A line-by-line analysis of “The Archer” by Taylor Swift
Hello! Taylor released “The Archer” yesterday literally out of nowhere (love her for it, though) and ever since hearing it, I’ve wanted to sit down and really analyze it. I had a free moment today, so I did just that, and here it is. (I’m doing a “read more” cut because this is so long.)
“Combat/I’m ready for combat.”
Pretty simple, and the meaning is there. She’s ready to fight. As the song goes on, we’ll find out what she’s fighting for or against. Let’s keep going.
“I say I don’t want that/but what if I do?”
If you look at this from the last line, then she could be referring to combat/fighting. “I say I don’t want [to fight], but what if I do?” Which then alters the meaning of the first lines. She says she doesn’t want to fight – fighting in a general sense, fighting against herself/someone else, fighting for herself/someone else – maybe because it’s too stressful or maybe because in the past she has never won.
With that, there’s so much talk about regarding secret sessions and who is going to meet Tay this era and honestly I’m SO excited for those who do!! Most of the stuff I’ve seen on twitter and tumblr has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive and I absolutely love that for us swifties.
But there is something that has really been bugging me since I “joined” stan twitter with my personal account last spring.. and I’m not in any way trying to say that anybody is wrong or that their feelings or expectations are invalid, I’m just saying how I feel about the whole thing so please bear with me here while I vent hahaha
I love the online swiftie community, honestly I really do. Everyone is awesome and I’m still amazed to this day that Taylor is so involved with us when she really doesn’t have to be. But the whole atmosphere changes once secret sessions are discussed and once tour starts and people start meeting Tay. It becomes such a competition, and if we’re being honest it’s a little bit isolating for people like me who don’t have the time (or the mental capacity sometimes) to be online 24/7 and therefore have never gotten noticed by Tay or TN.
BUT, that brings me to my main point (finally!!)
Just because Taylor and her team like to be involved, it doesn’t mean that they have to, or that we are entitled to their attention. I’m sure it’s great being noticed, and for those who meet/have met/will meet Taylor that is honestly AMAZING and I’m so happy for you!! And I also have no problems with people meeting Taylor more than once, despite that being an online war zone that I do not ever want to enter.
But in no other fandom do people just expect to meet their idols like they do here. Now, I’m NOT saying you cannot dream to meet them (I have a whole long list of people I idolize that I would love to meet, and I can’t even imagine meeting Tay and telling her how much she has helped me through life since I was 12)
But it wasn’t until joining the online swiftie community that I started feeling any sort of disappointment that I wasn’t “chosen” by Taylor. How fucking stupid is that??? I’ve always thought that people who meet their favs are so lucky but never in my life did I consider meeting Taylor as anything more than a pipe dream. That isn’t why I became a fan of hers.
I became a fan because when I was in the 7th grade her music gave me the sort of encouragement and positivity I needed going through such an awkward phase (that has evidently carried itself into adulthood haha)
I stayed a fan of hers because each album she released was perfectly relevant to whatever I was going through in my life at the time
I’m a fan today because everything she does amazes me, and I truly cannot fathom how one human being can be so smart, talented, beautiful, and genuinely kind.
And I will remain a fan whether or not I ever meet her, because that is not why I am here. It’s not why I ever was here for Taylor. And I really hope it’s not why you’re all here either.
I love Taylor Alison Swift more than I could ever dream of telling her. And that in itself is something I should never take for granted.
Needed to reblog because I still feel everything I wrote in the last half so deeply and yet all those feelings of not being good enough and being rejected come back every time I see people talking about ss 😢
We should be grateful that she even interacts with us and that her team interacts with us because that isn’t always “normal” in other fandoms. We have a bond with her that is unlike anything else and that should be all that matters💗💗💗
A line-by-line analysis of “The Archer” by Taylor Swift
Hello! Taylor released “The Archer” yesterday literally out of nowhere (love her for it, though) and ever since hearing it, I’ve wanted to sit down and really analyze it. I had a free moment today, so I did just that, and here it is. (I’m doing a “read more” cut because this is so long.)
“Combat/I’m ready for combat.”
Pretty simple, and the meaning is there. She’s ready to fight. As the song goes on, we’ll find out what she’s fighting for or against. Let’s keep going.
“I say I don’t want that/but what if I do?”
If you look at this from the last line, then she could be referring to combat/fighting. “I say I don’t want [to fight], but what if I do?” Which then alters the meaning of the first lines. She says she doesn’t want to fight – fighting in a general sense, fighting against herself/someone else, fighting for herself/someone else – maybe because it’s too stressful or maybe because in the past she has never won.
But then she says, “What if I [want to fight]?” What if she still wants to fight for herself, despite how it’s gone in the past? What if she wants to fight for someone else, despite how it’s gone in the past, despite her reputation? We can assume she’s talking about Joe here, sure, because we know he’s her boyfriend, but she also said this album is going to be the romantic side of everything in life, so that’s why I’m showing the different angles that this can be interpreted.
“‘Cause cruelty/wins in the movies/I’ve got a hundred thrown out speeches I almost said to you.”
Cruelty and revenge and everything around the two make for good movies. Everyone loves drama (“I swear I don’t love the drama/It loves me”); it’s just a fact of how we are. But here she’s saying, that stuff wins in the movies. It doesn’t win out here, in real life. We know Taylor and we know she doesn’t have a single mean bone in her body. Being cruel is the last thing she ever wants to be. Cruelty doesn’t win.
She writes what she wants to say to the person. Because of the line before this one, we can assume these speeches could’ve been anywhere from “I have to say goodbye” speeches to “What are you doing? How are you still around?” speeches to “I love you so much” speeches. There are so many routes.
“Easy they come/Easy they go/I jump from the train/I ride off alone.”
These lines. Okay.
Friends, relationships, whoever – “Easy they come/Easy they go” – She’s saying it’s always been so easy for people to come and go in her life. Easy maybe in the sense of she thinks she isn’t extraordinary enough for them to want to stay, and easy maybe in the sense that it never hurts them to come and go as quickly as they do.
She jumps from the train, she rides off alone. This gave me the image of maybe a western or even science-fiction movie. Jumping from a fast-moving train, presumably because enemies were on the train or the train wasn’t going in the direction they wanted to go. She rides off alone, she’s the only one not wanting to be on the train anymore. She’s on her own again.
“I never grew up/It’s getting so old.”
I’ve seen a few people make comparisons to her song “Never Grow Up” and that alone has made me emo, but I think these two lines are so important.
On the reputation stadium tour, Taylor sang “Never Grow Up” and if I remember correctly, she shifted the lyrics to something along the lines of, “I know you have to grow up,” which was sad on its own. But hearing this song and these lines adds an entirely different feeling.
She never grew up, not really. She’s been in the industry since she was so young. I bet she feels almost like she didn’t really have a true childhood or adolescence period, and it makes sense.
She never got the chance to grow up. She just had to do it. She didn’t get to experience it as a process, she just had to be grown up and have a presence all of the sudden. No process, just be. And it’s getting old. She never had the chance to a “normal” coming of age period, and she misses that.
“Help me hold onto you.”
I’ll come back to this line, for sure.
“I’ve been the archer/And I’ve been the prey.”
She’s been the one to shoot her arrows before. To attack, to fight. But she’s also been the attacked, the hunted.
“Who could ever leave me darling…but who could stay?”
This line hits especially because for me, I see the first half of it as almost a small bit of confidence. That, “Who could ever leave someone like me? Who would want to?” And then in the second half, she remembers why. She remembers her life and how her past has been and she says, “Who could stay?” Because (and I know she’s talked about this before and said this) who would want to deal with the life she has? Who would want this? Who would volunteer for this?
“Dark side/I search for your dark side/But what if I’m alright right here?”
She’s seen the dark side of many people. I have too, so this I relate especially to. Having something good only for it to turn at what seems like the tick of a second. All of the sudden, it’s not as good as it was. And now that things are good, it makes sense for her to be searching for the bad, to be untrustworthy of the good because she’s seen the good turn bad too many times. She’s searching for the dark side, but what if there isn’t one? And what if she doesn’t want to search for it anymore? What if she’s content, right here? What if she’s finally content just letting the good things be?
I think it’s really powerful that she uses “What if?” because that shows that while she is beginning to be okay with it, there’s still that fear. She still has to wonder that this is just another time where the rug is about to be ripped out from beneath her feet. She wants to believe this is good, that there is no dark side to search for, but what if there is?
“And I cut off my nose just to spite my face/And hate my reflection for years and years.”
“Cutting off the nose to spite the face” is an idiom, perfectly used here with the literal line on the second half saying that after doing that, she hated her reflection. The expression actually refers to “a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem” which is something I also heavily relate to (I got the definition from Wikipedia).
Maybe she’s overreacted in the past. Cut things off too quickly with someone or locked herself away from any prospect of love (friendship or romantic) because she was too scared. Refusing love is self-destructive – something I’ve done. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face, it’s tearing yourself down without needing to, it’s seeing a problem and thinking it can’t exist if you cut off every single avenue it could exist down, regardless of whether or not some are positive or that it could lead to something positive. It’s destroying yourself in the name of protecting yourself.
“I wake in the night/I pace like a ghost/The room is on fire/Invisible smoke.”
I’ve seen a couple people already refer to this as a line about anxiety, and I completely agree. Anxiety can make it seem like the room is literally on fire, when it isn’t (“invisible smoke” choking you, making it hard to breathe when there’s perfectly good air all around you to breathe). It can keep you up at night or it can wake you up in the middle of the night with no hopes of falling back asleep. It can keep you awake for days, depriving you of sleep, causing a ghostly appearance. It can do all of these evil things, and Taylor perfectly explained them here.
“And all my heroes die all alone/Help me hold onto you.”
A fear that my anxiety personally stems from is dying alone, so that’s why this line hits me hard. She doesn’t want to die alone. But she’s lost so many people. She needs him (assuming Joe) to help her hold onto him because she doesn’t want to die all alone.
“They see right through me/Can you see right through me?”
“They” can be referring to us, the fans, or it can be the media. Either way, the way she sings these lines only leads me to believe she doesn’t mean it in a positive way. It almost reminds me of Imposter Syndrome, where you’re always afraid you’re going to be found out. (Wikipedia describes it as “a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".”) That you’re not really who everyone thinks you are, or even who you think you are. And she’s worried that Joe can see right through her, can see that she’s not really who everyone says, or that she’s not as sweet as everyone thinks, or as loving, or as creative or intelligent. She thinks “they” see right through her, and she worries if he can, too.
“I see right through me.”
This has to be my favorite line from the entire song. This really rings true with Imposter Syndrome that I just mentioned. She sees right through herself. And the way she practically screams this line hurts my heart because I hear the exact emotion she’s feeling. I’ve felt it before, standing in front of my mirror at God-awful hours in the night. I see through myself. I don’t think I’m as smart or kind or talented or creative as everyone around me says I am. I see right through me. Right through me.
“All the king’s horses/All the king’s men/Couldn’t put me together again.”
These lines are from the English nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” (I knew I recognized them somewhere!). And if you remember the story, Humpty fell from the wall. Shattered his shell as he hit the ground. The king’s horses and men couldn’t make Humpty who he was before. She’s saying she fell, shattered as she hit the ground, and no one could put her back together again, no one could make her who she used to be (“I’d like to be my old self again/but I’m still trying to find it”) no matter how hard they tried.
“‘Cause all of my enemies/started out friends/Help me hold onto you.”
This shows more of the worry of good turning bad. All of her enemies used to be her friends, or who she thought were her friends. They used to have good times, and then it all changed. But she doesn’t want that to happen with Joe. She wants him to stay good (let’s be honest, we all know he will; he’s an angel), she doesn’t want him to be another friend turned enemy. She wants to hold onto him and the good thing they have going.
“Who could stay? You could stay.”
This is the most touching turning point in the song. She’s asking herself that famed question. Who would want to stay? Who would want this? And then she’s remembering. Joe has stayed. He could stay. He could be the one to stay. All this time she’s been asking who, and it’s been you (him).
Alright, that is my line-by-line analysis. Just a reminder that this is all entirely my own speculation. The beauty of songwriting is that songs can be open to so many different interpretations, this is just what I hear when I listen to it xx.
This is hitting me just because...to me it makes me think of, “I’m ready to fight for love. I say I don’t want it because I think it’s easier, but what if I do want it? What if I do want it and I can’t have it?” And that’s been my thought process lately.
DO you know these songs that when you listen to them in the middle of the night it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your body and it just hurts but at the same time it is the most beautiful feeling you have ever felt and you don’t know where to go with your feelings? yeah, the archer is one of those now
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