seeing so many people calling this album just fun and nothing more, and as someone who feels deeply connected to this album, i'd really like to offer an alternative impression:
something happens to a person when the rest of the world is constantly finding problems with you. whether you intend to or not, you make yourself smaller. usually subconsciously, but sometimes consciously, you cut out or tamp down on the pieces of you that they hated, until over enough time, there's not much left of you. because they all hated different things, created different wounds in different shapes. and then, you discover that it didn't even matter at all. the whole thing futile, because even the shell of you still isn't what they want and you've got nothing left to cut out of yourself for them. and there's a heartbreak there that's hard to describe, unless you've been there yourself (i'd actually never related to a taylor song on a personal level until I Hate It Here, which encompasses the emptiness fairly well. the idea of how you can only feel alive inside your own head).
while i know all of my own experiences that did this to me, taylor's can be easy to miss, despite the fact that she's put them in her music all along. not even mentioning all the bullying she went through prior to fame or all of the things that fans/haters/critics have said over the years, just about every man she's ever dated resented a different piece of her. john mayer, who she loved and idolized, turned out to just want a teenager to manipulate. jake laughed at her dreams, made sure she knew damn well he didn't think she was funny (think it gets three separate mentions on the red album?). high infidelity certainly suggests calvin didn't have great things to say about her, and how devastating that must have been after being so in awe that someone didn't hate her after a year together. every day we learn more about the things joe must've thought, and his resentment is clear.
ttpd ends up being more than romantic heartbreak, it's the slowly sinking realization that there's been a loss of self, while this album is a reclamation of self, alongside the death of ego. it's the undoing of trauma, now that there's a new lens to view it all through. it's the terrible associations with endearments, undone in honey. all the times people called her lame and cringe and annoying, undone in eldest daughter. the instinct to blame yourself for someone's unprovoked hatred, undone in actually romantic. the instinct to reflect your own pain back onto others, undone in cancelled. and a lot more (i could honestly go lyric by lyric on this, but i'll leave it there for now)
i have zero vested interest in travis specifically, but he showed her that she could actually do all of that. she could, as i saw someone else on tumblr phrase it, love being alive again, because it's almost impossible to truly love living when you're living as a shell. you only get glimpses of it, then. fleeting little moments.
so when i listen to showgirl, it genuinely feels like taylor said to me, "you could have this, too. the happiness that pours out of my voice. the freedom of self-acceptance. it's possible for you."
and my entire life has shifted since i heard that. my outlook is brighter, my anxiety lighter. it wasn't like a magic cure-all or anything, but for once in my life, i'm thinking that maybe i'm worth fighting for, even if it's my own poisonous instincts that i have to fight for it.
so it might be a silly little pop album to some people, but to me (and, as i think these interviews have shown, to taylor), it's a revelation.
wait i love this anon!! thank you for taking the time to write this out because i think it's a great explanation for how you can interpret the album. for me, my favorite thing about this album has been how she talks about creating your happiness and joy. in previous albums, it feels like she wishes for love to be a magical thing to descend upon her - almost like destiny (hence, "the prophecy"). but in this album she talks about how they make their own love and happiness - AND YOU CAN TOO!
also really love this: "you could have this, too. the happiness that pours out of my voice. the freedom of self-acceptance. it's possible for you."
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