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.
Tags: analysis, anxiety, bisexual, closet, closeted, Dancing with our Hands Tied, fear, gay, Gaylor, Kaylor, KelSwift, KelTay, kissgate, kissing, lesbian, LGBT, love, Lover, Midnights, outed, outing, PR, queer, Question..., questioning, sapphic, song, songs, SwiftGron, TayLiz, Taylor Swift, Taymily, WLW
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