innocent is written about someone who did something really horrible to taylor and she tried really hard to take the high road and show him grace and that’s why at the end of the song she says “lost your balance on a tightrope, it’s never too late to get it back”, telling him he can still become a better person. that matches up with her actions in real life when she chose to forgive him and try to be his friend but we found out years later that he continued to stab her in the back and she tried so hard to mend that relationship because she really wanted to be nice and cool about it. all of that to say: a decade later, she mentioned a tightrope again, saying “i’m still on that tightrope” and “still trying everything to keep you looking at me”. this mirrors what she talked about in miss americana perfectly: she tried so hard to be a nice good girl to the detriment of her own self. her own personal tightrope is needing other people’s validation, and one of the biggest examples of that in her own career is trying to help someone else get his balance again when he really didn’t deserve it.
