Would love to read your thoughts about the narrative within red that you mentioned in one of your previous posts… please tell us more! 🤍
okay so, this has existed in my head for nearly a decade! let me see if i can even explain it properly (i might have to dig up something i wrote a few years ago, but never shared on tumblr). 💖💖💖💖 this is focused on the central tracklist, State of Grace - Begin Again, because while i love and adore the bonus/vault tracks, those sixteen songs are what tell the story for me.
last year, when taylor announced red tv, she wrote:
"The heartbroken might go through thousands of micro-emotions a day trying to figure out how to get through it without picking up the phone to hear that old familiar voice. In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness. Imagining your future might always take you on a detour back to the past...Musically and lyrically, Red resembled a heartbroken person. It was all over the place, a fractured mosaic of feelings that somehow all fit together in the end. Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past."
and that struck the chord beautifully for me, because it's always how i've envisioned and understood the story of the album, and its rollercoaster of sounds and emotions.
we begin the story with the anthemic opener of State of Grace, which has almost a sense of wonderment and euphoria in experiencing the world, those drums like a heartbeat, and it sets up the thesis of the record - it's like a prologue. we fall in love 'til it hurts or bleeds or fades in time. and I never saw you coming, and I'll never be the same. it also has this transcendent sort of faith in it - the heartbreak has already happened, but she's telling us what it's worth. this is a state of grace, this is the worthwhile fight. love is a ruthless game, unless you play it good and right. these are the hands of fate, you're my Achilles' heel. this is the golden age of something good, and right, and real.
then we dovetail into Red, and it's like a flashback and a flashforward, reflecting on what's happened as a whole, while also serving as a set up for the rest of the story to unfold. she's already compared this love to a cannonball, and now to driving down a dead end street, so we feel this overwhelming rush. faster than the wind, passionate as sin. she sets everything up for the ups and downs. losing him was blue...but loving him was red.
Treacherous is like a snapshot of the first part of their story. she's discovered this tenuous, dangerous, unstoppable force that she's fallen in love with, even knowing it's reckless. I can't decide if it's a choice getting swept away. I hear the sound of my own voice, asking you to stay. and all we are is skin and bone, trained to get along. forever going with the flow, but you're friction. she takes the risk, and when it ends up being as treacherous as expected, she berates herself for not knowing better, even though she saw his red flags, like i mentioned in the other post (I knew you were trouble...and I realize the blame is on me), and it sounds chaotic because she's struggling.
the worst of the heartbreak happens with the entirety of All Too Well, and i could write about ATW forever, but i think we all know its power! she's going over and over what happened, asserting her own memory (I was there, I remember it), while also being strong and insistent that he knew it too (you told me 'bout your past thinking your future was me...back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known...wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all, down the stairs, you were there, you remember it all...), and desperately trying to put together the pieces of what's happened (just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest...I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it). she knows what she felt, she knows it was real, and rare, and it was sacred to her.
how do you come away from that pain? be with friends and just try to forget it all (make fun of our exes). it's also important that 22 follows ATW because of what happened at her 21st birthday. it's supposed to be fun - so she reclaims that next year instead.
but the pull of that love is still there, still inescapable, still in her mind in the night. she has to stop herself from reaching out to him. we made quite a mess, babe. it's probably better off this way...and I just wanna tell you, it takes everything in me not to call you. and I wish I could run to you. and I hope you know that every time I don't, I almost do. she even uses it to foreshadow "never ever" - I bet it never, ever occurred to you that I can't say "hello" to you and risk another goodbye, until finally she realizes, no, this can never work, there's too much hurt for it to ever be okay (WANEGBT - then you come around again and say, "baby, I miss you, and I swear I'm gonna change, trust me." remember how that lasted for a day?).
then Stay Stay Stay is the daydream, where she's picturing what could be, if someone would stay, someone who would take her for all she is (you took the time to memorize me, my fears, my hopes and dreams, I just like hanging out with you all the time. all those times that you didn't leave, it's been occurring to me - I'd like to hang out with you for my whole life). it's like a transition from the climactic, powerful heartbreak into something else.
The Last Time is the final realization of why some things are too broken to be fixed (you wear your best apology, but I was there to watch you leave).
Holy Ground is a recognition of healing, and realizing that's possible. it's a joyful reminiscing of a whole other romance of the past, wistful with a tiny bit of new wishful thinking creeping in too, and she brings back in the love as spirituality theme that exists in State of Grace (and, as we now know, in ATW10). it's so important because it contains recovery. it was good never looking down, and right there where we stood, was holy ground...tonight I'm gonna dance for all that we've been through.
Sad Beautiful Tragic is also a reminiscence, but a much more regretful one, and one where they were both wrong at times (and time is taking its sweet time erasing you. and you've got your demons, and darling they all look like me). she's still trying to understand why something beautiful and magical could come with such agony, how to reconcile that. it's tied back to ATW (time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it), but this time she's trying to let go (for the life of us we can't get back). the reason those memories are being stirred up is because of the difficulty she's having in processing and putting away what happened in the story of ATW, but if she can celebrate one, and feel a sense of catharsis, maybe it's beginning to get better.
The Lucky One shifts to a new perspective, one much more on personal identity (though the difficulty of finding an honest love still comes up - and your lover in the foyer don't even know you), and how everything can seemingly be going right, everyone can tell you that you're pretty and lucky, but you can still feel betrayed and alone (and they tell you that you're lucky, but you're so confused, 'cause you don't feel pretty, you just feel used). the subject of the song took the money and your dignity and got the hell out, and she's thinking maybe that's the right choice, because the atmosphere has become oppressive, filled with hollow praise and memories of past love and the people who left.
then light streams back in, and everything changes, and she finds there's still room to fall in love again (so dust off your highest hopes) and every time she discovers it anew, there's a leap of faith in it (all I know is a newfound grace). she finds a way to believe and to dance again (Starlight has outside inspiration, but it's also a big moment of recovery on the record, dreaming impossible dreams.)
Begin Again closes the story with an exhale, a new beginning, something simple, and kind, and hopeful. there is a chance to heal, and there is a way to find yourself again, and to embrace your passion and happiness, and there will be someone who listens, and never mocks your dreams, and looks at you like a treasure. and even if that doesn't last, there's the hope someday it will. she's been through all this pain and tumult, and she learns to value herself again, and to open her heart and trust again. she's finally able to stop dragging herself back through the shattered glass of what was, to be in a new sparkling moment. for the first time what's past is past ...I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did. I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end. but on a Wednesday, in a cafe I watched it begin again.
it's always been almost like a book set to music for me, where every chapter represents these watercolor moments she's experienced, until she emerges on the other side, not unbroken, but still shining.
ultimately, then, the narrative loops right back to State of Grace as well, because it's a love story, and a healing journey, and a reflection on everything love is, and what we hope love can be. we grow and fall and mend, and we remake love anew over and over again, and it's always a little bit painful, and it's always a little bit brave, and we whisper a little prayer that maybe someday, someone will clasp our hand and cherish the whole of us.
"when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. Because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking. And there’s something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that’s never coming. And there’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it."
we learn to live with the pain, mosaic broken hearts.
but this love is brave and wild.
