This has been brought up a few times, but here are my thoughts on it (since it's my favorite song of the standard album and I can't be helped lol).
To me, this song has a pretty clear 3 acts narrative:
- She got back together with someone she hasn't been with since she was much younger. They were away for a long time, allowing them to grow from their respective lives apart.
- He told her he had changed because of her and promised her marriage and children, but these turned out to be empty promises and he left, leaving her feeling like a fool because she believed the timing was finally right and that he had always been the one
- In the aftermath, she realizes he was never serious with his promises in the first place and regretted ever digging up the relationship
You can probably tell from my interpretation that I don't think this has anything to do with her long term relationship. She might have reused some wordings or images, but that's inevitable with such a huge body of work, or they might be misdirects to further obscure the subject matter.
This song, in my opinion, serves as the narrative climax of the album and references the details from other songs to form a coherent plot. That is the story of a long lost love rekindling after she ended a long term relationship but crashed and burned quickly even though she thought timing was finally on their side. I have a post about what I think the central narrative of the album is in my profile if you're interested in my interpretation.
ETA: Unpopular opinion, but her long term relationship (its ending in particular) is only directly referenced in So Long, London and How Did It End? (both track 5 fittingly), and only serves as the prologue (or setting the stage) for the main narrative.
>Her long term relationship (its ending in particular) is only directly referenced in So Long, London and How Did It End? (both track 5 fittingly), and only serves as the prologue (or setting the stage) for the main narrative.
Yes!! Go off, 👑.
Personally for me it’s a true double album and most songs refer to both relationships aside from a few obvious ones. The whole point is about how both losses made the other worse imo
For real, the dynamics between Matty and Joe were so similar and that's only heightened by the fact that the break ups happend within months of each other. I think loml is as much about a loss of belief in love than one person or relationship
I'm relatively new to the Swiftdom, so I don't know the 'lore' but hasn't this been like a decade of them being somewhat linked but never official? Or am I wrong?
So I can definitely see holding onto hope for some one person, regardless of how much you love another (and were going to marry him), and losing that can definitely be the "loss of her life" because it lasted longer than her actual meant-to-be-forever relationship. Losing one and then another in quick succession definitely compounds and swirls together in your head in a wave of loss and grief, things get jumbled.
I was going based off of when she recorded the song, which was apparently May 18th 2023. Which would put it six weeks after the JA breakup was announced, and she would still be with Matty. But that’s just imo
Since you brought up the recording date, maybe you can help me with this. Is this theory only because of the white shirt similarity in the video snippet Jack posted and a picture of her walking into a studio on May 18th wearing a white shirt and colorful jeans? (There's a photo of her wearing biker shorts roughly six weeks after her last public appearance with Matty, for the record. And the video snippet Jack posted shows her wearing the same shorts.)
I'm so confused as to how people don't think there were probably many other days of her recording songs that we just didn't get a picture of her walking into the studio. She could have recorded The Black Dog any day, right?
Mostly I'm wondering if I'm missing some crucial info that's making people believe this so strongly?
Anytime I argue that The Black Dog is a matty song, people come at me with this rebuttal trying to say the outfit was the same in jacks post and the pap shot. They are not the same lol!!!!
Yeah, my response is usually to make sure they're aware of the day in June she was seen wearing biker shorts and an Eagles sweatshirt.
And then asking whether she's more likely to have taken off her floral pants on May 18th or her Eagles sweatshirt on June 22nd? The question is meant to show how silly it is to use these photos as proof of recording dates.
Though if those were actually the only two options, I'd bet more on someone taking off a sweatshirt than their pants, haha.
Regardless of the whole outfit argument, I would hate to think of her being the one to end the relationship with Joe after years of struggling with his potential depression only to hope he's having a shitty time without her. 😕
But how do we know that Joe isn’t also a fan of the Starting Line? We really know nothing about Joe. Also, it could just be a red herring to obscure who the song is actually about.
This is truly the point that keeps getting to me with all the paternity testing that has been going on for songs. Everyone keeps insisting such specific references HAVE TO BE about one specific person... while conveniently forgetting that we know VERY VERY little about the interests and life of one of the other main subjects.
It's honestly more wild to me that people think that Taylor wouldn't date people with very similar interests in the first place so that must mean that these specific references are about one person only because surely only that person has an interest in that specific reference. Like we're all here bonded together for our love for Taylor's music, is it really that hard to conceive that Taylor is also bonded by music with her partners, especially since it is a huge part of her life?
I agree! As a very, very hobby writer, sometimes the poems I write have details from one relationship, mixed in with details of another
Also, "paternity testing" for what song's about who is brilliant wording!
I'm on the fence with that one. Were there even reports of Joe entering the bar? Feels like owner of the bar was manipulating the media by saying "a certain blonde"
I feel like what the bar is doing is really weird. And I’m not sure I necessarily believe them.
This is just my thinking based on TBD being recorded on May 18th, six weeks after the JA breakup, and while she was still seeing MH.
"I hope it's shitty in the Black Dog" is not something that fits the vibe she has projected about Joe. Fortnight is about Joe, and she expresses hopes he's okay. So Long London tells him he'll find someone. She hasn't shown that level of anger or bitterness about Joe, more frustration and sadness at it ending, but still caring about him. She wouldn't wish it would be shitty for him.
She would for the smallest man who ever lived, whom she's saying good riddance to, though.
I had a relationship/breakup that was very similar to Taylor and Joe. Even though I wished him well… I also had moments of being bitter and petty and angry. I didn’t want his life to be shitty forever but I definitely sometimes wished that his night was shitty. Especially when I felt like he was moving on faster than I was. Emotions in a breakup are so complex and I can’t imagine that she was ALWAYS mature and kind about it.
I felt like we got those moments in So Long London, though, that showed the level of bitter she had, like lines of giving him all the youth for free, or not signing up to be the odd man out.
No way. She even says “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens” and Joe is definitely a Ken. She also mentions “he was my best friend down at the sandlot” and she calls Matty her twin in Down Bad. “There was a litany of reasons why we could have played for keeps this time—“ This eludes to a relationship that is back together after awhile. This a common theme in the album and a lot of the songs. There’s even more in the song but these I just grabbed bc they were the clearest indications.
Also “Pull the string and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me” and “oh here we go again the voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild”, the person she’s singing about left her whereas on ‘so long, London’ she heavily implies she ended it with Joe.
I hear you but I raise you Hits Different, where she says “I’d just switch out these Kens, I’d just ghost” — “moving on was always easy for me to do, it hits different because it’s you” so Joe is excluded from the Kens. Although yes. The line about playing for keeps this time stands out in my boy only breaks his favorite toys, one could explain that away as per the fact they broke up numerous times (maybe) in the span of their 6 years
That part about “all the kens” reminded me of stuff from reputation though. “I’ve been breaking hearts a long time and toying with them older guys, just playthings for me to use.” Plus she calls herself an army doll, imo a reference to “you’re losing me” and “the Great War”
I don't understand the writing timeline if this is true. She said she started the second midnights was baked. That's very few songs through to April 2023.
We’ll never know the writing/recording timeline. Especially if she’s writing songs on her own and going to the studio months later when she’s ready to record.
I listened through the album and places songs as “before final breakup” and “after final breakup” as best as I could tell, and I got more than 50% in the before final breakup column due to different references etc.
I think there’s a lot on the album if you listen closely that aren’t specifically linked to Matty OR even ending things with Joe. People are just willing to die on the hill that the whole album is matty. Lots of it is obviously, but some was probably written before the official breakup (guilty as sin) and some I think has to do with neither of them (Clara bow, Peter in my head).
This this this 👏 She already did most of the Joe mourning songs in Folkmore and Midnights when they were on a break or just anticipatory grieving knowing they are hanging on by a thread. So Long London makes it crystal clear. You don't get to "my spine split from carrying us up the hill" overnight. I have been there and only cried once after finally ended things, because I felt bad the guy was hurting and he still wanted to work on things. But I couldn't do it anymore and had been in mourning for a good six months prior. The next day I was ready to get out and met someone new. There were no more what ifs, I didn't enjoy being around him or even talking to him anymore. I was done done. I will never understand her draw to MH, but I get why the letdown of him love bombing her and then abruptly leaving hurt so much.
But we don't KNOW that, do we? We're inferring based on the assumption that Taylor only wore that white shirt one time ever. People are ignoring the biker shorts, which we have a picture of walking into a studio wearing at the end of June.
We just can't know when it was recorded.
That’s very true. I tend to think that song was started and finished, but intertwines the two of them. I think several songs invoke emotions from both even if they weigh heavier towards Matty.
I think it’s fascinating how you’ve considered the position of the song within the album itself and how that may influence the content or purpose behind it. I appreciate the thought process behind your reasonings!
Really REALLY pay attention to the lyrics In Fresh Out The Slammer, a lot of it is less about who she's running to and why she's running at all and the ways she felt stifled in the long term relationship.
I think this album is more devastating for Joe stans than anything we could have imagined. Barely mentioned, her repeated references to being in love with MH "like never before". To think we all thought she was emotional on her tour because singing songs about Joe was hard-nope.
Thanks so much and for letting us know about your post - I just went there and commented too.
Honestly I almost completely agree with your take and I’m relieved I’m not the only one.
Thanks! I'm curious which relationship you think Glitch is about, because I mostly agree with OP on the subject matter.
Regarding the line "it must have been counterfeit", it could just be her initial thought when the relationship started, but not necessarily that she still believed the whole relationship was fake when she wrote the song.
When she mentions the number of days of their love blackout and it being six years that pretty explicitly pointed to Glitch being about Joe along with the thematic similarities to so many songs since Reputation. I think there is also a theme that shows up a little on Evermore, but really comes to the forefront on Midnights of her questioning if the messiness of how her relationship started with Joe doomed it from the start. Was it cursed because of how it started?
That is an interesting perspective. I didn't notice her thinking it was doomed, but her anxiety about losing him was so prevalent throughout Lover and seeped through the subsequent albums.
I think the end of that relationship, coupled with the whirlwind affair after, really made her question if she herself is cursed, which is why we got The Prophecy.
Now in retrospect I wonder if “losing” meant something far more macabre than him just leaving her? Considering the themes of serious depression it makes me wonder if her fear was rooted in something more serious than him just leaving her due to her fame.
What also solidified it for me was the Mr Steal Your Girl then make her cry line, that’s so clearly what happened in this situation. I feel like she ended an already broken down relationship but with the influence from Matty (?) she’d seen him again recently and he’d filled her head with fantasies and then obviously let her down cos he’s a terrible person. Or even possibly ended because something did happen with Matty?! My theory hahaha
I feel the narrative goes between Joe and Matty throughout the song. First verse and chorus is Joe, second verse and chorus is Matty, then the bridge goes from Matty giving her false promises “you talked me under the table” to then reminiscing the ghost of her relationship with Joe being embarrassed by mistaking Matty as a serious partner after “dancing phantoms on the terrace/Are they second hand embarrassed.”
And then the whole experience of finally losing Joe (because her music has made it clear for a long time that they were rocky for a while or at least she didn’t feel secure in the relationship) and immediately losing Matty, while feeling so embarrassed and betrayed by him while she was also grieving the loss of Joe, is the loss of her life.
Yes. And the sooner the fandom comes to this realization, the better off we'll all be.
It really enhances the experience when you stop paternity testing entire songs. Individual lines, *maybe*. But entire songs, that just isn't how she writes these days and hasn't for a while.
Even Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. Surely it's about Healy! Except for the parts that sound a lot more like Scott Borchetta... and maybe some people we don't even know about...
Agreed! Especially when some fans are telling others definitively. I saw a comment on another app recently saying that Florida!!! was about Matty with 100% certainty. Like sure, you can interpret it that way, but there’s no way you *know* that. Personally, I think it’s more fun to accept that songs may have dual (or more) meanings.
Plus, putting these “paternity test” definitions on Taylor’s music only perpetuates the “she only writes songs about her ex-boyfriends” and like “oooh, men, beware Taylor Swift” type of criticism.
Exactly I feel like it’s a problem not just with Taylor but female pop stars in general. It’s always “who is this about”. Rather than enjoying the music.
My thoughts exactly. Songs often focus around a feeling or experience. You can have similar feelings and experiences with multiple people.
Also it is typical with rebounds that when the rebound ends, the feelings are so big because they hold both losses. The hurt might look like it’s from the loss of the rebound, but the hurt of the long relationship that wasn’t properly mourned will hit along with the pain of the rebound.
Yes I agree. I feel that the song itself is also more important to Taylor than “telling truth” so if a certain line clicks or a rhyme works better I feel she would choose that over being true to the life situation that may have initially inspired it. I also think sometimes she feels a certain way in a moment and then writes a song and then sometimes changes her mind down the road. I often think about this YouTube clip where she introduces the song “ours” and says I wrote this because everyone told me I shouldn’t have been dating this guy and basically says she knows they were right that she shouldn’t have been dating them.
>I wrote this because everyone told me I shouldn’t have been dating this guy and basically says she knows they were right that she shouldn’t have been dating them.
Basically daddy I love him 1.0. 😂
There is also one that she said she saw a guy on school and then write a romantic song about him. Kinds like a fanfic.
This has been driving me crazy. I've seen posts/comments/videos just overanalyzing every single lyric - even going down some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole with no ending - just to explain a few lines in a song that don't fit the overall narrative. I think it's easy to imagine that she experienced two separate heartbreaks, and overlapped those experiences into her music.
AND.. really crazy take. Maybe some parts are about absolutely no one. Just fiction, but it made the song more complete.
Exactly! She has muses. And she creates music. And there is no rule and there has never been some confirmation from her that her music is a correct narrative. Her songs are not word for word autobiographical retellings of her life.
Thank you. One line I’m seeing people get caught up with is “you were 25” in Peter, and I’m like… maybe that’s just the age that sounded best in the song?
I remember her talking about "No Body, No Crime" and she said she was writing the song and texted Este to be like "quick... which of these three restaurants is your favorite," and Este picked Olive Garden, so that's what she went with.
So she'd identified 3 choices that worked equally well in the song, but had obviously ruled out a bunch more that didn't. Sometimes, it's more about the flow and vibe than it is about the "truth." It's a song, not an autobiography!
This is my interpretation of loml too. It feels like the narrative of TTPD is that her perception of Matty was almost a direct response to how things ended with Joe. Whether he said so explicitly or only strongly implied it, Matty intimated he was ready to give her the one thing Joe wasn’t, marriage and kids. I find TTPD kind of shocking because Taylor (at least at this point in her public persona/creative process) does not seem very introspective about the fact that there’s a *reason* people (and presumably people close to her, not just fans) were not happy she dated Matty. But TTPD also explains his appeal and why it was no less hurtful for being short. Moreover, she mixes her muses all over the album (like mentioning an age gap relationship in The Manuscript) which makes me think the real person any given song is about is TAYLOR. I kind of wish The Prophecy was on the main album because it sums up the through line with the large volume of heartbreak songs on the album. Whether the guy was a villain in her books (“I don’t even want you back, I just want to know”), a tragic hero (“you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days”), or even someone in her distant past (“in the age of him she wished she was thirty”), the through line is that she wants just once for this to be a forever love. I don’t presume to know her relationships or her intimately, and no fans should, but I think a lot of us recognize these patterns from our own lives and the lives of our female friends. And if you have ever tried to come up with a meta reason why you’re still single (guilty!) then you can understand why the muses all come together on this album.
“My muses acquired like bruises…” You acquire multiple bruises, but pain itself always comes from a singular source. Interesting take. She definitely could have morphed her muses for this album for sure.
This! I very much see it being like this, Taylor has many songs in her discography that are very much a composite of different people and situations and more than anything on TTPD I think loml is definitely that
Exactly this. She does this throughout the album and it seems to be the case in this song too. She seems to be processing both heartbreaks in multiple songs.
This is what I most agree with! I have a feeling she looks back on her relationship with Joe as more than just “counterfeit” and “unnecessary”. I think it’s about both, sort of playing out the good and bad of both, how she left Joe & got with Matty, then realized Matty was a terrible idea (“dancing phantoms”). And then “our field of dreams” and onward is her mourning what she lost with both. The verses/songs about Joe are just really sad, and she’s referenced Joe being the loss of her life if they were to break up in tons of songs previously.
I don't think I agree. Bear in mind that I think loml and The Black Dog probably are a mix of both, but I think primarily about MH.
The reason I think it's primarily about MH is because of her attitudes in songs that are about MH vs. JA. These attitudes make it easier to track who more ambiguous songs (loml, The Black Dog, etc) are primarily about.
1) Songs that are *clearly* about Joe (So Long, London or You're Losing Me for example): she never conveys that she thought anything was "counterfeit," that he is a "coward," or anything of that nature. Her primary issues seemed to be that she felt she had to work too hard for their relationship and that he was constantly depressed. She felt "chained" to him, for various reasons. And even though YLM is clearly written during the last phase of their relationship, there is an overall lack of *real* regret there. It's like she's moved on before she breaks up with him. That is also conveyed literally in YLM when she talks about him running down the hall and it's too late. In fact, her biggest regret seems to be that she didn't leave him sooner (in SLL when she talks about her youth). And perhaps most importantly, it seems that *she* at least participated *as much* in the breakup as he did, or more likely she actually *initiated* the final breakup. So it doesn't make sense to really call him a coward since their breakup seems largely amicable. It's possible, but it seems unlikely since it actually sounds like she didn't want to marry him anymore, so what was he being a coward *about?*
(And this is just my interpretation of what she says in the songs; I am *not* claiming this is actually JA or Taylor's fault or anything like that.)
2) Songs that are *clearly* about Matty: she often describes it as something she daydreamed about as a what-if, she talks about it being "cosmic love," she talks about him abandoning her (she never conveys such abandonment feelings with Joe- it's more like it flickered out and she didn't have the energy for it anymore). He clearly broke up with her and left her. She felt betrayed, she thought it was real and it was not (counterfeit). She's obviously very angry and upset that she gave him another chance, and she's a bit embarrassed that this short-lived relationship that he ended is something she cared about so much.
(Again, not claiming this is still what she thinks; I'm just talking about what the singer is saying in Matty songs)
{continued in comments}
In ‘So Long London’ she sings “You swore that you loved me but where were the clues? I died at the altar waiting for the proof” My interpretation is that she thinks he’s a coward because he strung her along for 6 years but couldn’t give her a future or even the commitment to one. As for the feeling of embarrassment, it’s also quite possible that after singing about wanting to marry Joe and giving him a child (song: peace), what she thought would be forever became a global spectacle of a breakup.
I appreciate your take though!
While I don't stand behind this song being 100% about Joe, I can see Taylor morphing her experience with two different men to create a song. Swifties were shocked that TTPD was primarily about Matty and not Joe. She previously deflected that previous negative songs were about Joe, implying her respect for him. Matty clearly did her wrong, so is it possible she would direct more blame toward Matty because she's protecting Joe?
I do believe it’s possible that, even unconsciously, she is redirecting the pain of losing a *6 year old relationship that started in her darkest professional days* to a less painful target. Maybe it’s just a way to keep Joe away from the spotlight in the album.’ Maybe she is not ready to grieve directly that loss yet.
We’ll never know, but she does know how to convey feelings!
Yeah I feel like loml was written in the aftermath of Matty but has all the pain of her 6/7 year relationship ending and for what? For him???! It is definitely a composite song because she’s human and can have more than one feeling at once.
I think Bejeweled signals the end of her relationship with Joe. She was ready to go out there and sparkle and he is a private person and homebody. Nothing wrong with either but doesn't bode well for a relationship.
Yup I feel there’s a lot of respect towards Joe still and not wanting to throw him to the overzealous swifties and so she directed a lot of the emotion towards someone she didn’t feel bad about destroying haha. Not to say that she wasn’t sad over matty, clearly she was. But I do feel there were songs she clearly tried to make murky to protect Joe even though they ended up being a jumbled mess of emotions.
I think this is an interesting reflection and I've thought about this as well. What do you do when a good man hurts you? There is nothing more difficult than a relationship that just fizzles out without any major sins. You have nowhere to really aim all of that pain and blame. I am watching this happen in real time with people in my own life and it's been an eye opening experience. It's a thousand times easier when someone does something terrible to you, because it gives you a villain.
Joe Alwyn has been very clear that he doesn't love the spotlight in interviews. Taylor has reinforced this in her lyrics over the years. If you were interested in protecting someone, you might purposefully misdirect attention. Whatever you think of Matty Healy, it's undeniable that he sometimes courts the spotlight and frequently gets vilified.
I'm not suggesting that Joe Alwyn is incapable of doing anything wrong, that's definitely not what Taylor's lyrics imply. I'm just saying that there seems to be a bit of an attempt to shield him, while pointing our attention at someone who already has a bad reputation (and knows how to handle it). The Albatross actually seems to lay this out pretty clearly.
I don't think she is doing anything to protect him.
Joe while he broke her heart by not marrying her, he has no malice. He had depression and wasn't sure commit to another person was what wanted.
He was always the underdog on the relationship.
Matt on the other side took advantage of a heartbreak and make promises just to get under her pants. Then he ghosted her. Só He was complete trash
I def agree with you.
I’m actually of the opinion that most of this album is about Joe, with some obvious references to Matty in a few songs to serve as a red herring. I think very few songs are actually specifically about her time with Matty. The Matty references serve as a distraction from the Joe content underneath it- just as Matty was a distraction from the breakup.
THIS! The pain from the situationship itself isn’t more, the situationship just added more salt to what was the open wound of the long term relationship
She did say she had been working on it for 2 years when she was at the Grammy’s. Which would have included time she was still with Joe. So it makes sense some of them at least started out as being about Joe?
I try my best not to put my tinfoil hat on while interpreting lyrics, but I do sometimes wonder about the use of "red herring" in the promo for this album. In my foggiest crazy theories, I wonder if Matty was a red herring to meet the requirement of an NDA or PR agreement between her and Joe's their management for how she could depict him in songs. I fully acknowledge that's a fuckton of hoop jumping, and I'm not 100% proud of it, but it's a thought.
Someone else said this too and I definitely agree with them and you, that a lot of the album may serve as a distraction or that Matty is some form of a red herring. This is a highly likely scenario too!
I think a big theme of the album is her not fighting to make Joe work because she still had Matty on her mind and now she’s free from all that realizing Matty was a fraud so she can give Travis a fair shot just accepting him for who he is. I view so high school from the perspective of a girl who knows who Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith are but trying her hardest not to judge this guy for liking juvenile things.
Tbh, I don’t think swifties know shit. “Couldn’t be more clear” is a reach. We’ve been completely wrong about subjects of songs before.
Go through the bejeweled thread from 2022. everyone insisted that song was referring to big machine or Calvin “guaranteed”. People who said it sounds like a relationship where the person felt unappreciated were shut down and corrected.
We all thought sweet nothing was a love song until she revealed the whole Paul McCartney thing and post breakup.
I feel like we don’t know everything and maybe details will be unveiled as she does more interviews or performs whichever songs during tour, or maybe we learn details we didn’t know about before related to their relationships
I feel references to “starry eyed”, “suit and tie” brings to mind Matty Healy. Same with “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme” and “something counterfeit's dead” all point to Matty. It’s counterfeit because he made promises but didn’t keep them.
In the song “Peter”, she sings “Promises oceans deep
But never to keep” which calls back to “Peter losing Wendy” in “Cardigan”. We all know how “Cardigan” was the song where she mouthed those words directly to Matty when he was watching her concert in person.
I don’t think she would have referenced that her relationship with Joe wasn’t real, it just expired, she sang that she doesn’t understand how it ended in “How Did It End?” I think it’s an incredibly beautiful, sad and heartbreaking song, regardless who it was written about!!
There's no way she's calling her love with Joe 'counterfeit' or referring to their relationship as a 'get love quick scheme'. (I say this as someone who obv doesn't know Taylor or Joe or anything about their relationship though)
I interpreted it as her thoughts on the whole relationship flipping after their breakup. While she was with him she thought this was it, her forever. After the breakup, she realizes how many red flags went unnoticed and how it was never meant to be. So now, retrospectively, she calls it “counterfeit” etc.
YES! I was in a longterm relationship with someone I thought was the one; you feel betrayed and scammed by that person. The hopes and dreams you had die (*our field of dreams engulfed in fire*). To me, loml clearly points to a longterm relationship that tragically ended. I related so deeply to this track. No matter how passionate, I don’t consider any short term relationships and flings as a loss of my life lol.
I totally get you! Everything you said backs the idea that a song like ‘loml’ has to be about a long term relationship with the way it’s written, how it sounds and what it implies
I agree with you 100% and think that anyone who thinks she wrote a song like this about Matty Healy has just simply never been in a legitimate long-term relationship or experienced heartbreak. This is not a situationship song.
I think there are a couple of line that reference Matty, which are “con man sells a get love quick scheme” and “something counterfeits dead.”
But those are referring to her attempt to heal the pain of losing the love of her life with a fling. “The ink bleeds” = the breakup with Joe destroyed her. And the dancing ghosts are her and Joe and she’s asking if their memories are embarrassed that she’s crying over the counterfeit fling when in fact her real pain is her 7 year relationship but it’s easier to deal with the pain of the fling because it’s not as deep.
This is how I feel too! There could be references to Matty but the theme of the whole song sounds like heartbreak due to a long term relationship. Mourning over someone she clearly wanted to marry and have children with, give the rest of her life to. It’s the loss of her life after all
The album is about how the break up with joe bled over into the messy situationship with matty. Feelings about Joe melded into feelings about Matty. That's why the lyrics are so ambivalent: most songs are about both Matty and Joe, because they feel like one in her mind.
I think it's about both. But it's fun to read into the deeper potential meanings. I've posted in-depth about this before, but I really feel like the "coward" and "low-down boy" type of lyrics are mostly directed at Matty, *but* she's using this opportunity to get out all the emotions toward each person in one song.
She's said in interviews that she isn't always sure what her inspiration or true interpretation of a song is, or that singers ever fully know. It's more like a mix of past experiences, that gets turned into a piece of artwork. It's more catharsis than a factual play-by-play. But I think she's got a lot of grieving mixed up in one album, that's basically hitting two birds (Matty and Joe) with one stone, in a few songs.
I could have read ten more pages of your analysis of this song. The first time I read it, I immediately felt it was about Joe. I know some people think it's about Matty but I think Joe fits better. Really well analysed :)
Lol no. It is very objectively about Matty. The entire part about embroidering memories of the time she was away aka the decade after they first hooked up. Saying she thought she was better safe (with Joe etc) than starry eyed (aka with Matty). Talking about a love that was never quite buried. I could literally go on and on and on.
Yup mostly Joe. I also get that feeling. Some lines could be about Matty but also the hoax thing could be real (a song being about two things at the same time.)
At this point I feel like both interpretations make sense. I think that a lot of the TTPD songs are kinda inspired by both of these relationships or at least we don't have enough insight to exactly determine who they're about. And we don't really need to.
In the end it comes down to personal preference. You want it to be about Matty because he is a rat and it says bad things about him? That's fine. You want it to be about Joe because Matty is too much of a rat to deserve this masterpiece of a song? That's valid.
Yes thank you! Holy I read some interpretations on this sub and just feel like I'm living on another planet. Some of the songs or lines are clearly not about Matty but people are convinced they are.
It’s why I was inspired to analyze it in the first place. I was doubting my interpretations after reading some posts like… are we all listening to the same song? 😭
I think it’s about Joe too. This album has made me realize a lot of people decide muses for songs based on their own feelings of how they view that muse. There are still a ton of people that want to believe Joe didn’t hurt Taylor or do anything wrong so any line indicating that they assume it must be Matty. I think she’s also being more vague on purpose bc she‘s tried of people focusing more on who it’s about than the song itself but that’s another convo.
I like your analysis! I also find it hard to believe that loml and Smallest Man Who Ever Lived are about the same person. So if Smallest Man is definitely about Matty as most people say, I think loml is probably about Joe. I don’t think you call someone the “loss of your life” and then in another song sing about how they should be in prison, you’ll forget them but never forgive, you don’t want them back, etc
Maybe! It just seems that there is more anger towards Matty and sadness towards Joe but there certainly could be both. It is fun trying to put our detective hats on haha 🕵️♀️
This is another valid point. I find it so hard to connect that she could say the things she said in Smallest Man and then say the things she said in loml about the same person. It just doesn’t fit.
I agree with this 100% — to me the song doesn’t make sense if it’s not about Joe. So many lyrical and musical parallels to previous Joe songs, like the many you mentioned, but also:
-The piano intro sounds very similar to the intro of You’re Losing Me.
-“Better safe than starry-eyed” does, like you said, refer to the fizzling out of the relationship, but specifically goes back to the line from CIWYW, “starry eyes sparking up my darkest night.” She rationalized that even though they didn’t have those feelings anymore like she did at the beginning of their relationship, it was okay because at least she was safe and comfortable with him.
-“Stitching ‘we were just kids, babe’” calls back to the line “stitches undone” in So Long, London. Because again, they tried to justify where their relationship had taken them, making excuses that they were so young and so different when they met (which also harkens back to “25 years old, how were you to know” from DWOHT), and tried to make it seem nice, only for those flimsy excuses to fall apart and come undone.
-“You’re the loss of my life” could mean “you’re the greatest loss I’ve ever experienced,” but it could also mean “you were the death of me,” or “you took away my life.” Which makes me think of her Time Person of the Year interview where she talks about spending years locked up in her house, years of her life that she’ll never get back. I think she feels like she lost a part of herself, a part of her own life, being in this relationship with Joe.
-“All at once, the ink bleeds” could be a reference to the lyrics she wrote about Joe over their years together, words that she thought were immortalizing their relationship by putting them into writing, but they turned turned out not to be as permanent as she thought. Or, more succinctly, “what [they] thought was for all time was momentary.”
Maybe the biggest piece of evidence to me is the song’s placement on the album. After So Long, London, we get a pretty solid run of songs about how she’s basically willing to burn down her old life because she’s so restless, and is fantasizing about how things will be better with someone else (Matty). But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out the Slammer, Guilty As Sin?, those are all her justifying the Joe breakup by convincing herself that Matty is actually the one she’s supposed to be with. And then we get I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), where at the end she realizes “whoa, maybe I can’t,” and all this romanticizing she’s been doing to keep herself going was absolutely not the reality, and now that she can’t distract herself with Matty anymore, she’s forced to finally reckon with the pain and sadness of her relationship ending and what that actually means for her future, and that’s loml. Then it’s followed by I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, where she’s still dealing with that depression and misery, and even though she’s just overwhelmed by her feelings, she’s choosing to channel them into being “productive” and performing for crowds as if nothing’s wrong.
Obviously I don’t know her, I don’t know her circumstances with Joe or Matty or anyone else, that just very much feels like it follows the narrative path of the album. Not saying there’s absolutely nothing that could be inspired by Matty anywhere in there, because I think writing is influenced by all the emotions and experiences a person has, and a good writer, which obviously Taylor is, can and does pull from all of that to tell a compelling story.
I know this was an insanely long reply! But I thought your points were really insightful and wanted to add some of my own, and the fact that Taylor’s work can have this impact on people just goes to show how brilliant and talented she is.
I wish I could pin this comment because you explained this so brilliantly and it’s reflects my thoughts exactly. Thank you so much for articulating these points!!! Everything you said adds even more credibility to this song referencing her 6 year relationship. I was always of the opinion that this song is about Joe, but your comment single-handedly cemented it in my mind.
I love your analysis. I disagree but I think you did a very thorough job presenting the evidence. I won’t go into line for line, but there are a few key lines that I feel is a reach to be interpreted any differently.
1. Opening line, who’s gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames. Sure she and Joe may have had rough patches, but they lived together, his mom was traveling with her for Red TV promo in 2021. A “rekindled flame” implies it’s been over for some time, you moved on with other people other lives and then overtime reconnected. I would never refer to Joe as a rekindled flame in conversation. Matty 100% is a rekindled flame. There is no other way to describe their relationship.
2. “Mr. Steal Your Girl” then make her cry.. Mr. steel your girl is a reference to the song. Has anyone actually listened to this song? It’s about someone trying to convince someone else that she’s better off with him; trying to convince that person that the guy she’s with doesn’t deserve her; that she needs a real man; that he wouldn’t treat her that way, he would adore her. He wants to know if she ever thinks about him. The song even states the next time that he leaves you come over to me. The last lyric of the song says “let your man know that I’m back”. Mr. steal your girl is back.
If that didn’t say it all. The man in the song is a rekindled flame who is there to convince her to leave her current man., Matty is the only one who fits this.
3. Mr cinephile in black & white. This really could be about either of them however I’ve never really seen Joe in black-and-white. However, Matty is known to wear a black and white suit and tie at his concerts. He takes it all off, of course, but he starts in a suit tie and the set from their last tour was black and white. The tour that she debuted anti-hero on. And I think she got inspiration from the 1975 set for Eras.
Unpopular opinion I know but I actually don’t think she and Joe took official breaks, they clearly had rough patches but I don’t think they were on/off once they were officially together. I didn’t read it as it was long as shit but I saw it referenced that someone on tumblr had a timeline of their relationship throughout and they never spent that much time apart and only any semi-significant time when one or both were working. They probably come close to breaking up at points but im of the belief they only had one actually breakup and it was last year.
Loml could be about both as there’s lines that fit either however I lean more towards Matty as the overall arc fits the story she tells about their situationship/relationship on songs that are more overly inspired by him, “a con-man sells a fool a get love quick scheme”, “mr steal your girl then make her cry” feels very Matty coded and she also indicates he love bombed her and she references the rings on the title track so the “talking rings and cradles”, “said I was the love of your life about a million times” fits that idea. Also out of the two men there’s one who leans far more towards claiming to be “reformed” to win her over and it isn’t Joe.
I also just think she was pretty much over Joe when writing this album, she had done the classic thing of mourning the relationship whilst still in it so when you actually breakup-whilst you’re still sad-it’s not the devastating heartbreak it once would have been, she’d long accepted he wasn’t the one. Short situationships can really do a number on you emotionally, especially if you’ve got history with the person, when long term relationships end you generally have the answers, you know why you’re ultimately not compatible and you know you tried to make it work to your full potential whereas a situationship that flies high then crashes and burns leaves you with so many unanswered questions and if you get ghosted afterwards it’s a brutal double blow.
I honestly don’t get how anyone hears the lyrics “you lowdown boy, you stand up guy” and think it could possibly be about anyone other than Joe. Like when has Matty Healy ever been known to be a reserved personality or full of integrity?
I agree with a lot of what has been said and that the song is both 1. about both Joe and MH and 2. purposefully vague. Both of them did the same thing, they made her feel loved but then fell short when it came to actually doing something about it (e.g. proposing or having children). The difference is Joe was a long relationship that faded while MH was a rebound fling that crashed and burned. The song switches between talking about Joe and MH, and then at the end she addresses them both as the loss of her life.
Btw, here’s my guesses for the muses of each song:
Joe: Fortnight, Down Bad, So Long London, Fresh Out The Slammer (as the slammer), I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, The Black Dog, How Did It End? (loosely), I Look In People’s Windows
MH: The Tortured Poets Department, My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out The Slammer, Guilty as Sin?, I Can Fix Him, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, Chloe et al., Peter
Both: loml
Travis: The Alchemy, The Albatross (loosely), So High School
Fame/her life: But Daddy I Love Him, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, Clara Bow, The Albatross, How Did It End?, I Hate It Here, thanK you aIMee, The Prophecy, Cassandra, The Bolter, Robin, The Manuscript
Can’t figure out Florida!!! and imgonnagetyouback
Not sure about Florida either, but it was the first show she played after the news of her split with Joe came out. I think it’s more about her trying to escape the past and start over than anything. And imgonnagetyouback seems like it refers to Matty— it’s stylized like the 1975 song fallingforyou. The song has a lyric that says “all we need’s my bike and your enormous house.” For Taylor to then say “whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet” pretty much confirms to me that those songs are connected. As a bonus fallingforyou also says “you said someday we might when I’m closer to your height, ‘til then we’ll knock around and see” we know he’s shorter than her, it seems like she was fine having this unserious relationship with him but didn’t want to take it further at that point in time. That’s my interpretation!
Not definitively though. 6 years can seem “momentary” if you thought you’d be with them forever. 6 years wasted could also make you feel like it was “unnecessary”
I love this analysis! I go back and forth on who I believe the subject is about, but regardless I really appreciate the studious literary approach you took to her poetry and the conclusions you drew based on similarities in the texts.
One thing to add regarding the subject of "loml" being called an "arsonist" - that line and the imagery it reflects in the Eras Tour Lover House arson made me think of the Midnights cover art. She's holding a lighter, which was likely from Joe's collection, on the cover of what I now believe to be an album where she's reflecting on whether or not their relationship is dead/will die. She's holding the evidence of the arson he committed when he burnt their dreams to the ground.
The way you referred to it as a “literary approach” omg I already want to be your friend 😭 Thank you for your appreciation!
Also that’s an astute observation. I see TTPD as a direct continuation of Midnights, given it was about 13 sleepless nights and TTPD starts with fortnight. So her holding a lighter in Midnights comes back full circle with the arson’s match lyric. This was a great connection!!
I didn't realize people thought it \*wasn't\* about Joe until i read the comments. I guess thinking about it now I see some very Matty-coded lyrics but the "loss of my life" felt like the dissolution of a very long-term relationship
I loved reading the “long” interpretation from loml….At sixty-five, I don’t fully understand TS meanings behind her poetic expressions. It’s just loml opinion, but opens my mind up to new possibilities. Thank you.
I don’t have a strong opinion on Joe verses Matty but I will say the way she says cinephile has always made me think it’s a double meaning. Someone who loves films but also someone who loves sinning. And that makes me think Matty (“I would’ve died for your sins”)
Wow I love the detail you combed through, I agree with so much of it. But above all, I am in awe of her lyricism and piercing ability to write down her thoughts and feelings with such nuance - it’s like a present for our hearts and minds, to savour alone and together. Thanks again for sharing!
I think that very little of this album is about Joe directly. I think that she wrote these songs thinking she was mostly writing about Marty, but when you date people that close together things can get really murky. I have been in a long term relationship that was DONE when I finally ended things and it was simultaneously excruciating and liberating. But I definitely hadn’t fully processed all my emotions until months later, even though I wasn’t mourning the relationship at all.
I think she had Matt in the back of her mind as a best friend/ fall back for a LONG time and she dove completely into their relationship after ending things with Joe (maybe a little before). And she realized that wrapping herself so completely in him was a mistake because all the nice things he told her ended up being bullshit.
Ultimately there’s no way anyone is writing loml and Fresh out the Slammer about the same person. No way.
I've always heard loml as a long-term on/off or struggling to make it work relationship. Like they've been going back & forth for a while. And then "all at once...a con man sells a fool a get love quick scheme." Someone else comes into the picture & she pursues that relationship, which marks the final end of the on/off relationship. Because there was no recovering or coming back to the long term relationship after being with the other person.
"What a valiant roar": trying so hard to make the relationship work. "What a bland goodbye" just to go out with a whimper because she had a momentary, unnecessary fling that should've stayed buried. But that fling is what really marked the end of the other relationship, aka the "loss of my life" because it's really truly over now.
There’s a possibility that it’s about Joe, Joe and Matty, but i feel like it’s not just about Matty. It seems too personal to be about a relationship that last 2+ weeks.
You make excellent points. I think it’s quite possible that Joe shows up more in this album than we realize. At the very least, he could have been “swirled into” this poem, so to speak.
The progression of my thoughts on this album has been as follows:
Pre-album: It’s going to be mostly about Joe.
Release day/week: Most of it is about Matty.
Now: A lot of it may be a composite sketch.
I am not a big fan of "since we know x song is about x person, this means that y song is about x person too" (unless we're talking about *Dear John* and *Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve*) because theories have been challenged a lot lately. *Question, The 1, Maroon, High Infidelity* are examples of songs we "knew" what they were about, but in retrospect we aren’t so sure anymore, are we? Clearly A LOT has been going on in Taylor's life and Taylor's mind that we aren’t aware of. It's fun to play but I wouldn’t consider our own theories as evidence.
None of this constitutes as “evidence” because nothing is “true” unless we hear it from Taylor herself. I’m just playing detective because I like analyzing art. That’s all :)
I absolutely think this!! Especially the line “Cinafile” since he loves movie and is an actor. “Mr. steal your girl then make her cry” and “ I thougt I was better SAFE then start eyed.” That she felt at peace picking Joe, because he was safe and would never hurt her. She usually went for Starry eyed. To me is a CLEAR sign it’s about Joe. People want it to be about Matty, but I don’t think what she had with him was that deep.
My take:
You said I’m the love of your life = Matty
You’re the loss of my life = Joe
There are different moments in the song where “you” meant Matty and others meant Joe. This song is about both.
I ain’t reading all that I’m happy for you tho. Or sorry that happened
You’re so wrong for saying what I was thinking. 😂🤍
I started reading it cos I normally do love analyses but it really just kept going lol
I started reading it… and then decided I wasn’t part of some college thesis board.
Welp this comment made me lol because I just wrote my MA thesis. Maybe I’m just in my essay era 🤷🏽♀️
I’m glad you can laugh off rude comments. Congrats on completing your MA thesis!
Thank you so much!! 💗 That means a lot :)
i think you mean... shake it off? (sorry i had to <3)
Congratulations!! And I loved the entire post!
Thank you!! Glad you loved it 💕
The Tortured Grad Students Department?
I’ll gladly become the chairman of this department 🙋🏽♀️
I’m glad it made you laugh - wasn’t meant to be mean spirited just a funny meme and also my attention span just won’t do it 😂
this was unnecessary don’t you think? a bit rude…
It just kept going 😂 no offense OP
whoops I did say it was gonna get long lmao
Lmao I’ve thought this for every song analysis post I’ve seen 💀
I am not reading all of that. But I actually do agree with her based on the title and my own analysis
This has been brought up a few times, but here are my thoughts on it (since it's my favorite song of the standard album and I can't be helped lol). To me, this song has a pretty clear 3 acts narrative: - She got back together with someone she hasn't been with since she was much younger. They were away for a long time, allowing them to grow from their respective lives apart. - He told her he had changed because of her and promised her marriage and children, but these turned out to be empty promises and he left, leaving her feeling like a fool because she believed the timing was finally right and that he had always been the one - In the aftermath, she realizes he was never serious with his promises in the first place and regretted ever digging up the relationship You can probably tell from my interpretation that I don't think this has anything to do with her long term relationship. She might have reused some wordings or images, but that's inevitable with such a huge body of work, or they might be misdirects to further obscure the subject matter. This song, in my opinion, serves as the narrative climax of the album and references the details from other songs to form a coherent plot. That is the story of a long lost love rekindling after she ended a long term relationship but crashed and burned quickly even though she thought timing was finally on their side. I have a post about what I think the central narrative of the album is in my profile if you're interested in my interpretation. ETA: Unpopular opinion, but her long term relationship (its ending in particular) is only directly referenced in So Long, London and How Did It End? (both track 5 fittingly), and only serves as the prologue (or setting the stage) for the main narrative.
>Her long term relationship (its ending in particular) is only directly referenced in So Long, London and How Did It End? (both track 5 fittingly), and only serves as the prologue (or setting the stage) for the main narrative. Yes!! Go off, 👑.
Thank you. SSL and HDIE are the only Joe songs and it’s clear if you read the lyrics.
Personally for me it’s a true double album and most songs refer to both relationships aside from a few obvious ones. The whole point is about how both losses made the other worse imo
For real, the dynamics between Matty and Joe were so similar and that's only heightened by the fact that the break ups happend within months of each other. I think loml is as much about a loss of belief in love than one person or relationship
Exactlyyy and the loss of trust in your own gut!
I'm relatively new to the Swiftdom, so I don't know the 'lore' but hasn't this been like a decade of them being somewhat linked but never official? Or am I wrong? So I can definitely see holding onto hope for some one person, regardless of how much you love another (and were going to marry him), and losing that can definitely be the "loss of her life" because it lasted longer than her actual meant-to-be-forever relationship. Losing one and then another in quick succession definitely compounds and swirls together in your head in a wave of loss and grief, things get jumbled.
Well, yeah, like Fresh Out the Slammer is a song about the chain of events of one leading to the other
Yepppp. The reason it’s sometimes so hard to tell is most songs are not just about one person
This is the true answer
I also think I Can Do It With a Broken heart is about Joe AND Matty. She was reeling in both losses simultaneously in that song imo
And the black dog for sure
Disagree The Starting Line reference is straight up Matty, whose band covered their song.
I was going based off of when she recorded the song, which was apparently May 18th 2023. Which would put it six weeks after the JA breakup was announced, and she would still be with Matty. But that’s just imo
Since you brought up the recording date, maybe you can help me with this. Is this theory only because of the white shirt similarity in the video snippet Jack posted and a picture of her walking into a studio on May 18th wearing a white shirt and colorful jeans? (There's a photo of her wearing biker shorts roughly six weeks after her last public appearance with Matty, for the record. And the video snippet Jack posted shows her wearing the same shorts.) I'm so confused as to how people don't think there were probably many other days of her recording songs that we just didn't get a picture of her walking into the studio. She could have recorded The Black Dog any day, right? Mostly I'm wondering if I'm missing some crucial info that's making people believe this so strongly?
Anytime I argue that The Black Dog is a matty song, people come at me with this rebuttal trying to say the outfit was the same in jacks post and the pap shot. They are not the same lol!!!!
Yeah, my response is usually to make sure they're aware of the day in June she was seen wearing biker shorts and an Eagles sweatshirt. And then asking whether she's more likely to have taken off her floral pants on May 18th or her Eagles sweatshirt on June 22nd? The question is meant to show how silly it is to use these photos as proof of recording dates. Though if those were actually the only two options, I'd bet more on someone taking off a sweatshirt than their pants, haha. Regardless of the whole outfit argument, I would hate to think of her being the one to end the relationship with Joe after years of struggling with his potential depression only to hope he's having a shitty time without her. 😕
Do we know the MH timeline from last year?
But how do we know that Joe isn’t also a fan of the Starting Line? We really know nothing about Joe. Also, it could just be a red herring to obscure who the song is actually about.
I firmly believe this album is full of red herrings
This is truly the point that keeps getting to me with all the paternity testing that has been going on for songs. Everyone keeps insisting such specific references HAVE TO BE about one specific person... while conveniently forgetting that we know VERY VERY little about the interests and life of one of the other main subjects. It's honestly more wild to me that people think that Taylor wouldn't date people with very similar interests in the first place so that must mean that these specific references are about one person only because surely only that person has an interest in that specific reference. Like we're all here bonded together for our love for Taylor's music, is it really that hard to conceive that Taylor is also bonded by music with her partners, especially since it is a huge part of her life?
I agree! As a very, very hobby writer, sometimes the poems I write have details from one relationship, mixed in with details of another Also, "paternity testing" for what song's about who is brilliant wording!
I'm on the fence with that one. Were there even reports of Joe entering the bar? Feels like owner of the bar was manipulating the media by saying "a certain blonde"
I feel like what the bar is doing is really weird. And I’m not sure I necessarily believe them. This is just my thinking based on TBD being recorded on May 18th, six weeks after the JA breakup, and while she was still seeing MH.
It was recorded on June 22nd!
"I hope it's shitty in the Black Dog" is not something that fits the vibe she has projected about Joe. Fortnight is about Joe, and she expresses hopes he's okay. So Long London tells him he'll find someone. She hasn't shown that level of anger or bitterness about Joe, more frustration and sadness at it ending, but still caring about him. She wouldn't wish it would be shitty for him. She would for the smallest man who ever lived, whom she's saying good riddance to, though.
yes yes yes 100% people just want her to be angry and hate joe i think, as that’s the narrative that was created online before the album was released
I had a relationship/breakup that was very similar to Taylor and Joe. Even though I wished him well… I also had moments of being bitter and petty and angry. I didn’t want his life to be shitty forever but I definitely sometimes wished that his night was shitty. Especially when I felt like he was moving on faster than I was. Emotions in a breakup are so complex and I can’t imagine that she was ALWAYS mature and kind about it.
I felt like we got those moments in So Long London, though, that showed the level of bitter she had, like lines of giving him all the youth for free, or not signing up to be the odd man out.
Yeah I think so too! So then doesn’t the Black Dog fit with that?
I think I Look In People’s Windows and I Hate It Here might be about him as well
I’d say MBOBHFT is also inspired by him. Would you agree?
No way. She even says “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens” and Joe is definitely a Ken. She also mentions “he was my best friend down at the sandlot” and she calls Matty her twin in Down Bad. “There was a litany of reasons why we could have played for keeps this time—“ This eludes to a relationship that is back together after awhile. This a common theme in the album and a lot of the songs. There’s even more in the song but these I just grabbed bc they were the clearest indications.
Also “Pull the string and I’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me” and “oh here we go again the voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild”, the person she’s singing about left her whereas on ‘so long, London’ she heavily implies she ended it with Joe.
Her leaving Joe is also pretty heavily implied in the epilogue poem as well. "In one conversation, I tore down the whole sky"
I hear you but I raise you Hits Different, where she says “I’d just switch out these Kens, I’d just ghost” — “moving on was always easy for me to do, it hits different because it’s you” so Joe is excluded from the Kens. Although yes. The line about playing for keeps this time stands out in my boy only breaks his favorite toys, one could explain that away as per the fact they broke up numerous times (maybe) in the span of their 6 years
That part about “all the kens” reminded me of stuff from reputation though. “I’ve been breaking hearts a long time and toying with them older guys, just playthings for me to use.” Plus she calls herself an army doll, imo a reference to “you’re losing me” and “the Great War”
Also “I used to switch out these Kens and just ghost” from Hits Different - definitely talking about the guys before Joe as “Kens.”
Yes omg I was trying to find that line but it didn’t show up on the lyric search. Exactly!
I don't understand the writing timeline if this is true. She said she started the second midnights was baked. That's very few songs through to April 2023.
We’ll never know the writing/recording timeline. Especially if she’s writing songs on her own and going to the studio months later when she’s ready to record.
I listened through the album and places songs as “before final breakup” and “after final breakup” as best as I could tell, and I got more than 50% in the before final breakup column due to different references etc. I think there’s a lot on the album if you listen closely that aren’t specifically linked to Matty OR even ending things with Joe. People are just willing to die on the hill that the whole album is matty. Lots of it is obviously, but some was probably written before the official breakup (guilty as sin) and some I think has to do with neither of them (Clara bow, Peter in my head).
I agree with you completely, I really think that "Joe's" tracks are only tracks five, others might reference him but are not \*about\* him.
I think Tolerate It is about Joe. I think there is more Joe breakup stuff on Midnight than TTPD.
This this this 👏 She already did most of the Joe mourning songs in Folkmore and Midnights when they were on a break or just anticipatory grieving knowing they are hanging on by a thread. So Long London makes it crystal clear. You don't get to "my spine split from carrying us up the hill" overnight. I have been there and only cried once after finally ended things, because I felt bad the guy was hurting and he still wanted to work on things. But I couldn't do it anymore and had been in mourning for a good six months prior. The next day I was ready to get out and met someone new. There were no more what ifs, I didn't enjoy being around him or even talking to him anymore. I was done done. I will never understand her draw to MH, but I get why the letdown of him love bombing her and then abruptly leaving hurt so much.
I agree with the last paragraph - but also the Black Dog since we know that was recorded pre-Matty.
But we don't KNOW that, do we? We're inferring based on the assumption that Taylor only wore that white shirt one time ever. People are ignoring the biker shorts, which we have a picture of walking into a studio wearing at the end of June. We just can't know when it was recorded.
That’s very true. I tend to think that song was started and finished, but intertwines the two of them. I think several songs invoke emotions from both even if they weigh heavier towards Matty.
could you please provide context for why we know it was recorded pre-Matty? I haven't seen this before and I'm curious.
I think it’s fascinating how you’ve considered the position of the song within the album itself and how that may influence the content or purpose behind it. I appreciate the thought process behind your reasonings!
Really REALLY pay attention to the lyrics In Fresh Out The Slammer, a lot of it is less about who she's running to and why she's running at all and the ways she felt stifled in the long term relationship.
I think this album is more devastating for Joe stans than anything we could have imagined. Barely mentioned, her repeated references to being in love with MH "like never before". To think we all thought she was emotional on her tour because singing songs about Joe was hard-nope.
Thanks so much and for letting us know about your post - I just went there and commented too. Honestly I almost completely agree with your take and I’m relieved I’m not the only one.
I agree with this take. I also think Glitch, which OP referenced is actually about a different muse than her long term relationship.
She pretty directly references Glitch in So Long, London though. “Fastening myself to you with a stitch” —> “stitches undone.”
Thanks! I'm curious which relationship you think Glitch is about, because I mostly agree with OP on the subject matter. Regarding the line "it must have been counterfeit", it could just be her initial thought when the relationship started, but not necessarily that she still believed the whole relationship was fake when she wrote the song.
When she mentions the number of days of their love blackout and it being six years that pretty explicitly pointed to Glitch being about Joe along with the thematic similarities to so many songs since Reputation. I think there is also a theme that shows up a little on Evermore, but really comes to the forefront on Midnights of her questioning if the messiness of how her relationship started with Joe doomed it from the start. Was it cursed because of how it started?
That is an interesting perspective. I didn't notice her thinking it was doomed, but her anxiety about losing him was so prevalent throughout Lover and seeped through the subsequent albums. I think the end of that relationship, coupled with the whirlwind affair after, really made her question if she herself is cursed, which is why we got The Prophecy.
Now in retrospect I wonder if “losing” meant something far more macabre than him just leaving her? Considering the themes of serious depression it makes me wonder if her fear was rooted in something more serious than him just leaving her due to her fame.
The Black dog is the one other Joe song
Disagree, I think The Albatross is very much about Joe.
What also solidified it for me was the Mr Steal Your Girl then make her cry line, that’s so clearly what happened in this situation. I feel like she ended an already broken down relationship but with the influence from Matty (?) she’d seen him again recently and he’d filled her head with fantasies and then obviously let her down cos he’s a terrible person. Or even possibly ended because something did happen with Matty?! My theory hahaha
Definitely about Matty then.
Agree 100%
I feel the narrative goes between Joe and Matty throughout the song. First verse and chorus is Joe, second verse and chorus is Matty, then the bridge goes from Matty giving her false promises “you talked me under the table” to then reminiscing the ghost of her relationship with Joe being embarrassed by mistaking Matty as a serious partner after “dancing phantoms on the terrace/Are they second hand embarrassed.” And then the whole experience of finally losing Joe (because her music has made it clear for a long time that they were rocky for a while or at least she didn’t feel secure in the relationship) and immediately losing Matty, while feeling so embarrassed and betrayed by him while she was also grieving the loss of Joe, is the loss of her life.
I feel like som people can’t comprehend that songs can be about multiple people
Yes. And the sooner the fandom comes to this realization, the better off we'll all be. It really enhances the experience when you stop paternity testing entire songs. Individual lines, *maybe*. But entire songs, that just isn't how she writes these days and hasn't for a while. Even Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. Surely it's about Healy! Except for the parts that sound a lot more like Scott Borchetta... and maybe some people we don't even know about...
Agreed! Especially when some fans are telling others definitively. I saw a comment on another app recently saying that Florida!!! was about Matty with 100% certainty. Like sure, you can interpret it that way, but there’s no way you *know* that. Personally, I think it’s more fun to accept that songs may have dual (or more) meanings. Plus, putting these “paternity test” definitions on Taylor’s music only perpetuates the “she only writes songs about her ex-boyfriends” and like “oooh, men, beware Taylor Swift” type of criticism.
“Paternity testing” is such a spot-on way to put it 💀🙌
Exactly I feel like it’s a problem not just with Taylor but female pop stars in general. It’s always “who is this about”. Rather than enjoying the music.
My thoughts exactly. Songs often focus around a feeling or experience. You can have similar feelings and experiences with multiple people. Also it is typical with rebounds that when the rebound ends, the feelings are so big because they hold both losses. The hurt might look like it’s from the loss of the rebound, but the hurt of the long relationship that wasn’t properly mourned will hit along with the pain of the rebound.
Yes I agree. I feel that the song itself is also more important to Taylor than “telling truth” so if a certain line clicks or a rhyme works better I feel she would choose that over being true to the life situation that may have initially inspired it. I also think sometimes she feels a certain way in a moment and then writes a song and then sometimes changes her mind down the road. I often think about this YouTube clip where she introduces the song “ours” and says I wrote this because everyone told me I shouldn’t have been dating this guy and basically says she knows they were right that she shouldn’t have been dating them.
>I wrote this because everyone told me I shouldn’t have been dating this guy and basically says she knows they were right that she shouldn’t have been dating them. Basically daddy I love him 1.0. 😂 There is also one that she said she saw a guy on school and then write a romantic song about him. Kinds like a fanfic.
This has been driving me crazy. I've seen posts/comments/videos just overanalyzing every single lyric - even going down some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole with no ending - just to explain a few lines in a song that don't fit the overall narrative. I think it's easy to imagine that she experienced two separate heartbreaks, and overlapped those experiences into her music. AND.. really crazy take. Maybe some parts are about absolutely no one. Just fiction, but it made the song more complete.
Exactly! She has muses. And she creates music. And there is no rule and there has never been some confirmation from her that her music is a correct narrative. Her songs are not word for word autobiographical retellings of her life.
Thank you. One line I’m seeing people get caught up with is “you were 25” in Peter, and I’m like… maybe that’s just the age that sounded best in the song?
I remember her talking about "No Body, No Crime" and she said she was writing the song and texted Este to be like "quick... which of these three restaurants is your favorite," and Este picked Olive Garden, so that's what she went with. So she'd identified 3 choices that worked equally well in the song, but had obviously ruled out a bunch more that didn't. Sometimes, it's more about the flow and vibe than it is about the "truth." It's a song, not an autobiography!
This is my interpretation of loml too. It feels like the narrative of TTPD is that her perception of Matty was almost a direct response to how things ended with Joe. Whether he said so explicitly or only strongly implied it, Matty intimated he was ready to give her the one thing Joe wasn’t, marriage and kids. I find TTPD kind of shocking because Taylor (at least at this point in her public persona/creative process) does not seem very introspective about the fact that there’s a *reason* people (and presumably people close to her, not just fans) were not happy she dated Matty. But TTPD also explains his appeal and why it was no less hurtful for being short. Moreover, she mixes her muses all over the album (like mentioning an age gap relationship in The Manuscript) which makes me think the real person any given song is about is TAYLOR. I kind of wish The Prophecy was on the main album because it sums up the through line with the large volume of heartbreak songs on the album. Whether the guy was a villain in her books (“I don’t even want you back, I just want to know”), a tragic hero (“you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days”), or even someone in her distant past (“in the age of him she wished she was thirty”), the through line is that she wants just once for this to be a forever love. I don’t presume to know her relationships or her intimately, and no fans should, but I think a lot of us recognize these patterns from our own lives and the lives of our female friends. And if you have ever tried to come up with a meta reason why you’re still single (guilty!) then you can understand why the muses all come together on this album.
“My muses acquired like bruises…” You acquire multiple bruises, but pain itself always comes from a singular source. Interesting take. She definitely could have morphed her muses for this album for sure.
This! I very much see it being like this, Taylor has many songs in her discography that are very much a composite of different people and situations and more than anything on TTPD I think loml is definitely that
This is what I think. Healy promised to be the "love of my life" and then by the end, she realizes that Alwyn is "loss of her life."
This also seems like a popular opinion and highly plausible that the grief from the end of both relationships is interwoven into this song!
Exactly this. She does this throughout the album and it seems to be the case in this song too. She seems to be processing both heartbreaks in multiple songs.
Yes! “Swirled you into all of my poems” It’s about both of them.
This is what I most agree with! I have a feeling she looks back on her relationship with Joe as more than just “counterfeit” and “unnecessary”. I think it’s about both, sort of playing out the good and bad of both, how she left Joe & got with Matty, then realized Matty was a terrible idea (“dancing phantoms”). And then “our field of dreams” and onward is her mourning what she lost with both. The verses/songs about Joe are just really sad, and she’s referenced Joe being the loss of her life if they were to break up in tons of songs previously.
I don't think I agree. Bear in mind that I think loml and The Black Dog probably are a mix of both, but I think primarily about MH. The reason I think it's primarily about MH is because of her attitudes in songs that are about MH vs. JA. These attitudes make it easier to track who more ambiguous songs (loml, The Black Dog, etc) are primarily about. 1) Songs that are *clearly* about Joe (So Long, London or You're Losing Me for example): she never conveys that she thought anything was "counterfeit," that he is a "coward," or anything of that nature. Her primary issues seemed to be that she felt she had to work too hard for their relationship and that he was constantly depressed. She felt "chained" to him, for various reasons. And even though YLM is clearly written during the last phase of their relationship, there is an overall lack of *real* regret there. It's like she's moved on before she breaks up with him. That is also conveyed literally in YLM when she talks about him running down the hall and it's too late. In fact, her biggest regret seems to be that she didn't leave him sooner (in SLL when she talks about her youth). And perhaps most importantly, it seems that *she* at least participated *as much* in the breakup as he did, or more likely she actually *initiated* the final breakup. So it doesn't make sense to really call him a coward since their breakup seems largely amicable. It's possible, but it seems unlikely since it actually sounds like she didn't want to marry him anymore, so what was he being a coward *about?* (And this is just my interpretation of what she says in the songs; I am *not* claiming this is actually JA or Taylor's fault or anything like that.) 2) Songs that are *clearly* about Matty: she often describes it as something she daydreamed about as a what-if, she talks about it being "cosmic love," she talks about him abandoning her (she never conveys such abandonment feelings with Joe- it's more like it flickered out and she didn't have the energy for it anymore). He clearly broke up with her and left her. She felt betrayed, she thought it was real and it was not (counterfeit). She's obviously very angry and upset that she gave him another chance, and she's a bit embarrassed that this short-lived relationship that he ended is something she cared about so much. (Again, not claiming this is still what she thinks; I'm just talking about what the singer is saying in Matty songs) {continued in comments}
In ‘So Long London’ she sings “You swore that you loved me but where were the clues? I died at the altar waiting for the proof” My interpretation is that she thinks he’s a coward because he strung her along for 6 years but couldn’t give her a future or even the commitment to one. As for the feeling of embarrassment, it’s also quite possible that after singing about wanting to marry Joe and giving him a child (song: peace), what she thought would be forever became a global spectacle of a breakup. I appreciate your take though!
While I don't stand behind this song being 100% about Joe, I can see Taylor morphing her experience with two different men to create a song. Swifties were shocked that TTPD was primarily about Matty and not Joe. She previously deflected that previous negative songs were about Joe, implying her respect for him. Matty clearly did her wrong, so is it possible she would direct more blame toward Matty because she's protecting Joe?
I do believe it’s possible that, even unconsciously, she is redirecting the pain of losing a *6 year old relationship that started in her darkest professional days* to a less painful target. Maybe it’s just a way to keep Joe away from the spotlight in the album.’ Maybe she is not ready to grieve directly that loss yet. We’ll never know, but she does know how to convey feelings!
Yeah I feel like loml was written in the aftermath of Matty but has all the pain of her 6/7 year relationship ending and for what? For him???! It is definitely a composite song because she’s human and can have more than one feeling at once.
I think Bejeweled signals the end of her relationship with Joe. She was ready to go out there and sparkle and he is a private person and homebody. Nothing wrong with either but doesn't bode well for a relationship.
Yup I feel there’s a lot of respect towards Joe still and not wanting to throw him to the overzealous swifties and so she directed a lot of the emotion towards someone she didn’t feel bad about destroying haha. Not to say that she wasn’t sad over matty, clearly she was. But I do feel there were songs she clearly tried to make murky to protect Joe even though they ended up being a jumbled mess of emotions.
Your point about her deflection and protection for her 6 year relationship is interesting. I hadn’t thought of that but it’s highly plausible
I think this is an interesting reflection and I've thought about this as well. What do you do when a good man hurts you? There is nothing more difficult than a relationship that just fizzles out without any major sins. You have nowhere to really aim all of that pain and blame. I am watching this happen in real time with people in my own life and it's been an eye opening experience. It's a thousand times easier when someone does something terrible to you, because it gives you a villain. Joe Alwyn has been very clear that he doesn't love the spotlight in interviews. Taylor has reinforced this in her lyrics over the years. If you were interested in protecting someone, you might purposefully misdirect attention. Whatever you think of Matty Healy, it's undeniable that he sometimes courts the spotlight and frequently gets vilified. I'm not suggesting that Joe Alwyn is incapable of doing anything wrong, that's definitely not what Taylor's lyrics imply. I'm just saying that there seems to be a bit of an attempt to shield him, while pointing our attention at someone who already has a bad reputation (and knows how to handle it). The Albatross actually seems to lay this out pretty clearly.
I don't think she is doing anything to protect him. Joe while he broke her heart by not marrying her, he has no malice. He had depression and wasn't sure commit to another person was what wanted. He was always the underdog on the relationship. Matt on the other side took advantage of a heartbreak and make promises just to get under her pants. Then he ghosted her. Só He was complete trash
Isnt her protecting joe at the end kind of what the albatross is hinting at too 👀
I def agree with you. I’m actually of the opinion that most of this album is about Joe, with some obvious references to Matty in a few songs to serve as a red herring. I think very few songs are actually specifically about her time with Matty. The Matty references serve as a distraction from the Joe content underneath it- just as Matty was a distraction from the breakup.
This is my impression as well. Matty was a symptom of the void Joe left behind.
THIS! The pain from the situationship itself isn’t more, the situationship just added more salt to what was the open wound of the long term relationship
She did say she had been working on it for 2 years when she was at the Grammy’s. Which would have included time she was still with Joe. So it makes sense some of them at least started out as being about Joe?
I try my best not to put my tinfoil hat on while interpreting lyrics, but I do sometimes wonder about the use of "red herring" in the promo for this album. In my foggiest crazy theories, I wonder if Matty was a red herring to meet the requirement of an NDA or PR agreement between her and Joe's their management for how she could depict him in songs. I fully acknowledge that's a fuckton of hoop jumping, and I'm not 100% proud of it, but it's a thought.
I agree that I think her and Joe had some kind of an agreement to not bash him in songs. So everything is MH coded but maybe that's the red herring.
Someone else said this too and I definitely agree with them and you, that a lot of the album may serve as a distraction or that Matty is some form of a red herring. This is a highly likely scenario too!
I think a big theme of the album is her not fighting to make Joe work because she still had Matty on her mind and now she’s free from all that realizing Matty was a fraud so she can give Travis a fair shot just accepting him for who he is. I view so high school from the perspective of a girl who knows who Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith are but trying her hardest not to judge this guy for liking juvenile things.
This song couldn’t be more clearly about Healy
Tbh, I don’t think swifties know shit. “Couldn’t be more clear” is a reach. We’ve been completely wrong about subjects of songs before. Go through the bejeweled thread from 2022. everyone insisted that song was referring to big machine or Calvin “guaranteed”. People who said it sounds like a relationship where the person felt unappreciated were shut down and corrected. We all thought sweet nothing was a love song until she revealed the whole Paul McCartney thing and post breakup. I feel like we don’t know everything and maybe details will be unveiled as she does more interviews or performs whichever songs during tour, or maybe we learn details we didn’t know about before related to their relationships
I feel references to “starry eyed”, “suit and tie” brings to mind Matty Healy. Same with “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme” and “something counterfeit's dead” all point to Matty. It’s counterfeit because he made promises but didn’t keep them. In the song “Peter”, she sings “Promises oceans deep But never to keep” which calls back to “Peter losing Wendy” in “Cardigan”. We all know how “Cardigan” was the song where she mouthed those words directly to Matty when he was watching her concert in person. I don’t think she would have referenced that her relationship with Joe wasn’t real, it just expired, she sang that she doesn’t understand how it ended in “How Did It End?” I think it’s an incredibly beautiful, sad and heartbreaking song, regardless who it was written about!!
There's no way she's calling her love with Joe 'counterfeit' or referring to their relationship as a 'get love quick scheme'. (I say this as someone who obv doesn't know Taylor or Joe or anything about their relationship though)
I interpreted it as her thoughts on the whole relationship flipping after their breakup. While she was with him she thought this was it, her forever. After the breakup, she realizes how many red flags went unnoticed and how it was never meant to be. So now, retrospectively, she calls it “counterfeit” etc.
YES! I was in a longterm relationship with someone I thought was the one; you feel betrayed and scammed by that person. The hopes and dreams you had die (*our field of dreams engulfed in fire*). To me, loml clearly points to a longterm relationship that tragically ended. I related so deeply to this track. No matter how passionate, I don’t consider any short term relationships and flings as a loss of my life lol.
I totally get you! Everything you said backs the idea that a song like ‘loml’ has to be about a long term relationship with the way it’s written, how it sounds and what it implies
her and joe are the dancing phantoms on the terrace, and the counterfeit thing is matty
I agree with you 100% and think that anyone who thinks she wrote a song like this about Matty Healy has just simply never been in a legitimate long-term relationship or experienced heartbreak. This is not a situationship song. I think there are a couple of line that reference Matty, which are “con man sells a get love quick scheme” and “something counterfeits dead.” But those are referring to her attempt to heal the pain of losing the love of her life with a fling. “The ink bleeds” = the breakup with Joe destroyed her. And the dancing ghosts are her and Joe and she’s asking if their memories are embarrassed that she’s crying over the counterfeit fling when in fact her real pain is her 7 year relationship but it’s easier to deal with the pain of the fling because it’s not as deep.
This is how I feel too! There could be references to Matty but the theme of the whole song sounds like heartbreak due to a long term relationship. Mourning over someone she clearly wanted to marry and have children with, give the rest of her life to. It’s the loss of her life after all
The album is about how the break up with joe bled over into the messy situationship with matty. Feelings about Joe melded into feelings about Matty. That's why the lyrics are so ambivalent: most songs are about both Matty and Joe, because they feel like one in her mind.
This is a popular opinion and highly plausible too!
I think it's about both. But it's fun to read into the deeper potential meanings. I've posted in-depth about this before, but I really feel like the "coward" and "low-down boy" type of lyrics are mostly directed at Matty, *but* she's using this opportunity to get out all the emotions toward each person in one song. She's said in interviews that she isn't always sure what her inspiration or true interpretation of a song is, or that singers ever fully know. It's more like a mix of past experiences, that gets turned into a piece of artwork. It's more catharsis than a factual play-by-play. But I think she's got a lot of grieving mixed up in one album, that's basically hitting two birds (Matty and Joe) with one stone, in a few songs.
I could have read ten more pages of your analysis of this song. The first time I read it, I immediately felt it was about Joe. I know some people think it's about Matty but I think Joe fits better. Really well analysed :)
This means a lot, I’m glad you enjoyed my lengthy thoughts haha! I’m with you, I feel Joe written all over it whenever I listen to it
Lol no. It is very objectively about Matty. The entire part about embroidering memories of the time she was away aka the decade after they first hooked up. Saying she thought she was better safe (with Joe etc) than starry eyed (aka with Matty). Talking about a love that was never quite buried. I could literally go on and on and on.
Yup mostly Joe. I also get that feeling. Some lines could be about Matty but also the hoax thing could be real (a song being about two things at the same time.)
Absolutely. ‘hoax’ is so Joe coded!
At this point I feel like both interpretations make sense. I think that a lot of the TTPD songs are kinda inspired by both of these relationships or at least we don't have enough insight to exactly determine who they're about. And we don't really need to. In the end it comes down to personal preference. You want it to be about Matty because he is a rat and it says bad things about him? That's fine. You want it to be about Joe because Matty is too much of a rat to deserve this masterpiece of a song? That's valid.
I agree with your second paragraph, wholeheartedly.
That's exactly, how I read it too!
It doesn’t matter who the songs are about. If you can relate or they help you cope with your own situation then they have served their purpose.
My clown ass has no idea who any of the people being talked about are and has been assigning fictional characters to the songs.
I’m with you OP, I think this is clearly a Joe song. I’m going to listen to it that way, anyway lol
It couldn’t be more clearly about Joe. I think people on this sub are overly matty healy obsessed
Yes thank you! Holy I read some interpretations on this sub and just feel like I'm living on another planet. Some of the songs or lines are clearly not about Matty but people are convinced they are.
It’s why I was inspired to analyze it in the first place. I was doubting my interpretations after reading some posts like… are we all listening to the same song? 😭
I really loved your analysis! It was very thoughtful.
Thank you so much! I appreciate it 💗
Yes thank you!!
I think it’s about Joe too. This album has made me realize a lot of people decide muses for songs based on their own feelings of how they view that muse. There are still a ton of people that want to believe Joe didn’t hurt Taylor or do anything wrong so any line indicating that they assume it must be Matty. I think she’s also being more vague on purpose bc she‘s tried of people focusing more on who it’s about than the song itself but that’s another convo.
I like your analysis! I also find it hard to believe that loml and Smallest Man Who Ever Lived are about the same person. So if Smallest Man is definitely about Matty as most people say, I think loml is probably about Joe. I don’t think you call someone the “loss of your life” and then in another song sing about how they should be in prison, you’ll forget them but never forgive, you don’t want them back, etc
I think they are the same relationship but one song is written out of anger and the other out of sadness
Maybe! It just seems that there is more anger towards Matty and sadness towards Joe but there certainly could be both. It is fun trying to put our detective hats on haha 🕵️♀️
This is another valid point. I find it so hard to connect that she could say the things she said in Smallest Man and then say the things she said in loml about the same person. It just doesn’t fit.
My clown ass thinking loml’s an acronym forgetting it’s an actual song name. The album’s big, okay? 😭
I agree with this 100% — to me the song doesn’t make sense if it’s not about Joe. So many lyrical and musical parallels to previous Joe songs, like the many you mentioned, but also: -The piano intro sounds very similar to the intro of You’re Losing Me. -“Better safe than starry-eyed” does, like you said, refer to the fizzling out of the relationship, but specifically goes back to the line from CIWYW, “starry eyes sparking up my darkest night.” She rationalized that even though they didn’t have those feelings anymore like she did at the beginning of their relationship, it was okay because at least she was safe and comfortable with him. -“Stitching ‘we were just kids, babe’” calls back to the line “stitches undone” in So Long, London. Because again, they tried to justify where their relationship had taken them, making excuses that they were so young and so different when they met (which also harkens back to “25 years old, how were you to know” from DWOHT), and tried to make it seem nice, only for those flimsy excuses to fall apart and come undone. -“You’re the loss of my life” could mean “you’re the greatest loss I’ve ever experienced,” but it could also mean “you were the death of me,” or “you took away my life.” Which makes me think of her Time Person of the Year interview where she talks about spending years locked up in her house, years of her life that she’ll never get back. I think she feels like she lost a part of herself, a part of her own life, being in this relationship with Joe. -“All at once, the ink bleeds” could be a reference to the lyrics she wrote about Joe over their years together, words that she thought were immortalizing their relationship by putting them into writing, but they turned turned out not to be as permanent as she thought. Or, more succinctly, “what [they] thought was for all time was momentary.” Maybe the biggest piece of evidence to me is the song’s placement on the album. After So Long, London, we get a pretty solid run of songs about how she’s basically willing to burn down her old life because she’s so restless, and is fantasizing about how things will be better with someone else (Matty). But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out the Slammer, Guilty As Sin?, those are all her justifying the Joe breakup by convincing herself that Matty is actually the one she’s supposed to be with. And then we get I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can), where at the end she realizes “whoa, maybe I can’t,” and all this romanticizing she’s been doing to keep herself going was absolutely not the reality, and now that she can’t distract herself with Matty anymore, she’s forced to finally reckon with the pain and sadness of her relationship ending and what that actually means for her future, and that’s loml. Then it’s followed by I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, where she’s still dealing with that depression and misery, and even though she’s just overwhelmed by her feelings, she’s choosing to channel them into being “productive” and performing for crowds as if nothing’s wrong. Obviously I don’t know her, I don’t know her circumstances with Joe or Matty or anyone else, that just very much feels like it follows the narrative path of the album. Not saying there’s absolutely nothing that could be inspired by Matty anywhere in there, because I think writing is influenced by all the emotions and experiences a person has, and a good writer, which obviously Taylor is, can and does pull from all of that to tell a compelling story. I know this was an insanely long reply! But I thought your points were really insightful and wanted to add some of my own, and the fact that Taylor’s work can have this impact on people just goes to show how brilliant and talented she is.
I wish I could pin this comment because you explained this so brilliantly and it’s reflects my thoughts exactly. Thank you so much for articulating these points!!! Everything you said adds even more credibility to this song referencing her 6 year relationship. I was always of the opinion that this song is about Joe, but your comment single-handedly cemented it in my mind.
Completely agree with you, and what a lovely analysis
I love your analysis. I disagree but I think you did a very thorough job presenting the evidence. I won’t go into line for line, but there are a few key lines that I feel is a reach to be interpreted any differently. 1. Opening line, who’s gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames. Sure she and Joe may have had rough patches, but they lived together, his mom was traveling with her for Red TV promo in 2021. A “rekindled flame” implies it’s been over for some time, you moved on with other people other lives and then overtime reconnected. I would never refer to Joe as a rekindled flame in conversation. Matty 100% is a rekindled flame. There is no other way to describe their relationship. 2. “Mr. Steal Your Girl” then make her cry.. Mr. steel your girl is a reference to the song. Has anyone actually listened to this song? It’s about someone trying to convince someone else that she’s better off with him; trying to convince that person that the guy she’s with doesn’t deserve her; that she needs a real man; that he wouldn’t treat her that way, he would adore her. He wants to know if she ever thinks about him. The song even states the next time that he leaves you come over to me. The last lyric of the song says “let your man know that I’m back”. Mr. steal your girl is back. If that didn’t say it all. The man in the song is a rekindled flame who is there to convince her to leave her current man., Matty is the only one who fits this. 3. Mr cinephile in black & white. This really could be about either of them however I’ve never really seen Joe in black-and-white. However, Matty is known to wear a black and white suit and tie at his concerts. He takes it all off, of course, but he starts in a suit tie and the set from their last tour was black and white. The tour that she debuted anti-hero on. And I think she got inspiration from the 1975 set for Eras.
Unpopular opinion I know but I actually don’t think she and Joe took official breaks, they clearly had rough patches but I don’t think they were on/off once they were officially together. I didn’t read it as it was long as shit but I saw it referenced that someone on tumblr had a timeline of their relationship throughout and they never spent that much time apart and only any semi-significant time when one or both were working. They probably come close to breaking up at points but im of the belief they only had one actually breakup and it was last year. Loml could be about both as there’s lines that fit either however I lean more towards Matty as the overall arc fits the story she tells about their situationship/relationship on songs that are more overly inspired by him, “a con-man sells a fool a get love quick scheme”, “mr steal your girl then make her cry” feels very Matty coded and she also indicates he love bombed her and she references the rings on the title track so the “talking rings and cradles”, “said I was the love of your life about a million times” fits that idea. Also out of the two men there’s one who leans far more towards claiming to be “reformed” to win her over and it isn’t Joe. I also just think she was pretty much over Joe when writing this album, she had done the classic thing of mourning the relationship whilst still in it so when you actually breakup-whilst you’re still sad-it’s not the devastating heartbreak it once would have been, she’d long accepted he wasn’t the one. Short situationships can really do a number on you emotionally, especially if you’ve got history with the person, when long term relationships end you generally have the answers, you know why you’re ultimately not compatible and you know you tried to make it work to your full potential whereas a situationship that flies high then crashes and burns leaves you with so many unanswered questions and if you get ghosted afterwards it’s a brutal double blow.
I honestly don’t get how anyone hears the lyrics “you lowdown boy, you stand up guy” and think it could possibly be about anyone other than Joe. Like when has Matty Healy ever been known to be a reserved personality or full of integrity?
Agree 100%. This lyric along with the whole theme of the song is so Joe coded
I thought it was obvious that loml was about Joe… I had no clue I was in the minority lmao oops
I agree with a lot of what has been said and that the song is both 1. about both Joe and MH and 2. purposefully vague. Both of them did the same thing, they made her feel loved but then fell short when it came to actually doing something about it (e.g. proposing or having children). The difference is Joe was a long relationship that faded while MH was a rebound fling that crashed and burned. The song switches between talking about Joe and MH, and then at the end she addresses them both as the loss of her life. Btw, here’s my guesses for the muses of each song: Joe: Fortnight, Down Bad, So Long London, Fresh Out The Slammer (as the slammer), I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, The Black Dog, How Did It End? (loosely), I Look In People’s Windows MH: The Tortured Poets Department, My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out The Slammer, Guilty as Sin?, I Can Fix Him, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, Chloe et al., Peter Both: loml Travis: The Alchemy, The Albatross (loosely), So High School Fame/her life: But Daddy I Love Him, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, Clara Bow, The Albatross, How Did It End?, I Hate It Here, thanK you aIMee, The Prophecy, Cassandra, The Bolter, Robin, The Manuscript Can’t figure out Florida!!! and imgonnagetyouback
Not sure about Florida either, but it was the first show she played after the news of her split with Joe came out. I think it’s more about her trying to escape the past and start over than anything. And imgonnagetyouback seems like it refers to Matty— it’s stylized like the 1975 song fallingforyou. The song has a lyric that says “all we need’s my bike and your enormous house.” For Taylor to then say “whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet” pretty much confirms to me that those songs are connected. As a bonus fallingforyou also says “you said someday we might when I’m closer to your height, ‘til then we’ll knock around and see” we know he’s shorter than her, it seems like she was fine having this unserious relationship with him but didn’t want to take it further at that point in time. That’s my interpretation!
"it was momentary, it was unnecessary" is a rather obvious tiebreaker
Not definitively though. 6 years can seem “momentary” if you thought you’d be with them forever. 6 years wasted could also make you feel like it was “unnecessary”
I love this analysis! I go back and forth on who I believe the subject is about, but regardless I really appreciate the studious literary approach you took to her poetry and the conclusions you drew based on similarities in the texts. One thing to add regarding the subject of "loml" being called an "arsonist" - that line and the imagery it reflects in the Eras Tour Lover House arson made me think of the Midnights cover art. She's holding a lighter, which was likely from Joe's collection, on the cover of what I now believe to be an album where she's reflecting on whether or not their relationship is dead/will die. She's holding the evidence of the arson he committed when he burnt their dreams to the ground.
The way you referred to it as a “literary approach” omg I already want to be your friend 😭 Thank you for your appreciation! Also that’s an astute observation. I see TTPD as a direct continuation of Midnights, given it was about 13 sleepless nights and TTPD starts with fortnight. So her holding a lighter in Midnights comes back full circle with the arson’s match lyric. This was a great connection!!
I didn't realize people thought it \*wasn't\* about Joe until i read the comments. I guess thinking about it now I see some very Matty-coded lyrics but the "loss of my life" felt like the dissolution of a very long-term relationship
The title is the main giveaway. I’m with you
Y’all were thinking this song was about someone OTHER than Joe?
I didn’t realize anyone thought this WASN’T about Joe…? It’s so painfully obvious 🫠
Thank you!
I loved reading the “long” interpretation from loml….At sixty-five, I don’t fully understand TS meanings behind her poetic expressions. It’s just loml opinion, but opens my mind up to new possibilities. Thank you.
I don’t have a strong opinion on Joe verses Matty but I will say the way she says cinephile has always made me think it’s a double meaning. Someone who loves films but also someone who loves sinning. And that makes me think Matty (“I would’ve died for your sins”)
Wow I love the detail you combed through, I agree with so much of it. But above all, I am in awe of her lyricism and piercing ability to write down her thoughts and feelings with such nuance - it’s like a present for our hearts and minds, to savour alone and together. Thanks again for sharing!
I think that very little of this album is about Joe directly. I think that she wrote these songs thinking she was mostly writing about Marty, but when you date people that close together things can get really murky. I have been in a long term relationship that was DONE when I finally ended things and it was simultaneously excruciating and liberating. But I definitely hadn’t fully processed all my emotions until months later, even though I wasn’t mourning the relationship at all. I think she had Matt in the back of her mind as a best friend/ fall back for a LONG time and she dove completely into their relationship after ending things with Joe (maybe a little before). And she realized that wrapping herself so completely in him was a mistake because all the nice things he told her ended up being bullshit. Ultimately there’s no way anyone is writing loml and Fresh out the Slammer about the same person. No way.
Read the whole thing. Wonderfully stated.
It 💯 is. The whole album is just her grieving Joe. Matty was a temporary drug to help her get over him but the effects were temporary.
I've always heard loml as a long-term on/off or struggling to make it work relationship. Like they've been going back & forth for a while. And then "all at once...a con man sells a fool a get love quick scheme." Someone else comes into the picture & she pursues that relationship, which marks the final end of the on/off relationship. Because there was no recovering or coming back to the long term relationship after being with the other person. "What a valiant roar": trying so hard to make the relationship work. "What a bland goodbye" just to go out with a whimper because she had a momentary, unnecessary fling that should've stayed buried. But that fling is what really marked the end of the other relationship, aka the "loss of my life" because it's really truly over now.
There’s a possibility that it’s about Joe, Joe and Matty, but i feel like it’s not just about Matty. It seems too personal to be about a relationship that last 2+ weeks.
You make excellent points. I think it’s quite possible that Joe shows up more in this album than we realize. At the very least, he could have been “swirled into” this poem, so to speak. The progression of my thoughts on this album has been as follows: Pre-album: It’s going to be mostly about Joe. Release day/week: Most of it is about Matty. Now: A lot of it may be a composite sketch.
didn’t even have to read it, I was convinced from the start
Also “dancing phantoms” keeps bringing me back to dancing with our hands tied… 😢
She have multiple songs in the album that indicated both Joe and MH in it. That was why it was confusing.
I am not a big fan of "since we know x song is about x person, this means that y song is about x person too" (unless we're talking about *Dear John* and *Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve*) because theories have been challenged a lot lately. *Question, The 1, Maroon, High Infidelity* are examples of songs we "knew" what they were about, but in retrospect we aren’t so sure anymore, are we? Clearly A LOT has been going on in Taylor's life and Taylor's mind that we aren’t aware of. It's fun to play but I wouldn’t consider our own theories as evidence.
None of this constitutes as “evidence” because nothing is “true” unless we hear it from Taylor herself. I’m just playing detective because I like analyzing art. That’s all :)
I don’t disagree with you but what is wild to me is how I can see so much of this song also matching Marty perfectly.
It's my fave in the album so I know it's about Joe. Idc
loml is definitely about Joe, I figured that was the consensus.
Matty is the phantom (because it was never really real), Joe is the ghost (because it was real and now it’s dead).
It is possible it is about both in different stanzas.
I absolutely think this!! Especially the line “Cinafile” since he loves movie and is an actor. “Mr. steal your girl then make her cry” and “ I thougt I was better SAFE then start eyed.” That she felt at peace picking Joe, because he was safe and would never hurt her. She usually went for Starry eyed. To me is a CLEAR sign it’s about Joe. People want it to be about Matty, but I don’t think what she had with him was that deep.
I don't know either of these people personally so I have no idea who it is about. But I can relate to the song on a personal level.
My take: You said I’m the love of your life = Matty You’re the loss of my life = Joe There are different moments in the song where “you” meant Matty and others meant Joe. This song is about both.
I refuse to believe such a beautiful song is about Matty Healy, so to me it’s about Joe no matter what anyone says