Karlie and Taylor have met by now and are quickly getting close. Karlie appears to be spending quality time with Taylor through December 2013 and beyond. There are reports that Karlie may have been at Andrea’s birthday party (early January.)
However according to the Lover Diaries Taylor is still feeling frustrated about love:
She ends out this journal entry by saying “They say if you love something let it go and if it comes back blah blah blah….So I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. Dating is awful. Love is fiction/a myth. I’m over it all.”
That line about letting something go actually sounds a lot like This Love lyrics:
This love is good, this love is bad
This love is alive back from the dead
These hands had to let it go free
And this love came back to me
This Love seems to be about her and Dianna’s fall 2012 reconciliation and is now referenced again a year and a half later. That’s what makes me think she’s referencing Dianna in this journal entry.
She also mentions deciding to move to New York. She had been seen searching for property in London in November 2013. Karlie claims in an interview later on that she’s the one who convinced Taylor to move to New York.
Some time early winter 2014 - Taylor stops by the Glee set
Kevin tells the story on a 2020 episode of Showmance about Taylor visiting the Glee set “just to see who was there.” We can’t be sure of the exact date but given the episode they’re reviewing we know it’s January or February of 2014.
The people Taylor were closest to on the Glee cast were of course Dianna obviously and Cory but Cory had passed away by this point.
This anecdote from Kevin and the Jan 6 Lover Diary entry make it clear there is a bit of residual Swiftgron pining and I think one last fling around this time in early 2014 becomes the inspiration for the song Style.
February 2014 - Dianna appears in UK InStyle done up like James Dean with her hair slicked back:
February 8, 2014 - Taylor writes Clean while in London - a song about finally being done with a relationship that’s officially been over for 10 months. She’s finally clean of Dianna right?
The “months and months of back and forth” referenced in Clean I believe points to the time around September when they appear to attempt to reconcile and then Dianna’s increasingly frustrated Instagram posts that appear exactly when Taylor meets Karlie.
(Later on in an interview Karlie claims Clean is her favorite track on 1989)
February 14, 2014 - Dianna posts to IG a clip of her dog being funny and ignoring her and she says “Freddie doesn’t care. Not at all. February 14, 2014.”
February 19, 2014 - Sike she’s not Clean yet - Taylor writes Style - a song about a relationship that never goes out of style and about hooking up with an ex where you’ve both tried to move on, been with other people even, but are still drawn back to one another
It’s thought that Taylor may have seen Dianna in the UK copy of InStyle dressed up like James Dean and been inspired to write the song.
Check out all-my-possessions’ post diving more into Style and Clean!
In interviews about this song Taylor says a lot of interesting thing. First of all she says “there’s not always a case of who was right and who was wrong.” when she speaks about the relationship that inspired this song - it’s more complicated than that:
She also describes the person who inspired this song as “that one person who you feel like might interrupt your wedding and be like ‘don’t do it, cause we’re not over yet’ I think everybody as that one person who kind of floats in and out of their life and the narrative is never truly over.”
Taylor describing the relationship that inspired this song as intense but essentially something she’ll look back on without any malice and the phrase “that one person” is one of the key pieces of evidence that made me think that the break up songs on Red (which were described by Taylor as about a toxic relationship) could not be about Dianna.
Also the lyric in Clean - “just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it” tells me that however tough it got with Dianna she still misses her and thinks fondly of her.
Early March (March 6th?) - Taylor and Karlie go to Big Sur and I believe this is the official start to their relationship (due to the love locked down instagram post) - Swiftgron is essentially over.
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