I did with Debut, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989. Pretty much every track on Reputation has queer content. There could probably be an argument made for LWYMMD and TIWWCHNT, especially the video and live performances, but neither really have lyrics conducive to this particular analysis. All the rest of the songs are included. Here are the links to each gay Reputation moment:
…Ready For it?
Golden age of Hollywood and bearding
Heterosexual marriage with frequent same sex interactions outside of the marriage
I didn’t include End Game because having features muddies the water about who contributed what. It’s probably Taylor being gay on main again, but I can’t rule out that Ed or Future added to the lyrics.
We finished the end of Dancing with our Hands Tied! Parts A-T if you missed it. Do you agree that Taylor is agonizing over an event that almost outed her? And she is regretful that she choose the closet over her lover? With that foundation, let’s look at Question…:
Here’s the lyrics as written so you can get a sense of the story Taylor is telling:
Can I ask you a question? Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room And every single one of your friends was Making fun of you But fifteen seconds later they were clapping too? Then what did you do? Did you leave her house in the middle of the night? Did you wish you put up more of a fight? When she said it was too much? Do you wish you could still touch …her? It’s just a question
Now I’ll try to analyze them line by line, using what we learned from Dancing with our Hands Tied plus the consensus of word meanings gleaned from other songs in the catalog:
Can I ask you a question?
To me, it seems like both Dancing with our Hands Tied and Question… Are less about one event or person, and more about Taylor’s overall mentality and what that leads to. Taylor is acknowledging that her gay-panic and straight-washing sucks. BUT this song (we’re back at Question…) is a justification of her actions.
She is asking the listener (her ex-girlfriends, fans, critics, etc…) to empathize with her very specific situation. In these lyrics, Taylor is calling for us to stand in her shoes (on your tiptoes) and see why she does these seemingly callous things repeatedly. Question… is a song about Taylor’s phobia of being unabashedly queer and her habitual dread of being outed.
As I said, I think this applies to every one of Taylor’s sapphic relationships. For ease of writing and for specificity, I’ll use the muse I’m most familiar with, the most recent known girlfriend, Karlie.
Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room
The first question Taylor asks (exes, fans, critics) is did you ever find yourself in a situation where you were doing a controversial action in front of everybody?
Not sticking up for your (sapphic) love out of fear of social rejection is a common theme in so many of Taylor’s songs because it’s the primary problem in Taylor’s real life (Question… [Part 14]). Her actions and inactions cause her partner to be relegated to the back of the closet. And all the hiding and secrets and lies hurts their love. Which is why in Betty, Taylor wants to rectify the situation by publicly kissing Betty/this woman she loves (Question… [Part 17]).
And every single one of your friends was
Making fun of you
Taylor adds details to her first question. She wants to know if you’ve done something controversial AND if everyone was disdainful towards you about it?
Taylor wants us to know that, yes, she acted ugly as a result of each of these public events that revealed her true nature. Cruel Summer shows Taylor’s hidden feelings:
Cruel Summer
She hated all the secrets. She snuck around for love despite the dangerous consequences. And it made her sad that her love wasn’t celebrated. But she had to. Because everyone was judging her harshly, ready to out her to the world.
But fifteen seconds later they were clapping too?
Then what did you do?
Taylor wants to know what the listener would have done when the rules changed. She says, turns out, you adjusted in order to tame the controversy, but society evolved. Instead of jeering this formerly controversial pairing, the majority were cheering. But what if you (her ex, the fans, any critics) were still locked in cages of maintaining your status quo? How would you handle the situation then?
She asks the listeners what they would do in that very specific situation. Knowing it’s impossible to handle smoothly, Taylor then implies that nobody can judge her harshly for her reactions and behavior. She says anyone would act just as cagey under her circumstances.
The specific event of Kissgate hurt Kaylor because Taylor defaulted to brand damage control instead of just coming out. Taylor, the individual, long ago lost her autonomy to Taylor Swift, the brand. All the anxiety about negative societal reactions kills the sapphic partnership. And when time passes and the general public is more accepting of queerness, Taylor was already locked into her marketed image. She has to remain super-straight, or her fans will know she lied a lot of times. They will feel betrayed by their friend. The half moon eyes in Question… are the combination of these anxieties constantly tugging Taylor and any sapphic lover apart.
Taylor talks to a few different subjects in the next lines. Taylor is asking herself these questions. She’s asking her girlfriend if any of these outcomes would have changed if either of them had taken different actions. And she asks the listener to empathize.
Did you leave your secret love in the middle of the night? In that situation, do you think you could put up more of a fight? And what about if your girlfriend was also anxious about it? Would you press her to continue? Taylor is saying she had all bad choices here, and anyone would have finished with the same bad outcome as she did.
Did you leave her house in the middle of the night?
According to her catalog, it’s Taylor who blew things out of proportion, and it was Taylor who burned the relationship down. It’s Taylor who pushes Karlie (any girlfriend applies) to run, and to take the last train. It’s Taylor who jumps off the train and rides off alone.
Did you wish you put up more of a fight?
Taylor is asking this question to herself and her exes. She’s also showing her listeners how difficult it was to even do the little pushing back she did. She was marketed not only as boy-crazy, but as everyone’s personal friend, so the news would cause a stir.
The Taylor Swift brand is huge. There is a lot of money and power behind it. Look at one example of a business move that conveys the incredible power of TSTM:
Taylor (as face of the brand) had spoken and a Fortune 500 company immediately complied. In this damage-control situation, after trying and faltering against all that brand-leverage, Taylor asks how would YOU proceed?
Coming out as any kind of gay would cause backlash, and the employees of TSTM might be subjected to hardship. There is strong motivation to put out fires on behalf of the brand. Their damage control is quick and decisive. The water of them putting out this fire became a flood that engulfed and overwhelmed everything. In Clean, Taylor said she screamed so loud when all this water filled her lungs. This damage control negatively impacts her despite being the face of the brand.
Remembering how the butterflies crumble to dust and Taylor is unhappy and alone in the closet, she had momentary bravery and pushed back against her team’s damage control. Part of Taylor wants to choose authentic love, and the woman. So she started fighting for her (real) relationship, arguing with her team about downplaying the event that outed her. She protested against going back into the closet, and tried to stop the torrent, “…but no one heard a thing.”
Nobody on Taylor’s team listened to Taylor [remember her crying at the table in Miss Americana?] and she submitted, “Hung my head as I lost the war.” The war is Taylor’s conflict with her sexuality (this is bigger than her team). She momentarily wanted to come out, but TSTM executives thought it would be bad for the brand. It was just enough friction to trigger the conflict within herself. As much as Taylor wants to come out and be free to love her soulmate, her fears of losing everything are stronger. “So I punched a hole in the roof, Let the flood carry away all my pictures of you.” Taylor’s fear took over in the end. Clearing the air, she breathed in the smoke, and helped with the cover-up at the expense of her sapphic love.
When she said it was too much?
Here Taylor is telling the listener that the split wasn’t just one-sided. The partner felt exhausted by the complications and couldn’t deal with it anymore.
She is asking the listeners/critics what you would do if you lived through this complicated event, and had to deal with the pressure of a whole brand.
Furthermore, what if the girl you were trying to fight for had a lot of doubts? The girlfriend wasn’t sure that she even wanted to go through more just to make things work–what would you have done? Taylor is making it evident that she (as individual vs. brand) didn’t have a lot of pull in the matter. And even if she did, her girlfriend was beaten down by the experience and ready to leave.
Again, the music belies Taylor’s internal struggle. In Death by a Thousand cuts, Taylor tells how heartbroken she was with the final result:
Do you wish you could still touch …her?
Taylor’s last question shows that she wishes it wasn’t this way. She still covets the touch of her lover. Despite her impossible situation, and inability to rectify it in a satisfying way (for all parties involved) Taylor says she truly loved the girl.
Taylor’s most important relationships couldn’t overcome so many stumbling blocks despite both loving each other (Question… [Part 10]). There is internal homophobia, career pressures, political considerations, bearding complications, on and on. How many struggles can one relationship survive?
When Taylor’s default action is covering up her queerness, it causes her to suppress her secret relationship as well. Karlie politely lived with being stifled, her love tamped down (Question… [Part 10]). But eventually left the smothering deprivation of the closet. Karlie “married” the guy or more suitably–commissioned her new heteronormative life (Question… [Part 9]).
The break-up kills Taylor. And Karlie is dead to Taylor now that she has a child and a (diabolical) husband. Both Taylor and Karlie (this could apply to any and all of Taylor’s sapphic lovers) are dead inside, cold lifeless hands reaching out grieving for the living (“do you wish you could still touch her?”). Yet, Taylor still prioritizes building a legacy despite repeatedly losing the lover because of it (Question… [Part 11]). It’s a pattern she’s repeated over and over.
It’s just a question
This is a cheeky ending where Taylor feels like the listener agreed with her logic. She wanted us to know the details of her situation so we could see how she couldn’t do things any other way. And now that we’ve seen her side of things, she knows we’re on the same page as her. She was entombed in a lot of ways and that justified her behavior. It’s the same as Dancing with our Hands Tied: Taylor is broken because her sapphic relationship ended. She’s regretful and wished things would have been different. But she reminds herself, her ex, and her audience in the song how her unique circumstances are to blame. And she ends both songs saying I regret this, but… Taylor has rationalized all her choices which have led to these disheartening outcomes.
Taylor will remain shrouded in the lavender haze because she has more challenging circumstances than many. But she’s still going to be sad, and share her feelings about it in song.
I could’ve spent forever with your hands in my pockets Picture of your face in an invisible locket You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it I had a bad feeling
But we were dancing Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied Yeah, we were dancing Like it was the first time, first time Yeah, we were dancing Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied Yeah, we were dancing (Ooh, we had our hands tied) And I had a bad feeling But we were dancing
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied Yeah, we were dancing Like it was the first time, first time Yeah, we were dancing Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied Yeah, we were dancing And I had a bad feeling
We addressed the central part of the song: Kiss in a crowded room by exploring Dancing with our Hands Tied strongly believed to be tied [too on the nose?] to Kissgate.
We proved Question… and Dancing with our Hands Tied are nearly the same song. DWOHT is looking back with regret and wishing for a re-do. Question… is also looking back at the same or similar event(s).
So we’re segwaying from DWOHT back to the end of Question…
This part of the song really turns into Question…
If I could dance with you again
This is a lament. Taylor’s behavior in that pivotal moment caused the pair to stop dancing. The dancing is the actual act of holding each other and the feeling of liberation at associating as a romantic couple in public.
I’d kiss you as the lights went out
If Taylor could rewrite history she would have kissed her partner in that clamorous moment. Instead of worrying about the people looking up at her and her lover (grinnin’ like the devil), Taylor would have leaned into her love.
Swaying as the room burned down
The fire Taylor (and her team) have been terrorized by flared up that night. Taylor let her guard slip and was too obviously gay out in the open. Viewers were quick to gather physical evidence and Taylor would have been outed. If she could revise what happened in that significant moment, Taylor says she would have continued dancing instead of getting flustered.
I’d hold you as the water rushes in
The following week, Taylor succumbed to the pressure of her team’s damage control. Once mollified, she even felt safe within the enclave of the closet. Taylor tells her sapphic lover that if she could do it all again, she would choose her. Instead of acquiescing to the closet, Taylor wishes she would have remained firm and stood proudly with her lover.
If I could dance with you again
Taylor is regretful that salvaging her straight image caused her girlfriend to be enshrouded too. By covering up their love, Taylor buried it.
BUT the very last line of the song:
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
Taylor amended the whole event to appease her ex-girlfriend and show her how she’s evolved as a person. This whole verse was tinged with regret, and Taylor is telling how she would make different choices. The way that Taylor dealt with the original moment ended up causing her (and her girlfriend) pain and suffering. She is lonely and unhappy because of those choices.
Yet, at the very end (the last line of the song) Taylor doesn’t allude to dancing, uninhibited in the open, freely out with her partner.
Her idea of comfort is dancing within the constraints of her brand. Taylor wants to be with the woman, but she needs her career. Taylor has not progressed at all. She changed everything in the Kissgate scenario, but ends up back in the same precarious position–dancing, but within the chains of her heteronormative image.
I put the parts we already talked about together in a different way. The repetition conveys the anxiety Taylor feels.
I had a bad feeling
Taylor is chronically anxious about a lot of things. Primarily, in her words: Her house is haunted. Translation: The physical embodiment of her sensibilities is gay (Question…[Part 6]. Taylor feels torn between her “aberrant” sexuality and being seen as the ideal woman, or at least politically correct. It’s a struggle for Taylor to be authentic to who she is, but also appeal to a wide swath of people to maintain her fame (Question… [Part 12]). She’s gay, rattled, and drunk, yet she projects hyper-femininity and confidence to be palatable to the masses. Throughout Taylor’s life her sexuality caused her to hide, panic, and scheme.
I had a bad feeling
The middle of the night is a time for Taylor to ruminate and contemplate why she is in cages. She has to retract central parts of her branding if she wants to be open about her sexuality. If she sticks to the tenants of the Taylor Swift brand, Taylor, the individual, must closet and beard (Question… [Part 6]). She has strife about this difficult choice, because Taylor worries that her sexuality will accelerate her losing everyone and everything.
But we were dancing
Taylor and her lover have stopped (“we were”) dancing. The word “Dance” is being unbothered and happy-go-lucky in her queerness–a state Taylor enters only with this specific person per Holy Ground (Question… [Part 17]).
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
Taylor construes “dance” to mean having no inhibitions. She talks about how children are willing to dance without shame. The word is used to show the elation, relief, and liberation of being herself, as in the song, Long Live (Question… [Part 17]). Slightly adjacent to being in an uninhibited, unflappable mode relating to her queerness (NOT her default state of anxiety and fear) Taylor uses “dance” to express allegiance and belonging. When she dances in Welcome to New York it shows that Taylor found people that accept her and “Dance” is used to show affiliation with these urban queers. Same with Beautiful Ghosts. She “dances” or unites with these other gay people because that’s who she is, and they integrate her into their chosen family (Question… [Part 17]). The preponderance of “dancing” in Taylor’s catalog is relaxation and ease with her innate sexuality.
Yeah, we were dancing
Yeah, we were dancing
Taylor also uses dance to show intimacy between two people. I think that’s a pertinent meaning in this song, because Taylor is telling her ex-girlfriend what she would do if they could resume dancing.
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
Dancing with our hands tied, however, is not completely free. With that phrase, Taylor is not only describing the physical representation of her and her lover’s arms and hands tangled and intertwined. She is telling us despite the dancing, there were always handcuffs, chains, restraints, hemming-in of their relationship. And with her own relationship to her (queer) self.
Yeah, we were dancing
Taylor knows she left her lover hanging, and it’s her fault both of them are depressed. Even though this is the central person in Taylor’s life she never acknowledges them publicly.
And I had a bad feeling
But she already loses her important romances. This is part of the reason why, even at the early stages of a relationship, Taylor is terrified to lose the love. She senses it’s fickle and fears it could go away at any time (Question… [Part 11]). Taylor has suffered loss and loneliness with at least Emily, Dianna, and Karlie. Emily was out of the band suddenly and Taylor felt sorry. A fake article about Swiftgron went viral and Dianna erased her blog and tattoo then Taylor was only seen with her one more time. Karlie’s timeline is complicated, but the last four albums tell us they couldn’t get on the same page about how to proceed with their relationship.
But we were dancing
Taylor uses “universe” to show how far away she seems to her lover. Fear causes Taylor’s priorities to be misaligned. Her girlfriend feels neglected, lonely, awkward, forgotten, and depressed when Taylor does her celebrity thing (and the closeting that goes with it). Taylor’s closeting relegated her soulmate to the background. Since that is her gay-panic default behavior, the women aren’t surprised, but it ruins the relationships nonetheless.
So, baby, can we dance
Taylor can’t let go of her soulmate–she’s a hostage to her feelings. But Taylor is torn: Her back is against the wall in regards to maintaining her public image–she must beard to be seen as straight and make money.
I had a bad feeling
At times, both Taylor and Karlie were nervous about being sapphic. In Call It What You Want Taylor tells Karlie (I hear her name in the song and can’t hear anything else) they don’t have to name what they are. It speaks to Karlie being nervous about calling herself part of the LGBT community. Taylor urges her to just go with it and don’t worry about labels–she just wants this love. Yet, in Cruel Summer Taylor still paid a man to be her beard. Taylor’s lifelong defense mechanism is closeting so when she sees a shiny toy, this bad boy with a price, she bought it.
But we were dancing
Taylor never makes her secret sapphic love her centerfold, thus her lover is a flight risk. Even with the threat of losing her beloved, it always comes back to Taylor’s career (Question… [Part 9]).
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
Taylor loves, but in secret. Taylor uses dancing in Cowboy Like Me to misrepresent her sexuality to the rich folks. She dances with this other queer person to look outwardly romantic and mollify homophobic reactions (Question… [Part 17]). This is Taylor’s personal life: She feels she has to dance and spin on her tiptoes, al-la Mirrorball, showing her audience, the media, and the general public everything they want to see. The closet stifles Taylor, but also makes her feel safe, per Clean and Lavender Haze.
Yeah, we were dancing
Yeah, we were dancing
The shades of gray surrounding Taylor speak to a situation so complex it has to be deciphered with nuance (Question… [Part 13]). Taylor had confusion, indecision, and doubt, letting her terror drive her actions. Taylor fears for her image and how being LGBT might jeopardize business, so she pushes her lover away, despite wanting to hold onto her.
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
The specific event of Kissgate hurt Kaylor because Taylor defaulted to brand damage control instead of just coming out with it. All the anxiety kills the partnership. The half moon eyes in Question… are the combination of anxieties constantly tugging Taylor and any sapphic lover apart.
Yeah, we were dancing
This is past tense (“were”). And she loses these relationships to internalized homophobia and the closet time and time again (Question… [Part 10]).
(Ooh, we had our hands tied)
Not sticking up for your (sapphic) love out of fear of social rejection is a common theme in so many of Taylor’s songs because it’s the primary problem in Taylor’s real life (Question… [Part 14]). Her actions and inactions cause her partner to be relegated to the back of the closet. And all the hiding and secrets and lies is hurting their love. Which is why in Betty, Taylor wants to rectify the situation by publicly kissing Betty/this woman she loves (Question… [Part 17]).
And I had a bad feeling
The night of Kissgate, Taylor went on a Kaylor-liking spree online, signaling some pre-gaming had occurred even before the 1975 concert. Taylor drinks to calm her anxiety, and anything too gay makes her especially anxious. She correlates the overwhelming feelings of Sapphic love with drunkeness. Being drunk is cathartic and freeing, allowing inhibitions to be lowered. But it can also make your head spin, cause you to go rogue, and can make you throw up on the street (Question… [Part 11]). The night Taylor is talking about in Question… she was “on something” is both liquor and the high of gay love (Question… [Part 11]).
But we were dancing
Yeah, we were dancing
Yeah, we were dancing
During the break-ups Taylor is emotionally raw. She oscillates between sadness, reminiscing, empathy, and anger.
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
Taylor’s early romances ended nearly the same as her current romance has ended. She has always felt regretful about her situation and wishes the lover would show up below her window. But there are just too many secrets, lies, miscommunications, and accusations complicating things. For example, Betty, a highly autobiographical allegory for Taylor’s real life, shows a common conflict of closeting and bearding. James (aka Taylor) was nowhere to be found, because she hates the crowds (creates a spectacle wherever she goes). But she saw Betty dance with HIM, which James/Taylor misconstrued as legitimate. It’s just like reality where bearding is sometimes pulled off too well, creating jealousy and mistrust. In both Betty and in Taylor’s real dating life, a chain of negative reactions follows the act of bearding and the relationship between the female lovers suffers. So after being pushed away by Taylor’s closeting, instead of throwing pebbles at Taylor’s window, the girlfriend actually leaves (Question… [Part 14]). Then, there is just sadness about what will never be.
Yeah, we were dancing
Drinking and getting drunk mark Taylor’s journey of grief after the split (Question… [Part 11]). She regretfully remembers how she contributed to their split, and woefully wishes she could go back to their happy moments.
And I had a bad feeling
Taylor can’t stand the heat, is constantly afraid of impending fire, and the invisible smoke hangs over her. The smoke (hint of a fire) is unrealized events that Taylor fears. The heat of the fire is every time Taylor is overtly gay and too many people notice. The (anticipated) fire is getting burned by coming out or worse, being outed. The water rushing in is damage control by Taylor’s PR team. The rain is Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer. It’s rain, a naturally occurring event (vs. firefighting, a planned, aggressive action) because Taylor yields to her team’s straight-washing, and feels regretful about her own. Taylor suffers because she loves the gal, but also knows how “out(ed)” celebrities lose their fame and die all alone.
But we were dancing
Without her lover, Taylor is in the gray of sadness, loneliness, and isolation (Question… [Part 13]).
Hands tied, hands tied
In the case of Kissgate and Kaylor, I think Taylor wanted to go to The Lakes and be a private couple, just the two of them. But I suspect Karlie felt obligated to be with Jo$h, and still wanted to be with Taylor, as attested by Ivy. Taylor couldn’t go along with that because of distress about losing control, apprehension about the unknown, and antipathy of those political associations (Question… [Part 10]). Taylor’s break-up with her lover kills her. And Karlie is dead to Taylor now that she has a child and a (diabolical) husband. Karlie politely lived with being hidden and put on the back burner, until she didn’t (Question… [Part 10]). She eventually left the deprivation of the closet which erased her. Karlie “married” the guy or commissioned her new heteronormative life (Question… [Part 9]). Now both Taylor and Karlie are dead inside, cold lifeless hands reaching out (“do you wish you could still touch her?”) grieving for the living.
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?
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied
We’ve discussed how Taylor construes “dance” to mean having no inhibitions. She talks about how children are willing to dance without shame in Fifteen. The word is used to show the elation, relief, and liberation of being herself, as in the song, Long Live (Question… [Part 17]). Slightly adjacent to being in an uninhibited, unflappable mode relating to her queerness (NOT her default state of anxiety and fear) Taylor uses “dance” to express allegiance and belonging. When she dances in Welcome to New York it shows that Taylor found people that accept her and “Dance” is used to show affiliation with these urban queers. Same with Beautiful Ghosts. She “dances” or unites with these other gay people because that’s who she is, and they integrate her into their chosen family (Question… [Part 17]). The preponderance of “dancing” in Taylor’s catalog is relaxation and ease with her innate sexuality.
Dancing with our Hands Tied, however, is not completely free. With that phrase, Taylor is not only describing the physical representation of her and her lover’s arms and hands tangled and intertwined. She is telling us despite the dancing, there were always handcuffs, chains, restraints, hemming-in of their relationship. And with her own relationship to her (queer) self.
This bejeweled dress also looks like chains, shackling Taylor Swift into her public image. With the money she makes from her brand, comes the forced closeting and bearding and straightwashing. “Where’s that man who threw blankets over my barbed wire?” in Tolerate It [a song about people not accepting Taylor’s sexuality] shows how the TS brand hides Taylor’s barbed wire (rough edges, sexuality) by propping a man next to her. The song is telling us Taylor beards to hide her sexuality. Invisible String reiterates how Taylor the brand looks beautiful dripping in jewels, but Taylor the person is restrained by these same gems. “Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire/Chains around my demons…”
Taylor loves, but in secret. Taylor uses dancing in Cowboy Like Me to misrepresent her sexuality to the rich folks. She dances with this other queer person to look outwardly romantic and mollify homophobic reactions (Question… [Part 17]). This is Taylor’s personal life: She feels she has to dance and spin on her tiptoes, al-la Mirrorball, showing her audience, the media, and the general public everything they want to see. The closet stifles Taylor, but also makes her feel safe, per Clean and Lavender Haze. It’s no accident the gold mirrorball dress also has the jewel/chains. She is shining for others, but the mirrorball mentality also keeps her tied up in that image.
The specific event of Kissgate hurt Kaylor because Taylor defaulted to brand damage control instead of opening up and coming out. All the anxiety kills the partnership. The half moon eyes in Question… are the combination of anxieties constantly tugging Taylor and any sapphic lover apart.
Not sticking up for your (sapphic) love out of fear of social rejection is a common theme in so many of Taylor’s songs because it’s the primary problem in Taylor’s real life (Question… [Part 14]). Her actions and inactions cause her partner to be relegated to the back of the closet. And all the hiding, and secrets, and lies are hurting their love. Which is why in Betty, Taylor wants to rectify the situation by publicly kissing Betty/this woman she loves (Question… [Part 17]).
Taylor’s early romances ended nearly the same as her current romance has ended. She has always felt regretful about her situation and wishes the lover would show up below her window. But there are just too many secrets, lies, miscommunications, and accusations complicating things. For example, Betty, a highly autobiographical allegory for Taylor’s real life, shows a common conflict of closeting and bearding. James (aka Taylor) was nowhere to be found, because she hates the crowds (creates a spectacle wherever she goes). But she saw Betty dance with HIM, which James/Taylor misconstrued as legitimate. It’s just like reality where bearding is sometimes pulled off too well, creating jealousy and mistrust.
In both Betty and in Taylor’s real dating life, a chain of negative reactions follows the act of bearding and the relationship between the female lovers suffers. So after being pushed away by Taylor’s closeting, instead of throwing pebbles at Taylor’s window, the girlfriend actually leaves (Question… [Part 14]). Then, there is just sadness about what will never be.
In the case of Kissgate and Kaylor, I think Taylor wanted to go to The Lakes and be a private couple, just the two of them. But I suspect Karlie felt obligated to be with Jo$h, and still wanted to be with Taylor, as attested by Ivy. There is a back and fourth in that song. Taylor is anxious at the impending doom of Karlie’s wedding (among other things) and Karlie answers, trying to assuage Taylor’s fear of the Ku$hners burning the house down. These lines (starting from “How’s one to know” are from Karlie’s perspective:
Karlie lived and died for her affair with Taylor despite an upcoming deadline with Jo$h. Taylor gets afraid and tells Karlie to just go to the guy, but Karlie asks Taylor to sit with her, drinking Jo$h’s wine, and wait and see what Kaylor can be. Karlie, further says all of this is under Taylor’s control. Karlie’s pain is in Taylor’s freezing hands, but she wants to hold on to Taylor. Even though Karlie has made a commitment that is soon to start, she says Taylor impacted her and she can’t pretend their love isn’t centered in her life. Karlie didn’t choose to fall in love with Taylor, and she acknowledges that falling in love with Taylor is messing up the future that she had long ago planned, but it happened. Karlie is covered in the invasive, inconvenient ivy of Taylor’s love. Taylor couldn’t go along with continuing an affair with a married Karlie because of distress about losing control, apprehension about the unknown, and antipathy of those political associations (Question… [Part 10]).
Because each of their hands are tied due to bearding, Kaylor had to stop “dancing” despite truly loving one another. Taylor’s break-up with her lover kills her. And Karlie is dead to Taylor now that she has a child and a (diabolical) husband. Karlie politely lived with being hidden and put on the back burner, until she didn’t (Question… [Part 10]). She eventually left the deprivation of the closet which erased her. Karlie went ahead and “married” the guy or more accurately, commissioned this heteronormative life (Question… [Part 9]).
Now both Taylor and Karlie are dead inside, cold lifeless hands reaching out (“do you wish you could still touch her?”) grieving for the living.
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?
If I could dance with you again
This is a regretful thought after the fact. Taylor and her lover have stopped dancing. It’s the literal dancing of Kissgate, but “Dance” is also being unbothered and happy-go-lucky in her queerness. It’s a state Taylor enters only with this specific person per Holy Ground (Question… [Part 17]). In other songs, Taylor uses the word, “dance” to show intimacy between two people. In Dancing with our Hands Tied, Taylor is telling her ex-girlfriend what she would do if they could resume dancing.
Taylor knows she left her lover hanging, and it’s her fault both of them are depressed. Even though this is the central person in Taylor’s life she never acknowledges them publicly. Taylor uses “universe” in other songs to show how far away she seems to the lover.
Fear causes Taylor’s priorities to be misaligned. Her lover feels neglected, lonely, awkward, forgotten, and depressed when Taylor does her celebrity thing (and the closeting that goes with it). Taylor’s closeting relegated her lover to the background. Since that is her gay-panic default behavior, the lovers aren’t surprised, but it ruins the relationships nonetheless.
Taylor can’t let go of her soulmate–she’s a hostage to her feelings. Despite her anxiety about gay-stigma, she does love this woman. But Taylor is torn: Her back is against the wall in regards to maintaining her public image–she must beard to be seen as straight and make money. Taylor never makes her secret sapphic love her centerfold, thus her lover is a flight risk.
Even with the threat of losing her beloved, it always comes back to Taylor’s career (Question… [Part 9]). The shades of gray surrounding Taylor speak to a situation so complex it has to be deciphered with nuance (Question… [Part 13]). Taylor had confusion, indecision, and doubt, letting her fear drive her actions. She fears for her image and how being LGBT might jeopardize business, so Taylor pushes her lover away, despite wanting to hold onto her. It puts their relationship in this gray area too.
And she loses these relationships to internalized homophobia and the closet time and time again (Question… [Part 10]). During the break-ups Taylor is emotionally raw. She oscillates between sadness, reminiscing, empathy, and anger. Drinking and getting drunk mark Taylor’s journey of grief after the split (Question… [Part 11]). Without her lover, Taylor is in the gray of sadness, loneliness, and isolation (Question… [Part 13]).
That’s why Taylor is thinking about what she would have done if she could do the whole thing again.
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.
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?
And I had a bad feeling
Taylor is chronically anxious about a lot of things. Primarily, (and in her words) her house (physical embodiment of her sensibilities) is haunted (gay) (Question…[Part 6]. Taylor feels torn between her “aberrant” sexuality and being seen as the ideal woman, or at least politically correct. It’s a struggle for Taylor to be authentic to who she is, but also appeal to a wide swath of people to maintain her fame (Question… [Part 12]). She’s gay, rattled, and drunk, yet she projects hyper-femininity and confidence to be palatable to the masses. Throughout Taylor’s life her sexuality caused her to hide, panic, and scheme.
The middle of the night is a time for Taylor to ruminate and contemplate why she is in cages. Taylor is a super-star. Her every move is published for the world to judge. A primary problem is that Taylor has to retract central parts of her branding if she wants to be open about her sexuality. If she sticks to the tenants of the Taylor Swift brand, Taylor, the individual, must closet and beard (Question… [Part 6]). She has strife about this difficult choice, because Taylor worries that her sexuality will accelerate her losing everyone and everything.
But Taylor already loses her important romances. This is part of the reason why, even at the early stages of a relationship, Taylor is terrified to lose the love. She senses it’s fickle and fears it could go away at any time (Question… [Part 11]). Taylor has suffered loss and loneliness with at least Emily, Dianna, and Karlie. Emily was out of the band suddenly and Taylor felt sorry. A fake article about Swiftgron went viral and Dianna erased her blog and tattoo then Taylor was only seen with her one more time. Karlie’s timeline is complicated, but the last four albums tell us they couldn’t get on the same page about how to proceed with their relationship. For instance, Call It What You Want tells Karlie [I hear her name in the song and can’t hear anything else] they don’t have to name what they are. It speaks to Karlie being nervous about calling herself Sapphic. Taylor urges her to just go with it and don’t worry about labels–she just wants this love.
Yet, in Cruel Summer Taylor still paid a man to be her beard. Taylor’s lifelong defense mechanism is closeting so when she sees a shiny toy, this bad boy with a price, she bought it.
The night of Kissgate, Taylor went on a Kaylor-liking spree online, signaling some pre-gaming had occurred even before the 1975 concert. Taylor drinks to calm her anxiety, and anything too gay makes her especially anxious. She correlates the overwhelming feelings of Sapphic love with drunkeness. Being drunk is cathartic and freeing, allowing inhibitions to be lowered. But it can also make your head spin, cause you to go rougue, and can make you throw up (the blurple color shows she’s gay inside) on the street (Question… [Part 11]). The night Taylor is talking about in Question… she was “on something” is both liquor and the high of gay love (Question… [Part 11]).
Taylor can’t stand the heat, is constantly afraid of impending fire, and the invisible smoke hangs over her. The smoke (hint of a fire) is unrealized events that Taylor fears. The heat of the fire is every time Taylor is overtly gay and too many people notice. The (anticipated) fire is getting burned by coming out or worse, being outed. The water rushing in is damage control by Taylor’s PR team.
The rain is Taylor’s own overcorrections when things look too queer. It’s rain, a naturally occurring more passive event (vs. firefighting, a planned, aggressive action). Taylor uses rain to describe herself putting out the gay fire to show it’s compulsory and imposed when she yields to her team’s straight-washing. It makes her feel safe, yet contrite.
Taylor suffers because she loves the gal, but also knows how “out(ed)” celebrities lose their fame and die all alone.
Kit10Phish Explains it all __has moved! https://tinyurl.com/bdad9vdm 
Catty Remarks