i’ve been thinking about “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” for months now.
I’m 100% convinced that it’s the best song written by Taylor Swift. No one can convince me over-wise. I’m a huge swiftie, and i love all of her songs, but this one is so heavy that i can’t get this song out of my head. Maybe it all comes to my personal traumas and shit, maybe it has something to do with her IMMACULATE writing, or maybe it’s both. But i’ve seen a lot of videos on youtube about this song, and i have some thoughts to share. I want to tell you why, in my opinion, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” is one of the greatest songs ever written
First of all, it grabs your attention almost immediately. The synths are dark and very subtle, the atmosphere of the track is clear from the start. To be completely honest, i would never in a million years guess that the song’s topic is going to be so morbid and almost too dark for the listener to comprehend.
You might be confused right now, but let me explain why is it so dark. What separates us from animals is the fact that we were gifted with thought and memory. It can be considered a blessing, but it’s also out biggest curse. We wouldn’t be scattered and broken inside if we didn’t have our memories. A very deep rooted, heart-wrenching trauma is like a leech that drinks your blood slowly but surely the more you live and grow, because what your brain does is very cruel: it makes u forget on the surface. You feel like everything is fine, you feel like u moved on, but your unconscious didn’t. It’s like a brain tumour with no symptoms until the visibility of symptoms doesn’t matter because you’re dying.
Your trauma influences everything: your decisions, your personality, your emotions, your thoughts, your tears when you least expect it, your hysterical laugh when it’s unnecessary. This small leech inside of you can also influence the lives of other people, and you never know how badly it can influence someone.
I went off track a little bit, but i guess it’s important for me to mention all of it. So the song “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” is a brilliant song that explains trauma in the most eloquent, straightforward and heartbreaking way. I guess that after all of the re-recordings Taylor, to her own surprised, realised that there’s a very horrible and significant trauma deep inside of her that she has ignored for years due to its heaviness. You might ask me: “why is this one unique and significant?”. It’s significant and unique because of the way she wrote this song, and this song is not like the others.
“If clarity’s in death then why won’t this die?” is one of the questions she asks on this song. And internally she asks A LOT of questions on this song. People tend to ask questions when they are confused or bothered, obviously. And she’s not only bothered and confused on this track, she’s also shaking her inner child with an insane force. She’s in so much pain and confusion that she starts looking at her younger self with a little bit of judgement. She’s not only regretting someone, she’s regretting the fact that she’s been hiding from this very trauma for a decade. Maybe back then she thought that it wasn’t important to deal with it, and now she’s realizing that she’s wrong. And she blames herself, which is unfair, of course. She shouldn’t, she was small and vulnerable. She was a baby at 19, and we are all babies at 19. That’s when we get all of our bruises and wounds that don’t heal. When you have a scar, you can sort of forget about it, cause it doesn’t bother you all that much. The wound bothers you even if it’s small.
She craves purity because her soul is tainted by this experience. That’s why the God imagery is so strong in this song. We can hear the similar sentiment on the song “Clean”, where Taylor is not tainted by the relationship anymore, her mind is clean. She’s free.
Sometimes small things are actually big, sometimes insignificant things don’t matter until they matter so much that you explode. This song is Taylor’s explosion. That’s why it’s so intense and undeniably emotional. She sounds so sincere and vulnerable on this track that it feels like you’re hearing way too much, you feel like you’re almost invading her privacy way too much.
I admire this track with all my heart, because i can relate to it severely. Maybe that’s why i’m so passionate about it. I understand her. And i hope that she’ll find peace. Or maybe she’s already found it, we’ll never know.
