Hey! I wanted to ask you about your Elizabeth Taylor thoughts since you did the deep dive into her bio before the album came out. Im digging the song so much but I genuinely dont know what to make of the lyrics!
Hey bestie thank you so much for a chance to chat about this song because I really love it
So I still haven't finished the biography I've been reading since it is truly huge and Elizabeth lead such an interesting life there is a lot of stuff to write about! But from the context I do have it makes so much sense why Elizabeth's son compared the two woman and why Taylor sees Elizabeth as a role model.
Elizabeth Taylor is the second song in Taylor's discography (as far as I'm aware!) heavily inspired by Elizabeth Taylor and her romantic life, the first being Ready For It?, so I really see Elizabeth Taylor (the song) as a sequel to Ready For It, and I am gonna link to my further thoughts on Ready For it and Elizabeth here. All the things I mention in the posts linked and in this ask I learned from Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower.
But to summarise the post I linked above Elizabeth's most famous romantic relationship was with fellow actor Richard Burton. Both Elizabeth and Richard left their spouses to be together after being caught together during the filming of Cleopatra in Italy. The media frenzy that followed is credited with the invention of the paparazzi as we know the term today, photographers stalked and harassed both actors and Elizabeth's children to the point that the Italian police put armed guards outside the house they were all staying in during filming.
So with that context I think Ready For It is inspired by Taylor's knowledge of this time in Elizabeth's life and her desire to someone who will withstand that level of attention and privacy violation. Elizabeth and Richard at one point played pretend that they were in a cops and robbers type situation while in that house in Italy to deal with the stress of the harassment and I think that heavily inspired the imagery of Ready For It?.
With all of that context let's get to the lyrics of Elizabeth Taylor!
"Elizabeth Taylor / Do you think it's forever?"
So Elizabeth Taylor was infamously married 8 times in her lifetime which brought her a lot of (misogynist) criticism and quite frankly hatred amongst some people. Reading between the lines I think one of the things Taylor finds inspiring about Elizabeth is that even though her marriages ended she kept looking for a great love despite the press and the judgement, that she kept looking for a forever love. In my head Taylor is kind of looking up at the sky and asking Elizabeth if she thinks her and her muse will be together forever.
"That view of Portofino was on my mind when you called me at the Plaza Athénée"
Portofino is an area in Italy in which Elizabeth apparently spent a lot of time vacationing and is reportedly also where Richard Burton proposed to her for the first time. The couple also lived in Plaza Athénée, a hotel in Paris, for a period of time in 1971.
So how I understand these lyrics is that the muse has called the narrator while staying at Plaza Athénée in Paris and the connection between that hotel and Elizabeth brings up the image of Richard proposing to Elizabeth in Portofino.
(This is pure speculation but I am imagining that the narrator has at this point already visited Portofino with this muse so the imagery is blurring between their time in Italy and what Elizabeth experienced in Italy. While it was where she seemed to have many happy times it was also where they were while filming Cleopatra and all the trauma that came with that happened, which I think informs the next line.)
"Ooh, oftentimes it doesn't feel so glamorous to be me / All the right guys / Promised they'd stay / Under bright lights / They withered away / But you bloom"
Like I said above I think the glamorous line is both referencing Taylor's experiences of fame and Elizabeth's. Both women who experienced previously unknown levels of success for women in their respective fields but that success came with levels of scrutiny and threats of violence that most people would struggle to survive under.
And that leads us right into the rest of these lyrics. There are two sets of lyrics from TTPD that I think these lyrics are invoking;
"We hereby conduct this post-mortem / He was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman / Our maladies were such we could not cure them" from How Did It End?
"And all of those best laid plans / You said I needed a brave man / Then proceeded to play him / Until I believed it too" from The Black Dog
So she's saying there were these men who swore they could handle the levels of attention and danger that comes with being my public long term partner but in the end they could not. But this new muse instead of withering under that pressure and leaving is blooming instead.
"Portofino was on my mind / And I think you know why"
To me this reads as a reference to I Think He Knows. She has been here before, where she thought she knew a proposal was incoming but she was wrong. Something I also think this line is suggesting is that she has told the muse all about Elizabeth and her relationship with Richard and even the detail of him proposing in Portofino. Between the lines this suggests to me the couple are already discussing their own engagement.
"And if your letters ever said, "Goodbye" / I'd cry my eyes violet"
Now these two lines I think in the context of the Swiftian universe are actually a really freaking big deal.
So the Elizabeth Taylor context is that Elizabeth's eyes were a shade of blue that often looked almost violet. But I think Taylor is using that as a way to play with words, since Taylor's eyes are blue if she cried so much her eyes were rely red, the red and the blue would make purple, hence violet.
But the reason I think these lyrics are a big deal is because since reputation Taylor's lyrics about her lover leaving her have only grown in intensity and impact.
"If you walk away / I'd beg you on my knees to stay" -> "I was riding in a getaway car / I was crying in a getaway car / I was dying in a getaway car / Said 'goodbye' in a getaway car" -> "And I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends / I'd never walk Cornelia Street again / That's the kinda heartbreak time could never mend / I'd never walk Cornelia Street again" -> "I wake up screaming from dreaming / One day, I'll watch as you're leaving / 'Cause you got tired of my scheming / (For the last time)" -> "Sometimes I wonder if you're gonna screw this up with me / But you told Lucy you'd kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen"
In that context I personally think the narrator of this song saying she'd.... Cry a lot if her lover were to leave is kind of mind blowing to me. Like she's gone from literally saying she'd kill herself to saying she's cry so much her eyes are red!!!! Like that's such a shift in internal worth it truly hasn't really sunk in for me like it really seems like such a huge deal to me.
"Elizabeth Taylor / Tell me for real / Do you think it's forever? / Been number one, but I never had two"
Again I think she is kind of talking to Elizabeth Taylor in her head, this time asking both if this relationship is for real and if this shift in perspective is real.
She goes on to say she has been number one but never had two. To me this is her saying she has never had a lover who was able to match her ability to withstand the pressure and attention that being number one comes with.
"Be my NY when Hollywood hates me / You're only as hot as your last hit, baby"
If I started to go into what NY and LA represent in Taylor's catalogue I would be here all day so to keep this brief I think with this lyric she's saying she wants someone who will always be home for her even if the public turns on her again.
"Been number one, but I never had two /And I can't have fun if I can't have you"
I think the second line is a reference to "But it would've been fun / If you would've been the one" from the 1. I think she is saying I want to have fun and I want this to last, and I want both of those things with this muse specifically.
"Hey, what could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once? / Babe, I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust (Just kidding)"
So to me this is a flip of the sentiment of Paper Rings. While there is a material nature to both the sentiment of these lyrics and of Paper Rings, what's more interesting to me is the metaphorical ideas behind them. In my reading of the lyrics of Rep and Lover in those relationships the narrator felt like she bad to pick between her fame and her relationship. While the (Just kidding) is a successfull attempt at humour I think there is also a sentiment of her rejecting the idea that she has to be either in a happy relationship or at the top of her career. She can have the Cartier and someone to trust.
"We hit the best booth at Musso and Frank's / They say I'm bad news, I just say, "Thanks" / And you look at me like you're hypnotized / And I think you know why"
So I did not know this before I googled but Musso and Frank is a restraint in Hollywood that is credited with bringing the Italian dish fettuccine alfredo to LA, so again these lyrics are I think referencing Italy and it's importance as a place to Elizabeth.
The lyrics from the second one here I really love. It feels to me like the song The Albatross condensed down to a couple of lines.
And I also love the detail of this muse being hypontised by her ability to deal with the judgement from strangers. Again it feels like a contrast to past muses perhaps not seeing how amazing her ability to deal with public scrunity was because they were perhaps focused on how it was affecting them? It makes me think of the TTPD poem
"Lovers spend years denying what’s ill fated / Resentment rotting away galaxies we created / Stars placed and glued meticulously by hand next to the ceiling fan / Tried wishing on comets / Tried dimming the shine / Tried to orbit his planet / Some stars never align / And in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky"
I am perhaps reading to deeply into all this but yeah I think she is saying that rather than being scared of the attention this relationship brings this new muse instead is just looking at her dealing with the attention so expertly.
"All my white diamonds and lovers are forever / In the papers, on the screen, and in their minds / All my white diamonds and lovers are forever / Don't you ever end up anything but mine"
This bridge is one of my favourites on this album! I love the melodies but I also love how much is said with so few lyrics.
So white diamonds is a perfume from Elizabeth's perfume brand, I believe the original fragrance. She was in my understanding the creator of the first hugely successful celebrity perfume line, with 16 of her fragrances being made today.
(Diamonds are forever is also a James Bond movie, I don't really see any way Elizabeth or Taylor tie to this movie so it may just be a coincidence based in the saying diamonds are forever but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else sees a connection I'm missing!)
ANYWAY I think Taylor is again talking about both herself and Elizabeth in these lyrics. Both of their relationships are 'forever' as they are documented and followed so closely by the public and the press, and are literally documented forever in photography and film.
This again to me is quite a switch of perspective from earlier Taylor songs. I'm thinking of Wildest Dreams specifically and how the narrator in that songs is almost begging the muse to remember her when the relationship inevitably ends.
Whereas here she is asserting both that all her lovers will remember her forever and that she wants to this love to last forever.
My gosh if you read all of this well done A+ gold star for you I did not mean to say all that much but here we are!!!! I hope I answered your question <3
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