I’ll admit this is not my favorite song on the album. I actually do think it could have been cut – I know that’s a bold opinion, but I just don’t really get anything from the song. It does speak to her depression and reflecting on the past and decisions we’ve made – but I think we get that from the album and other songs within it. But anyways, it’s become relevant with the recent state of American and the upcoming administration … so let’s dive into the Lyrics.
I will be honest- some of these lines that I find kind of silly. This is one out of 3 songs that I think should have been reworked just a little bit more; or edited for lyrics that flow a bit better. Even the bridge is very similar in sound which is not something she does usually. Many people had stated that some of these songs had to be written before 2023 because they don’t think she could turn around an album so quickly, but because some of these songs feel like they could have been edited a bit more – I’d disagree. Even in My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, there is a line that says “he saw forever so he smashed it up,” is a line that slightly drives me crazy, because it just feels like it was forced in there, rather than perfected to fit the rest of the melody and rhythm of the other lines.
Lyrical Breakdown
Quick, quick
Tell me something awful
Like you are a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy
In these first lines we’re seeing her almost beg someone to tell her they are miserable too. cause im miserable!! And no one even knows! A poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy is funny actually. Because her idea of being miserable is an artist stuck in a 9-5 job. Which.. relatable, I tried that too and it didn’t work for me.
Tell me all your secrets
All you’ll ever be is
My eternal consolation prize
The next lines are sad – because she’s asking this person to tell her their secrets. The lines being after that have me asking one question. Is this person telling her all she’ll ever be is the 2nd best thing or the comfort after the heartbreak, or is she saying that to them? Consolation means the comfort received by a person after a loss or disappointment. So all someone ever will be is the forever comfort for them, but can never actually help them or be forever first in their life.
You see I was a debutant in another life but
Now I seem to be scared to go outside
A debutante is a young woman from an aristocratic or wealthy family who is formally introduced to society at a debutante ball or other formal event. The term comes from the French word debutante, which means “female beginner”
In another life she was social, outgoing, a wealthy woman, but in this new life she is isolated, alone, and afraid. I think this .. is a weird line – but I think she is painting the picture of who she was – happy, full of life and surrounded by people she impressed, but she’s turned into something miserable and afraid of the world. It could be because of who she became in the previous 6 years as she tucked away from the public and hid who she really was for the compromise of the love she found and his comfortability with the media.
If comfort is a construct
I don’t believe in good luck
Now that I know what’s what
This song was most likely written after a double heart break. Not during either of them. After you have been through multiple heart breaks, and honestly, her mother’s progress with cancer in and out, it can only make you think the worst of situations. If comfort is something we make up to help us get through, and good luck doesn’t really exist, it feels like she has given up on any thing good, and is realizing before she was naive.
I hate it here so I will go to
secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
These lines make me think about folklore and evermore. She created fairytales and different stories to preoccupy her and the time. She references secret gardens, which also makes me think of the album lover and even cruel summer. I snuck in to the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate. Are these gardens the same? Or is one simply physical and the other metaphorical.
No one is allowed access to this one – however – because she has never spoken about what goes on within her thoughts and her mind.
Although a bit of physical location may be apart of this, we can assume she is mostly talking about her emotional circumstance. Feeling abandoned, lost, hopeless.
On tour she kind of hints at the idea of the Secret Gardens being up on stage in front of us, the fans. Just with the visuals and this over the top production, every time she gets up on stage and discusses personal elements that vary from show to show, it’s clear she uses work and touring as her minds productivity to deviate from her personal troubles. [same girlie]
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
These stories definitely could have come from influential books when she was younger. When she didn’t have big big dreams and she wasn’t scared of who she was or if she was going to get out of her small town. When life was simple –
No mid-sized city hopes and small town fears
I’m there most of the year
Cause I hate it here
I hate it here
She thinks about the past often and her younger self [which we see in Robin] when she is in these moments of hating her life now. We know Taylor thinks about the past routinely and the what ifs in life. I got to admit, I think about her and her thoughts on her own life a lot. Fans and fame is a double edged sword. They help you make money and joy, but they also can be the demise of your happiness too… and can be extremely invasive.
My friends used to play a game where
We would pick a decade
We wished we could live in instead of this
I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for
the highest bid
OK THESE LINES ARE WHERE I AM GONNA HAULT. This verse just feels so weird and rushed to me. Through this song it just feels like she is trying to ‘poet’ a bit too much. So that is the criticism of this song for me. These lines above are just … they don’t really flow. I totally understand WHY she included the lines, without the racists and getting married off for the highest bid. She is acknowledging that the 1830s really wasn’t that great in a nutshell, not for women, and not for minorities. Important, yes, but for this song? Clunky lol
She really didn’t have to mention this game that she doesn’t enjoy now and she is rethinking that she never did. It just seems like something else could have been placed here that is new information that elaborates on things she loved in her past that no longer are things she entertains.
Everyone would look down
Cause it wasn’t fun now
Seems like it was never even fun back then
Nostalgia is a mind’s trick
If I’d been there, I’d hate it
It was freezing in the palace
The last three lines are the ones I enjoy. Nostalgia is a mind’s trick – yes. I talk about this with memory all of the time to my students. We remember things in our past from a child’s lens. As we age we look back at things and think ‘.. oh.. that was actually really messed up.’ or that things that seemed like fun – were things that were forced on us and not really fun at all. With these two verses we are really getting a sense from her that things she thought she loved, she really didn’t, she thinks about the past a lot, and acknowledges there were flaws or misunderstandings she had as a child, as an adult, and everything in between. By god there wasn’t heat in the castle!
I hate it here so I will go to
Lunar valleys in my mind
When they found a better planet
Only the gentle survived
This is a very niche thing to write. Her mind thinks about space, the end of the world, walking in between the depths and crevices in the moon – and leaving this hateful planet. Only the gentle survived. This DEFINITELY is about her being too soft for all of it. Whether that’s the hatred she gets from the media, fans, or general public, or the cruel people in her past that left her hating her current life and situation.
I dreamed about it in the dark
The night I felt like I might die
No mid-sized city hopes and small town fears
I’m there most of the year
Cause I hate it here
I hate it here
The dark can reference the darkest place she has been emotionally, or physically right when we go to bed, when the darkness surrounds us and our mind takes over. Anxiety attacks, panic attacks, sleepless nights. She again is thinking about alternative endings, life, past choices, as her escape from her reality. In reference to past songs on this album she does discuss these moments of isolation and hiding from the world because of her depression in these months she wrote the album. So all of this is apart of the story – yes – I also just don’t think it’s any new information.
However she references THE NIGHT she might die. There was one night that stands out to her among all the rest.
I’m lonely but I’m good
I’m bitter but I swear I’m fine
I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I’ll get lost on
purpose
This is where we get a full more forward story of what her secret gardens are. She’s lonely after the heartbreaks, she’s bitter but fine. … again a cruel summer flashback… I said Im fine but it wasn’t true. It kind of feels like this moment is the same situation she was in during this summer of 2016 when she referenced it in cruel summer. come one come all, its happening again.
Her hopeless romantic self is being internalized. The secrets in her mind are never spoken but always thought about. She gets lost in daydreams of what if, and stays up at night treating her sleepless nights and anxiety attacks by thinking about romance she wants, could have had, or hasn’t worked out. we’ve all been there, tay. Always something to reflect on in our past that we did wrong or wish could have ended differently.
This place made me feel worthless
Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me,
and in my fantasies I rise above it
And way up there, I actually love it
Where she is at, mentally and probably physically, especially because she is dreaming of the end of the world and only kind being existing, makes her feel worthless, as if, no one wants her. It’s pretty amazing to me that people do not understand that even the most successful people in the world can feel so alone. Again I am going to reference Lonely – by MGK
Lonely, lonely, even when the room is full
I’d trade it, trade it, I would trade it all for you
Lonely, lonely, even when the room is full
I’m lonely, lonely, lonely without you
I see so many crossovers in lyrics and ideas from these two, it’s insane.
In her dreams that feel so real, she has love, energy, hope. She rises above the feelings of worthlessness and being unwanted by those she desired, and loves existing in her dreams. It’s an escape she cannot be hurt in.
Quick quick
Tell me something awful
Like you are a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy
We are ending with the beginning of the song. This is the third time she does this on an album. It’s a good way to circle back to the original conversation. With this type of writing style I always imagining someone asking a question or talking to someone and within that second having a full conversation or mental load overflow your brain all before they answer. In hopes that what they will say, will resonate with you and make you feel less ______ whatever you are feeling – in this case, alone.
Visual Representation
I think I’m funny with creating an image about hating it here – in the depths of winter in Michigan. But obviously this song is more than physical location – it’s about circumstance.
But in all seriousness we all have moments we think about happy places we’d rather be than in the situation we are in. Whether that be the time of life, or reminiscent about someone who was once in our life who isn’t any more.