so much to be said about new york in the taylor swift lore universe. her first three albums, she’s on the outside but thinking about it. “this is a big world, that was a small town, there in my rearview mirror disappearing now.” and “someday i’ll be living in a big old city.”
red opens and she’s on the streets of new york and falling for her first big adult love and it’s exhilarating and horrible and passionate and beautiful, but it belongs to him, “your brooklyn broke my skin and bones,” “i bet you’re sitting in your chair by the window looking out at the city and i hope sometimes you wonder about me,” and “feeling on new york time,” a hundred miles an hour, and “new york, be here,” come back.
then, perhaps as part of healing from that first huge, car-crash love, she moves to new york and “took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer” and she owns the city, maybe to heal, maybe to grow up. she opens her album and tour with “welcome to new york, it’s been waiting for you…the lights are so bright but they never blind me.” but there is a sort of tension throughout the album, loving the freedom of the city and being a single twenty-something but “the lights and noise are blinding” and “let’s get out of the city, away from the crowds” and she knows places to hide from the flashing lights. but she pretends it’s fine and i think she really does love it and is growing into owning the city.
then her world falls apart but she finds love on the rooftops and hanging out in underground bars and dodging cameras, finding her own little night city oasis. then part of her heart and the city is defined by this love that began there, “i hope i never lose you, i hope this never ends, i’d never walk cornelia street again.” she’s still sneaking in garden gates in the big city, she rents a place, but it’s her home, “you’re the west village,” sucks for you if you’re “staring out the window like i’m not your favorite town,” but you created a home across the sea, “back and forth from new york, sneaking in your bed.”
and in a haze of folklore and fantasy intertwining with reality, “your heartbeat on the highline, once in twenty lifetimes, i knew you” and “you know i left a part of me back in new york” and how the city scarred her as much as it created her in her adult, multifaceted form. and that she came out stronger because of them, and she is still bejeweled. that the city in all its chaos and glory is her. the relationships and betrayals that make home, home. and it really all does come back to the line i think she is embracing, back on the streets of new york as a full adult, who has friends for life, who’s been through hell and back, who’s still here.
“staring out the window like i’m not your favorite town, i’m new york city.”
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