#red analysis

[whatiwillsay]

the swiftgron red holy trinity plus 22

Ok so you guys may know I have fully become obsessed with three songs Taylor wrote in the Spring of 2012: Everything Has Changed, Treacherous, and Come Back... Be Here.

There’s a lot to say about these songs as Gaylor proof, how she assigns Treacherous to Harry, how she assigns EHC to Conor, and how neither Conor or Harry fit as the muse for CBBH... but today I want to talk about how these songs are all thematically linked to one another and the song 22(particularly the original lyrics.)

The songs all talk about night/are set at night

EHC - she sings about waking up and being changed, insinuating that something changed the night before, she also asks the person to “meet me there tonight”

Treacherous - in Style’s little sibling she sings about being out driving around at night and how she’s sleepless “Two headlights shine through the sleepless night”

Come Back... Be Here - She’s up at 4am (sleepless night!) chatting with this person

and in 22 - she has breakfast at midnight during the “perfect night”, “tonight’s the night we forget about the heartbreak”, PLUS “It feels like one of those nights, We won't be sleeping” (sleepless night!)

Falling for strangers

EHC - She just wants to know this person better now

Treacherous - It’s not as explicit but she’s getting swept away by this new person, gravity pulling her to them, they’re a new love and there is an air of “unknownness” to them in the song even if not explicitly commented on in the lyrics

Come Back... Be Here - “how strange that I don’t know you at all”

and in 22 - “It feels like a perfect night, For breakfast at midnight, To fall in love with strangers”

Rushing into things (didn’t they tell us don’t?)

EHC - She falls for this person in the space of 18 hours and she’s worried it might be all in her mind because it’s so new

Treacherous - It’s not as explicit but the quicksand nature of slipping into something with this new person feels rushed

Come Back... Be Here - It’s only the second day, they barely know one another, and she’s already completely besotted

and in 22 - “sometimes it hits me, we’re moving quickly”

Uncertainty/confusion

EHC - she’s worried it’s all in her mind and asking her new lover to come back and assure her it’s not

Treacherous - she can’t decide if getting swept away is a choice or not, she’s feeling very conflicted, she even says she’d be smart to walk away but she isn’t going to

CBBH - “The feeling you can know so much, Without knowing anything at all” ... “If I had known what I'd known now, I never would've played so nonchalant”

and in 22 - “Yeah, we're happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time It's miserable and magical”

Furthermore the original scrapped lyrics of 22 are the exact same vibe of Treacherous which tells of a dangerous love that she’s slipping into despite her trepidation that she has almost no choice but to plunge into as headlights cut through the nighttime haze.  She knows there’s danger and they might get her into trouble or be bad news but she’s going to do it anyway.

meanwhile 22 says this:

Sometimes it hits me, We're moving quickly, Toward something hazy, A future I can't see, Let's break the old rules, While we're still 22, You look like bad news, I gotta have you.

Now we are supposed to believe that these four songs have four different muses.  Harry for Treacherous, Conor for EHC, A mystery man for CBBH, and the fulltime fancy girls + selena for 22.  But it seems like she’s talking about the same relationship/connection.  Someone she’s up late nights with that she’s getting swept away by and fast.  Someone she has conflicted feelings for.  Someone she doesn’t know all that well but is already enamoured with in which she’s in a confusing but tantalizing situation with.  

There’s this heightened level of emotional stakes that are are raised so high the situation is both miserable and magical, it’s treacherous and dangerous and reckless but it’s worth the drive.  It’s only the second day and she’s already saying she misses this person so bad she’s breaking down over it.  She’s worried it’s all in her mind but it’s all she thinks about as their name echoes through her mind... This person looks like bad news but she’s gotta have them anyway.

Now of course Taylor loves a reoccuring theme. we know from debut to folkmore she addresses similar ideas about life and love again and again in similar terms.  So it’s of course possible that the artist is the common denominator here, not the muse.

However wouldn’t it make a hell of a lot of sense if Dianna were the muse for all of these songs?  The male muses associated with the songs are a mess.  Dianna is of course an appropriate muse for 22 with her name in the liner notes and Taylor did spend that whole spring and summer with her but Dianna also works as a fine muse for the other three songs too.

Taylor reflects on her new lover as the rain pours down around her in EHC and we know it rained all day in LA the first time she hung out with Dianna.  Furthermore, Dianna went to London and New York City (a couple times!) without Taylor that spring.

I don’t claim to have all the answers guys.  I don’t know who these songs are about but god damn if it doesn’t add up in my mind for them to all be about Dianna.

[whatiwillsay]

everything has changed - the first swiftgron song

i haven’t been giving this number her due but in terms of proof it’s up there with babe and wonderland imo so she’s going to get her own masterpost!  every gaylor and their mom has done one but now it’s my turn!

part 1 - the timeline

the first thing about everything has changed that’s so delightfully evidence filled is the great timeline disallowing for a proper public male muse.

thanks to tweets we know ed and taylor were working on the song on may 15th, 2012:

this is after taylor’s first fling with harry is over (which supposedly ended april 22, 2012) but before she meets conor kennedy (as far as we know they met over july 4th weekend 2012).  at this point in time conor is a junior in high school and 17.  i’ve got plenty of posts on why i don’t think either of these boys are proper muses (x, x, x) and how their timelines don’t add up but they really don’t add up for everything has changed.

now you might say, “oh maybe ed and taylor were working on a different song.” but taylor tells on herself later in interviews for red, confirming that a couple weeks after they met (so a week or two after these tweets) she debuted the “i just wanna know you better now” pre chorus to him, confirming that indeed they were working on ehc in may (or perhaps early june at the latest) not fitting timeline for harry or conor:

the only thing that could work is that she started writing this song for harry before they broke up the first time but she later attributes this song very obviously to conor.  you might argue that she didn’t want a falling in love song to go to harry on the red album since they had had a rocky little break up in late april but she attributes treacherous to him and harry’s thought to be the muse for come back... be here as well.

part 2 - green eyes, your freckles, and the rain (among other things)

there are a lot of delightful little clues that point back to dianna in this song.  she, of course, has green eyes as mentioned in the song.  

the newest addition to the evidence pile i have for y’all is that dianna does have proper freckles.  they’re a pale dusting across her cheeks that appear to usually be covered up by makeup but you can see them in scenes of movies where she doesn’t wear a lot of makeup and when natural lighting hits her such as hollow in the land and bare:

yes they’re hard to see but they’re there!

it also rained (a rare occurrence in LA!) during the first swiftgron hang out (that we know of) possibly harkening back to the lyric “all i know is pouring rain and everything has changed”:

it didn’t rain in LA when taylor spent the first week of april with harry there, nor did it rain in nyc when they were supposedly there together.  it also didn’t rain in hyannis port during the first week or july when she met conor (and the song was written before that!). it rained in la on the 13th of april but taylor was in nashville, and then it rained on the night of the 25th, after haylor 1.0 was over.

now of course the rain could be a metaphor or simply a vibe, but if you want to make it literal, you can for dianna.  

the butterflies referenced in the song could be a reference back to dianna’s tattoo she got for the book “hope for flowers” which is about a butterfly and a caterpillar that she got removed after swiftgron supposedly broke up:

furthermore taylor brings back the pouring rain, the dust, and the butterflies back for clean.  taylor has only used butterflies twice in a song- ehc and then clean.  would make sense if they’re about the same muse but according to taylor ehc is about conor and clean is about harry!

the lyric “meet me there tonight” is of note as well since the night taylor first wrote with ed, may 15th, she did go have dinner with dianna that very night!

part 3 - the songs gayer than we give it credit for

what changed taylor? what do you know now that you didn’t before? insights on dianna’s sexuality/feelings for you perhaps? insights on your own sexuality?  and why are you so worried it might all be in your mind?  as usual it could all just be a vibe situation but it feels as thought something sort of profound and nerve wracking is going on here.  that doesn’t inherently prove gayness but it certainly fits.

part 4 - where the fuck is hyiannis port?

so taylor dedicates the song to conor kennedy with the liner note hyannis port (supposedly where she met him) except she spells it wrong!  she adds an i and spells it “hyiannis” which appears to mimic part of the spelling of dianna’s name:

if this was a typo taylor (who is a renowned control freak) never had it corrected in subsequent printings of the liner notes.

the placement of “i”s right after line breaks also mimics the way taylor places the i in dianna’s name in the 22 liner notes:

part 5 - furthermore

dianna tweeted about the song:

kind of interesting since it feels like all too well or perhaps the last time would be more in dianna’s music taste imo, even more interesting that she didn’t tweet about 22 which, you know, is officially dedicated to her.

another closing thought would be- if conor inspired such soft and intense falling in love music, why didn’t he inspire any breakup songs (as far as we know)?

taylor actually came back and gave an interview where she (or her publicist) said the conor situation was casual, just a youthful fling.  but ehc doesn’t sound casual, it sounds pretty intense and profound!

[whatiwillsay]

All-my-possessions says the copyright registration for Begin Again is 2011. You actually seem interested in the truth (unlike some other blogs!) so that’s why I raise the issue.

ok so it looks like begin again was probably written in fall 2011 which still tracks for it to be about dianna since they likely met sometime through cory or chord in 2010 and were at the very least acquaintances.  they seem to actually become friends in fall 2011.

this is all documented in my timeline here - @swiftgronmasterpost

tho i do believe achele continued on and off throughout feb 2012 and swiftgron wasn’t officially together until march 2012 i think it’s entirely possibly taylor got a big ole lesbian crush on dianna after hanging out with her in fall 2011.  maybe it’s about someone else but i can very easily make a case for it being about dianna and i’ve been parsing over this analysis in my head for a couple days (hence me waiting on posting these)

begin again seems to have some references you could easily attribute to dianna. also what’s funny is none of the “official red love interests” (harry and conor) are around at all during this point in time (and neither are the “official breakup boys” jake g and john mayer)

what’s funny is even though the copyright was established in 2011 the hets seem to be fine with ascribing it to conor like...do they even care about reality? conor would have been freshly 17 and i think a junior in high school when she wrote this that’s honestly DISGUSTING and harry was 17 at the time too.  i think it’s safe to say it’s not about either of them.

there are a few lyrics that can even be publicly ascribed to dianna it seems to me!

“And you throw your head back laughing like a little kid”

when they met at Fairfax flea market there was a lot of laughter pictured

and dianna’s actually a bit famous for her distinctive laugh

“I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did”

we know dianna thought taylor was funny:

“I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does”

lately, @adastrabella and @swiftiesleuth have been making me think there was something legit about jake g and taylor... probably not what the media painted it out to be but perhaps they had something (they seemed to be spotted in organic and private moments and liz huett seemed to be jealous of him and ofc we’re open to bilor theories here)

if that’s the case then fall 2011 is exactly when she met dianna and 8 months after she publicly ended it with jake.

if this is the case it’s possible that “He didn't like it when I wore high heels, but I do” is accurately ascribed to jake as the “he” because jake is a dude who is 5′11″

taylor being a woman at 5′10″ would have towered over jake in heels.

dianna is short compared to tayor at about 5′5″ which is a very average height for an american woman and wouldn’t have cared if taylor wore heels or not.  girls in wlw relationships aren’t typically insecure about that stuff.

so the 8 months line added to the heels line seems to suggest that there was something more than pr (tho i still think it was heavily pr, relationships can be both) to jake and taylor.

“You said you never met one girl who Had as many James Taylor records as you, but I do”

dianna is a bit famous for being, shall we say, a pretentious art gay.  i promise you she would have gushed with taylor over record players and vinyls as well as artists like james tayor.

here’s dianna talking about records and such:

and we know dianna went and saw Taylor preform with james taylor at tanglewood in the summer of 2012!

“We tell stories and you don't know why I'm coming off a little shy, but I do” this doesn’t tie back to dianna specifically (although who wouldn’t be shy around her god) but it’s very sapphic.  that nervousness that goes along with meeting a girl you may like is communicated sweetly here.  not only do you have to wonder “does she like me back” but also “is she gay too?”

But you start to talk about the movies That your family watches Every single Christmas and I won't

dianna is Jewish but has been observed casually celebrating christmas and the holiday season in general.

so while she’s probably not at midnight mass or having an extremely spiritual christmas tradition having an annual movie watching fest at christmas seems to be a way she may mark the holiday.

furthermore, it’s actually on record that dianna seems to celebrate the christmas season sometimes by watching love actually, which is one of taylor’s favorite movies!

also dianna is ofc going to discuss movies with new friends and crushes since she’s an actress and a huge cinema head.  i would say her top four interests are film, music, photography, and dance and i think og dianna fans would agree with me.

so as far as the content of the song goes it’s pretty obvious you can make a strong case for begin again being about taylor’s first couple of meetings with dianna and her developing crush and their early friendship spent discussing music, movies, and other shared interests.

as far as the timeline goes i think it makes a lot of sense to be about dianna as well since it’s a song about the very beginning of falling for someone (but not confirming you’re in an official relationship with them yet) 

update from 2022- this song is about will anderson

[whatiwillsay]

come back... be here vs. i wish you would - an unneeded analysis

i think these songs are about the same person (duh) - cbbh wishing someone would come back at the dawn of a relationship and iwyw being about wanting someone to come back in the dusk of a relationship.  we all already think that but i’m just trying to explore the two songs and maybe we’ll see something we didn’t before.

the crux of this analysis is simply that “come back be here” is the same sentiment as “i wish you would come back”.  the same thing is requested in both songs.

the opening lines of the songs mentin an early time in the AM:

You said it in a simple way 4 AM, the second day

vs.

It's 2 AM in your car

there’s mentions of modes of transportation that the object of affection is in - cbbh has a plane, iwyw has a car, i don’t think it’s necessarily intentional but it makes a nice metaphor for the soaring emotions you feel at the beginning of a relationship plus we know they rushed into things thanks to previous explorations of themes, and then we know for the LA Lover/1989 muse cars were always a big thing they were driving together everywhere (which it doesn’t exactly seem like she’d be doing with Harry since he was visiting LA every time he went - he likely didn’t have his own car there)

while come back... be here seems to be more about the anxiety of being seperated from a new love interest, iwyw seems to be about the depression of being seperated from an old love interest - cbbh mentions the second day, the delicate beginning rush, and falling in love and i wish you would mentions memories and the past.

i think all the dianna songs on red have a successor on 1989 and to me cbbh is obviously followed up by iwyw.  what do y’all think?

[whatiwillsay]

in your opinion, which songs on red are /not/ about dianna and who are they about?

ok i go back and forth (and i may do a pod episode on this)

option 1.  swiftgron got started before we knew in early 2011 (this doesn’t 100% make sense because achele was on through summer 2011 and that seems pretty fucking obvious to me) and was dramatic from the get go so most every song on red, the happy falling in love songs, AND the break up songs are about dianna (except for all too well)

option 2. (and this is what i’m fucking w lately). the breakup songs like red, the last time, etc. are about julianne or liz or emily and the happy/falling in love songs are about dianna

so let’s go with option 2 today

red songs for swiftgron nation would be:

treacherous

22

stay stay stay (it’s about fighting but it’s light-hearted and a love song in the end)

everything has changed

begin again

come back... be here

wangbt - so this is kind of a break up song and maybe it’s not ab dianna but she did tweet about it and it’s kind of joking and lighthearted.  also the indie record line is SO dianna.  and it’s like the flip side to cbbh (we hadn’t seen each other in a month - is also about traveling)

non-swiftgron songs:

red - maybe about maybe julianne, maybe emily

state of grace - four blue eyes and twin fire signs lines up 100% with julianne

ikywt - julianne kind of has that bad girl reputation i think (though it was written in the middle of the swiftgron summer and dianna has the bad girl rep too)

sad beautiful tragic - waking up in different cities sounds like emily to me, also “hang up, give up” reminds me of “call me up just to break me like a promise”

all too well - emily is the consensus 

holy ground - i know i know this is a swiftgron anthem and maybe it is BUT it was (supposedly) written before dianna’s bday where the note on the door was left and is reflecting back on a past relationship.  big wide city = LA so i’m going to give it to julianne.

i almost do - emily - there’s mentions of phone calls and it’s very sad and emotional.  i think she thought they were gonna get married.

girl at home - probably about some chad who hit on her

the last time - emily. too emotional not to be.

the moment i knew - fake ass straight bait jake het plant

other

the lucky one - not romantic though i think there’s echos of dianna

starlight - same as the lucky one, it's supported to be for the kennedys but i think in general though it’s a tribute song and not a love song it’s kind of about dianna too cause it’s about dancing around and stuff and it’s sweet. it’s dual layers.

[blupeeblep]

Bro/gn

You know how folks often headcanon that Blue hates the cold?

And how folks also write Red as someone who likes fire?

Red got an arson charge and his stuff got stolen

Red almost lost Green in a volcano

Red almost lost Vio in a volcano

And while we’re talking temperature, he had to save Blue from ice

What if he fears extreme temperatures, ESPECIALLY fire, now?

Think about it

Yeah, I've been thinking of it. Been seeing it around.

How I hc, Red likes fire in the way of like, a fireplace or campfire. Just finds watching it fascinating and helpful. And he does like fire, but he also fears it. If he does fire, he makes sure that there's plenty of stuff to keep it controlled. He's decided to become smarter about it to try to help his fear. If the fire's too big, he'll try to put it out, normally with help. He used to be very chill with how he used fire. Didn't worry, but now, every time he uses it, or sees it, etc, he goes over and over how to make sure it doesn't become bad, but manageable and helpful. People don't see his struggle and calculation though. It's all in his head. He's very good at masking his concern and fear and worry.

Anyways, thx for talking with me! I'm curious to hear how you hc? If it's any different from mine? I'm always curious to how others see things. It's very interesting and fun.