Beautiful Speak Now Album Things:
TAYLOR WROTE IT COMPLETELY BY HERSELF AT AGES 18-20!!!! AND IT WON 2 GRAMMYS!!!
Like every fuckin’ bridge on this album makes you want to cry
And all the lyrics are fucking awesome. It’s a lyric-driven album
“Every time I look at you, it’s like the first time”
“You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter”
Opening “Mine” with “uh-oh” and closing it with the background vocals echoing “I can see it now” to show the emotional journey of the character as she believes in love again over the course of the song
“BRACED MYSELF FOR THE GOODBYE / ‘CAUSE THAT’S ALL I’VE EVER KNOWN / AND YOU TOOK ME BY SURPRISE / YOU SAID, ‘I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE’”
The entirety of “Mine,” the best love story ever told
The fact that Taylor resurrected Sparks Fly from the dead and put it on her 3rd album because we asked her to
The fact that Taylor also rewrote Sparks Fly and took out the lyrics that made it more sexual and about performing in a bar
The fact that the original lyric (now displayed in The Taylor Swift Experience) was “brown eyes” and she made it “green eyes”
How she describes the love interest as “a full-on rainstorm” and later says “meet me in the pouring rain”
The juxtapositions of rain and fire and then darkness and light in Sparks Fly
How the entire song is just an apology without any excuses. It just’s “I messed up and you suffered for it and you didn’t deserve that”
“you gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye”
How the orchestra makes everything so fucking beautiful??
The use of seasons in the second verse to describe the rise and fall of the relationship
How she references the 2009 VMA incident (”how you held me in your arms that September night / the first time you ever saw me cry”)
Speak Now being about the Paramore relationship drama and how Taylor was actually at the wedding it’s about lol
Taylor singing up an octave in Speak Now to sound like a gentle little girl about to crash the shit out of wedding
“a gown shaped like a pastry” “fond gestures are exchanged” “a song that sounds like a death march” “she floats down the isle like a pageant queen” = so descriptive?? conveys the feelings?? Queen of conveying emotions through descriptions
“you need to hear me out and they said Speak Now” “Your time is running out and they said Speak Now” “I hear the preacher say, ‘Speak Now or forever hold your peace” “So glad you were around when they said Speak Now” = queen of altering her main chorus line
“I’m not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white veil occasion” –> What’s the kind of girl tho?? I never knew
DEAR JOHN. THE ENTIRE SONG. ALL THE LYRICS.
How Dear John calls out emotional abuse by a much older man onto a 19 year old without any apologies or sympathizing with the man but also has pieces where the victim blames themselves and calls out a pattern of abuse of other women
But it ends with the victim retaining their self worth and escaping and it’s amazing
“the girl in the dress cried the whole way home” –> have you ever seen such a beautiful conveying of a young girl’s loss of emotional innocence
How the secret message of Dear John is “loved you from the very first day” which is a line on a bonus track “Superman” which is about how the love interest seems like the best guy in the world and a real life Superman
That fuckin’ banjo in Mean
How Mean began about a critic who said Taylor ruined her “entire career overnight” at the Grammys and then Taylor performing Mean at the Grammys and wining 2 Grammys for it
The use of a big city to display one’s level success (which is what actually happened when Taylor moved to NYC)
“A simple complication, miscommunications lead to fallout”
“I’D TELL YOU I MISS YOU BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW / I’VE NEVER HEARD SILENCE QUITE THIS LOUD”
Isn’t it weird how she says “and people would say they’re the lucky ones” then on the Speak Now Tour she wrote “The Lucky One” ?? weird
“So many things that I wish you knew / so many walls up I can’t break through” –> “So many things that you wish I knew / but the Story of Us might be ending soon”
That fuckin’ ramp up back into the chorus after the bridge in The Story of Us
How perfectly Never Grow Up conveys how scary can it feel to grow up
The bridge of Never Grow Up
How every song except Never Grow Up and Last Kiss use heavy production and background vocals and it makes those two songs that much more powerful in their simplicity
“I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone” and how this line gets more powerful the more years that go by
How Never Grow Up starts as a song to a baby, watches that baby grow up, and ends with Taylor looking back at her life and the passage of time and swearing to protect that baby from harm….you ever cry
Just take 5 minutes and listen to Enchanted again pls
“Wonderstruck” “Enchanted” “Passing notes in secrecy” “this is me praying” “the very first page, not where the story line ends” “your eyes whispered” “this night is sparkling” “blushing all the way home” “I’ll spend forever wondering if you knew” “this night is flawless” “dancing ‘round all alone” –> So much mystical and whimsical imagery that you feel like you could call in love with the next person you see
The production of Enchanted
“Sophistication isn’t what you wear or who you know / or pushing people down to get you where you wanna go”
“I always get the last word” “There is nothing I do better than revenge” “show me how much better you are” –> Taylor is v self-aware
Also how “show me how much better you are” is a reference to that JoBro song “Much Better” lmao so much 2008/2009 Disney drama
How Taylor wrote Innocent about the VMA incident when she could’ve just told you-know-who to fuck off
How Innocent looks at the subject from the perspective of their childhood and how they had “monsters” and “demons” that made them do bad things later in life and how this doesn’t make them a bad person
Knowing that you-know-who was one of Taylor’s favorite artists growing up so Innocent is also Taylor reconciling with herself how someone she artistically looked up to for years hurt her
The use of light: “time turns flames to embers” “your string of lights is still bright to me” “in your firefly catching days”
How Innocent is Never Grow Up but applied to someone else through the lens of forgiveness
“I hope you’ll remember: today is never too late to be brand new”
The orchestra in Haunted and how it makes the song sound urgent and the situation dangerous
“holding my breath” “your eyes go cold” “something’s gone terribly wrong” “can’t turn back now” “a fragile line” “it’s getting dark and it’s all too quiet and I can’t trust anything now” “come on, come on, don’t leave me like this” “can’t breath whenever you’re gone” “you’re not gone, you can’t be gone” –> everything sounds dangerous and urgent!! Like she’s actually gonna die!! And it’s called Haunted!! You get haunted by dead people!! But she’s saying she’s haunted!! The Haunting is killing her!! Holy shit!!
The secret message of Last Kiss: “Forever and Always”
The breath in the bridge of Last Kiss
The use of time and the passage of time: “at 1:58″ “that July 9th” “you can plan for a change in weather and time” “your name forever the name on my lips” “I’ll watch your life in pictures” “I’ll feel you forget me” “I’ll keep up with our old friends” “I still remember” “L
“I’m not much for dancing, but for you I did” –> “I don’t wanna dance if I’m not dancing with you” (Holy Ground)
THE BRIDGE: “So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep / and I’ll feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe / and I’ll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are / hope it’s nice where you are / I hope the sun shines and it’s a beautiful day / and something reminds you / you wish you had stayed / you can plan for a change in the weather and time / but I never planned on you changing your mind”
How the secret message of Long Live is “For you”
How Taylor ends Speak Now with a song for her fans and her band that she wrote during the Fearless Tour
How Long Live because even more powerful and beautiful and even sadder the more the years go by and the more successful Taylor becomes and as original member of The Agency leave/are left go
How Taylor wrote “we will be remembered” when she was like 19 and was still on her second album and before she won AOTY for the first time and wasn’t even close to the prime of her career but she was proud of how far she had come already and how Long Live sounds like a song someone writes at the end of their career to reflect on their accomplishments
How Taylor wrote “promise me this: that you’ll stand by me forever” and every band member she has ever had still speaks highly of her and defends her
“When they point to the pictures, please tell them my name” but now no one will have to because everyone knows who she is and will know who she is for a long time because of her accomplishments and effect on popular culture
“It was the end of a decade but the start of an age” Taylor literally had no idea how true this line would become
HOW SHE ENDS THE ENTIRE ALBUM WITH “ONE DAY, WE WILL BE REMEMBERED”
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