What does “devils rolls the dice, angels rolls their eyes” even mean?
Thanks for sending this ask. I’ve seen a lot of people wondering about this and it seems be an important lyric based on its use in promotional materials for Lover. I haven’t had a good answer that is any different from anyone else’s speculation, so I’ve been ignoring it. But Sarah and I decided to tackle it the other day and this is what we came up with as a different plausible explanation that I haven’t seen anyone else suggest:
Like most people, I think, when I first saw this lyric I thought of two types of people. Devils rolling the dice, playing games, gambling, taking chances in a bad way, and angels rolling their eyes at their ridiculous games. And of course being a delulu kaylor, my mind can go to the nefarious men in their lives facing off against these two angels. But this explanation didn’t really sit right with me. Partly because later in the song we have TS’ love interest giving a devilish grin to TS. I posted about this before. I don’t like the idea that the person grinning is one of the nefarious men in their lives. A devilish grin is a mischievously playful smile and is not evil. And I think that smile is just a smug response to TS’ frustrations at loving her even though it makes no sense. Also I think at this stage of their relationship, the nefarious men were really not an issue.
Sarah said she had a shower thought of the angels and devils being the cartoonish image of the shoulder angel and devil, with the devil acting as your bad side, your worst tendencies, and the angel representing your conscience (the side of you who knows to do the right thing.) I ask you, dear reader, to google “angel devil” and tell me what the top results are.
So, assume the devil rolling the dice and the angel doing the eye rolling are internal figures of at least TS and possibly both of them, what are they doing? Games have been a huge theme throughout TS’ art the last few years. The first I can think of is New Romantics (poker references). We’ve also got “love’s a game” in Blank Space and “the games we play” in TIWYCF, and tons of games mentions in rep (I did a post about it last year that I reblogged recently, about Taylor’s PR games). And now even more in Lover, including in the Lover music video. We’ve got them actually playing games together in the upside down orange room. Without going into them all, I’ll focus on a few. We’ve got poker references again in EG, specifically “you’ve been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks.” This is repeated in INTHAF with “call my bluff, call me babe”. In Cornelia street she looks back on a time when they were card sharks playing games and she thought kk was leading her on. Then she showed her hand. And they admit to playing cat and mouse at first in Paper Rings.
So I think what this angel/devil lyric is saying is that in this early stage, they were playing games with each other, as you tend to do, not being entirely honest about your feelings out of fear of coming on too strong. Maybe playing a little hard to get. Enjoying the chase. Seduction. And Taylor being the mess she is ( immature, she never grew up) probably took this too far to the point that she hurt kk, not knowing that kk’s games are in fun while TS was used to having her heart played with by people who maybe weren’t quite so nice. And this is why for me, Cruel Summer fits so well with The Archer. That internal back and forth TS has that she will ruin everything, love is impossible for her, and should she just go ahead and ruin it? This fits really well with the shoulder angel/devil imagery. It also fits with the RFI MV and the two Taylors, and her duality that is everywhere.
So basically we’ve got the internal devil playing love games, trying to ruin it and the internal angel rolling her eyes and saying “don’t be a dumbass, she could stay.”
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