I've loved you five summers now honey, but I want em all! Taylor Swift's seventh album Lover represented a fresh start and the first page in a new chapter of her career. In the album's foreword, Taylor wrote the thesis behind Lover; "I've decided that in this life, I want to be defined by the things I love - not the things I hate, the things I'm afraid of, or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. Those things may be struggles, but they're not my identity. I wish the same for you."
This album is a love-letter to love itself in every form. Throughout the eighteen songs, her longest album up to that point, she writes about all of the "captivating, spellbinding, maddening devastating red, blue, gray, golden aspects of it". Although now five years removed, much of her feelings surrounding the time that inspired it have likely changed, nothing can take away the pure love and joy she was expressing when she was making it. When music like this is put out in the world, it tends to take on a life of it's own and become ingrained into the stories of our lives. All of Taylor's music tends to have that impact, with this album especially transcending the original intention of which it was written and became a piece of so many other's love stories.
Some of the most beautiful love songs she has written are on this album, which is saying a lot since that topic has been her specialty for nearly two decades now. It has some of the absolute greatest songs in her entire discography - "Cruel Summer", "Death By A Thousand Cuts", "Cornelia Street", "The Archer" - just to name a few. For those songs alone, Lover can easily be a contender as one of my top favorite albums by Taylor.
So many of the themes and lyrics that make up this album have been revisited and referenced in every album she has released since. Many songs she went on to write in the years to follow Lover's release share many lyrical and sonic connections to this album. Midnights was perhaps the most telling of all, one that with time has come to show the complexities and unraveling of the love that inspired so much of this music years prior. It was very much a product of all of the doubts and sleepless nights that she tried to sugarcoat on this album.
This era of Taylor's career was also an interesting transition period when looking back all these years removed. Lover was the first album she released under Republic Records, after leaving her previous label of 13 years, Big Machine Records. That alone was a very significant moment in her career and very much shaped the future of her as an artist at the time. This was the first time in her career that she 100% owned the masters and publishing rights for the music she was making. Tied into the promotion of Lover, Taylor was very outspoken with the falling out between her and Big Machine Records. Alongside that, she began to vocalize her intentions to re-record her first six albums in a pursuit to regain control over the rights for her entire catalog up to that point. Of course, today we all know these re-recordings as Taylor's Version and it has been an incredibly successful venture for her. Before she would dive into the process of re-recording and re-releasing her back catalog a couple of years later, Taylor started off this new journey with Republic Records with a lighter, happier era than where she left off in 2017.
The Lover era did get cut short though due to the pandemic starting just a few months after it's release. For many years, there were only a couple of live performances of this music and just a few music videos that were released around summer 2019. I often wonder what it would have been like if we could have seen a fully realized Lover era from Taylor at the time, it is such a great album that never really got it's full moment to shine because of the pandemic. Of course, that would have meant never getting some of the best music she has ever made with folklore and evermore less than a year later, which absolutely transformed her career and brought her artistry to new heights. Those are also two of my favorite albums of all time, so I can't imagine a world in which those albums don't exist either. Since then, she has put out a total of nine albums and counting, which is crazy to think about. Lover did get its moment years later throughout The Eras Tour, with "Cruel Summer" especially experiencing a huge resurgence as the opening song of the setlist. This album was also the introduction into Taylor's new way of releasing music, featuring progressively longer track lists, as well as faster turnarounds from creation to the songs being out in the world. Because of that, the topics and emotions are all still very current to her life in that moment by the time it is released.
It all started though with what is now a very strange and interesting blip in Taylor's catalog, "ME!", which served as the lead single off of Lover and the first song she fully owned the masters to. For better or worse, it also remains among the most divisive, but important, songs in Taylor's discography for many reasons. "ME!" is definitely a cute and uplifting song, meant to be a celebration of self-love and confidence. I appreciate the positivity and the sentiment behind making a song like this. With Lover celebrating every kind of love, it was really fitting for there to be a song about loving yourself on it like this, as cliché as it may be at times. When she announced the song on Good Morning, America, Taylor said, "'ME!' is a song about embracing your individuality and really celebrating it and owning it. I think that with a pop song, we have the ability to get a melody stuck in people’s heads, and I want it to be one that makes them feel better about themselves." The song also features Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco, which was also the first time a collaboration served as a lead single for one of Taylor's albums.
Who would have thought that the first glimpse we got into the era, which went on to become one of her most beloved and commercially successful, would have started with a song like this when there are objectively about a dozen better options? Upon it's release, "ME!" garnered a lot of negative reviews, which honestly made it one of the few misses in her career. My personal opinion on the song is not nearly as negative or dramatic as I've seen from others online, but to me it still doesn't even hold a candle to any of the other lead singles she's put out. It's not her worst song by any means, but looking back on it now, I view it more as just a kind of a campy, fun piece in Taylor's catalog that fell victim to bad marketing. If it wasn't the lead single and wasn't meant to be this big comeback for her, I don't think anyone would really have a strong opinion of the song either way honestly. Ever since the Lover era, Taylor has never again released a stand-alone single outside of the full album. I think that approach works a lot better for an artist like Taylor at this point in her career since the listeners can go in blind to the full body of work and not really have any preconceived notions of what the record may or may not sound like.
However, I do see now looking back why she may have been compelled to start the era with "ME!" instead of any of the other incredible songs that are featured on this album. It feels like this was the song that she put out in hopes of proving to her former label that she could make it without them, that the driving power behind Taylor's success was always because of her own talents - a clear message to those that she used to work with that likely doubted her new venture. That's a sentiment that has followed through in a lot of her music to follow, a lyric that comes to mind is "He's got my past frozen behind glass, but I've got me", which is from a song she would write the following year called "it's time to go". As much as I think that there were way better options from this album to be the lead single, in hindsight I do see the possible personal intentions behind why she ended up going with it too. At the same time though, so much of this song is just kind of silly and half baked, which is a shame because the verses are actually well-written and heartfelt, but the rest of it just kind of takes away from that. There was a clip from her Miss Americana documentary of her writing this song in the studio with producer Joel Little and when she played it on the piano, it almost felt like a completely different song. There was almost a layer of sadness that is hidden by all of the cheesy, maximalist production that we got with the final product.
One thing about Taylor is that as much as she excels at writing a heart-wrenching emotional ballad, she's just as good at writing pop anthems that are as clever as they are infectious, Lover is probably the strongest example of that in her entire discography. The dichotomy of her artistry is one of the many reasons why she is as successful as she is because of her ability to seamlessly switch between the two.
Lover starts off with the simple, yet impactful, statement of "I Forgot That You Existed" - a song that depicts a very different frame of mind than where she left off with the bulk of Reputation. During the album release party with iHeart Radio, Taylor talked about why she wanted to start the album with this song and for the first time talked about the events that inspired the creation of Reputation. She said, "...Reputation was pretty much like a coping mechanism. Reputation was like going through all the stages of grief over the loss of one's reputation; kind of like throwing a funeral for something that maybe wasn’t even good for you to have in the first place. In doing that, and in picking the first song and writing the first song on this album, I wanted to complete the cycle of grieving, almost, and the cycle of when you go through some drama or some frustrating stuff in your life where a relationship ends, or you're going through this turmoil in your life, there's all these phases you through. And then, when you're really done with it, you hit indifference." It serves as the transition between those two very distinct eras of her career, to formally close that chapter of her life one last time before moving onto the real theme of the album. She sings, "It isn't love, it isn't hate, it's just indifference".
"I Forgot That You Existed" is a song about not letting your past define you and not letting other people's opinions of you define your own self-worth either. There is also a strong message of not getting caught up in the pain that other's have inflicted on you either, a theme that follows through into much of the album.
"May you write down your feelings and reflect on them years later, only to learn all the trials and the tribulations you thought might kill you... didn't. I hope that someday you forget the pain ever existed," Taylor wrote in the foreword for the album as advice to the listener.
Of course, the brightest shining moment of not only this album, but among all of Taylor's work, is "Cruel Summer". Although she has released hundreds of songs over nearly two decades, I can confidently say that this is easily ranked at the top of the list of best songs she has ever made. "Cruel Summer" was co-written with her frequent collaborator and primary producer of Lover, Jack Antonoff, as well as first-time collaborator St. Vincent. They are three of my favorite songwriters of all time, so it was destined to be magic when they got together to make this song. As the second track, it introduces so many of the recurring themes that string throughout so much of the rest of the album. The energy on this song is almost palpable, there's nothing else like it. As much as Lover is about happiness, love and romance, a lot of it is also balanced with these feelings of pain, fear and desperation too. "Cruel Summer" is sort of a mix between both of the very distinct sides of the album.
"This song is one that I wrote about the feeling of a summer romance, and how often times a summer romance can be layered with all these feelings of, like, pining away and sometimes even secrecy. It deals with the idea of being in a relationship where there's some element of desperation and pain in it, where you're yearning for something that you don't quite have yet, it's just right there, and you just, like, can't reach it," she said during her iHeart Radio album release party. She and Jack revisited this sort of fast-paced ranting type of writing on the bridge, a call back to one of their first collaborations ever, "Out Of The Woods" from 1989. It is literally the definition of pop perfection, as so much of their work together is.
It's powerful and razor sharp, paired with a dramatic performance in a way unlike anything she has ever recorded before. One of the best moments of the song is the bridge, when all of these emotions and fears of what's going to happen next reaches a climax. "I'm drunk in the back of the car and I cried like a baby comin' home from the bar, said, 'I'm fine,' but it wasn't true, I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you," she sings. At the end of the bridge she cries out, " I screamed for whatever it's worth 'I love you, ain't that that worst thing you ever heard?'"
"Cruel Summer" was immediately the fan-favorite of the album and in the year's following it's release continued to gain more and more momentum in a way none of her other songs ever have before. It was never released as an official single and experienced a very organic rise over the course of the past five years. It was intended to become a single in 2020 in promotion of her Loverfest Tour, which ironically actually ended up being the cruelest summer yet. For obvious reasons, the rest of the Lover era plans were cancelled in early 2020, including the tour, and she instead moved forward with working on new music during the pandemic instead. "Cruel Summer" was never even performed live until The Eras Tour started in 2023, which opens the show and became a defining moment of the set. It had a steady resurgence throughout that year and in October 2023, it even reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts four years after its release. It became the tenth number one song of her career and the first for the Lover album. For "Cruel Summer" to achieve that years after its release (not even during the summer, either) is proof of how universally loved this song is.
"I’m really, really proud of this song, because it's always been very hard for me to write love songs that weren't about love, and like, pining, love and secrecy, love and fear," Taylor said during her iHeart Radio album release party. "If I wasn't writing 'Love Story,' which wasn't even about my own life; like really, it was about movies I had seen, and Romeo and Juliet, and sort of a fragment of it was my own life. But, I haven't really been able to write a pure 'Oh my god I love you' love song, and this is the one that I'm the most proud of." I love the way she wrote this song to highlight all of the mundane everyday things can make life feel like a fairytale.
The bridge is so stunning, as well. "Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? With every guitar string scar on my hand, I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover," she sings, which she wrote as if they were wedding vows. "My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue, all's well that ends well to end up with you".
Track five on all of Taylor's albums has a history of being among the most personal and sentimental songs for her on each album. In this case, it feels like "The Archer" is a depiction of who Taylor is underneath it all and is amongst her most inherently personal and introspective songs she has ever released. It is so honest and vulnerable, really stripping back the layers of every part of herself. "The Archer" is an honest look at her experiencing phantom fears of becoming the villain in her own life, trying to not self-sabotage everything. It depicts her in this cycle of spiraling and dealing with imposter syndrome, thinking everybody sees right through her. The production is so understated and beautifully captures the mood of the song. "Easy they come, easy they go, I jump from the train, I ride off alone," she sings in the pre-chorus. "I never grew up, it's getting so old, help me hold on to you".
"...if you ever find something really great, or a situation that is solid, or a situation where your trust isn’t being broken...sometimes you have to deal with your demons from all those times that it didn't work," Taylor said when she performed in on BBC Radio 1. "You have to stop yourself from thinking the worst is always going to happen. And this is a song that touches on anxiety, and how to break patterns and cycles that aren't healthy, because we learn a lot in life." It's one of the best songs she and Jack Antonoff have ever made together, which at this point is over a decade of incredible work of collaborations. "All of my heroes die all alone, help me hold on to you", is one of my favorite lyrics she has ever written and one that plays such a pivotal role in the narrative of this album. That specific lyric also connects in such a special way to lyrics from "Perfect Places" by Lorde, "All My Heroes" by Bleachers, and "New York" by St. Vincent too, all of which were also co-written and produced by Jack Antonoff. Back in 2021, I had the most incredible and surreal experience getting to meet Jack in a special Bleachers event on the rooftop of Electric Lady Studios, the place where all four of those songs were made. During the Q&A, I got a chance to ask him about that lyrical connection and what the hero theme meant to him when working on all four of those songs. The theme of heroes, specifically dealing with the loss of one or becoming one for yourself, is a subject so interesting to me that has always drawn me to each of those songs and the lyrical depth behind them. I loved getting to hear his perspective on that, especially since I never heard him talk about in any other interviews before. It was honestly one of the most exciting moments of my life that I still can't believe actually happened! I'd love for you to check out Jack's full response and the rest of the amazing day here.❣️
With this album, Taylor does largely separate herself from a lot of the specific drama and heartache at the center of Reputation, but there are still a few moments throughout Lover where she references some of it though, just in a more indirect way. On "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince", she shares a more metaphorical retelling of that time in her life - a songwriting method she would continue to explore in the coming years on albums like folklore and evermore. She writes it through the lens of a fictional high school. "This song is about disillusionment with our crazy world of politics and inequality," Taylor told Spotify. "I wanted it to be about finding one person who really sees you and cares about you through all the noise. The cheerleader chants are actually my voice doing a twist on the 'Go! Fight! Win!' chant."
Around the time of Lover's release, Taylor started becoming more vocal publicly about politics and even shaped an entire documentary called Miss Americana around it. She was specifically inspired to write this song following the 2018 Midterm elections, as well as her remorse for not using her platform to endorse Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. "American glory faded before me, now I'm feeling hopeless", she sings. In an interview with The Guardian, she talked about the particularly bad space she was in during that time in 2016, "I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn't. I was literally about to break," she said. "I felt just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance. I feel really remorseful for not saying anything." In another interview with Vogue, she explained further how she felt she may have a negative impact if she were to endorse Clinton. "The summer before that election, all people were saying was 'She's calculated. She's manipulative. She's not what she seems. She's a snake. She's a liar.’ These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? 'Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women.'"
At other points on the album, Taylor continues to share more pointed social commentary about the state of the world and the injustices that women and the LGBTQ+ community face. On "The Man", she sharply points out the differences in the way women are perceived and expected to act, while men are not held to that same standard. "I'm so sick of running as fast as I can, wonderin' if I'd get there quicker if I was a man and I'm so sick of them comin' at me again, 'cause if I was a man, then I'd be the man," she sings in the chorus. She told Vogue, "It's a thought experiment of sorts: 'If I had made all the same choices, all the same mistakes, all the same accomplishments, how would it read?"
Taylor specifically writes about it through the lens of her experience in the entertainment industry and the often unfair way she has been treated in the media through the years. "It was a song that I wrote from my personal experience, but also from a general experience that I’ve heard from women in all parts of our industry," Taylor said in her Billboard Woman of the Year speech. "And I think that, the more we can talk about it in a song like that, the better off we'll be in a place to call it out when it's happening. So many of these things are ingrained in even women, these perceptions, and it's really about re-training your own brain to be less critical of women when we are not criticizing men for the same things."
"You Need To Calm Down" was also written as another anthem of self-love and advocating for equality and the LGBTQ+ community. She references everything from homophobia, to sexism, to internet culture. "You just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace and control your urges to scream about all the people you hate, 'cause shade never made anybody less gay," she sings in the second verse. The song is very catchy, bright and bubbly, as most of the singles were leading up to the release of Lover. "The first verse is about trolls and cancel culture," Taylor said in an interview with Vogue. "The second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other." In another interview, she added "It's about how I've observed a lot of different people in our society who just put so much energy and effort into negativity, and it just made me feel like, 'You need to just calm down, like you're stressing yourself out. This seems like it's more about you than what you're going off about. Like, just calm down." 
Lover is also made up of some of the sweetest pop songs Taylor has ever written. They literally are radiating with pure love and joy within each song. I love the cheeky and fun lines from "I Think He Knows", a song about the rush that comes with experiencing the early stages of a new love. "It's like I'm 17, nobody understands," she sings, "He got my heartbeat skipping down 16th Avenue". I also love her delivery of this song in particular, her vocal inflections add so much to it. That paired with Jack's signature synth production truly makes it the perfect pop song.
"Basically, I was playing around with the idea of quiet confidence. There's something so sick about quiet confidence; somebody who, they're not arrogant, they're not cocky, like, that's obnoxious," Taylor said at the iHeart Radio album release party. "But, there are certain people who just walk in and they don't need to be arrogant because there’s something beaming from within them that they probably aren't even in control of."
"Paper Rings" is a continuation of that same love story, one that reminisces on all of the memories they've made together and how far they've come since they met. "The moon is high like your friends were the night that we first met, went home and tried to stalk you on the internet, now I've read all of the books beside your bed," she sings in the opening lines of the song. The song takes the feeling of being so in love with someone that nothing else matters as long as you're with them, which she also talked about at the iHeart Radio album release party. Taylor said, "...your whole life you talk with your friends about how, like, 'Oh my God. Do you wanna get married? What do you want your ring to look like? What kind of ring do you want?' I don't know, I just feel like if you really love someone, love someone, you'd be like, 'I don’t care.' And so, it talks about that concept as the hook."
Taylor has definitely been known to love a London boy or two (or three) through the years, one in particular was the muse behind the best love songs on this album and many others she wrote around this time. On the eleventh track, she dedicates "London Boy" to that relationship, which is such a cute and catchy love song. She spent the bulk of her time in London with him for many years, so this song is kind of an ode to not only him, but also the city they lived in together. "You know I love a London boy, I enjoy walkin' Camden Market in the afternoon, he likes my American smile, like a child when our eyes meet, darling, I fancy you," Taylor sings in the chorus. It's such a joyful moment of this album.
London has served as the backdrop for so much of Taylor's music over the years. Just like New York City, it has kind of become a character in itself throughout all of her art. To close out this chapter of her life officially in the aftermath of this relationship ending, Taylor gave one final farewell to him and the city they lived in for so many years on one of the heaviest moments on her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department, with a song called "So Long, London". Throughout that song, she is questioning his love and unwilling to fully commit to her with the line, "You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waitin' for the proof". It brings a stark contrast to the bliss and hopefulness that songs from Reputation and Lover had, but these problems have been alluded to in hindsight throughout Midnights too. Specifically on "You're Losing Me", she sings "I wouldn't marry me either, a pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her", is the line in particular that felt the most telling of where it went wrong. "So Long, London" is such a heart wrenching song, the frustration and pain in her voice is evident. That was her final ode to him, finally letting go of a relationship that has ran its course and just wasn't meant to be. It is bluntly written, she's not holding anything back anymore. She isn't necessarily heartbroken over him anymore on that song, more so annoyed and hurt that the place she loved for all of these years will never be the same for her. "And I'm just getting color back into my face, I'm just mad as hell 'cause I loved this place for so long, London". It is quite sad to listen to the progression of their love story through her music, especially those two songs. 
"Cornelia Street" very much personifies all of the anxieties and fears that lie underneath many of these very beautiful, heartfelt love songs. She sings about the fear of this relationship ending before it hardly even began, terrified of heartache she will be left with in the aftermath. It is named after a street in New York City that she lived on for a brief period in 2016. This was also around the time she started a new relationship with the London boy that would go on to shape much of her work for the next several years. This is truly one of the best songs she has ever written. It details the early days of their relationship, all of the "sacred new beginnings that became my religion". She sings about never wanting there be an end to their love, but if there ever were to be, she knows she will never be the same again. New York City, more specifically the place they made so many formative memories together on Cornelia Street, would never be the same for her either. It is very sad to listen to now, especially in the context of all of the music she made after this point in time. "That's the kinda heartbreak time could never mend, I'd never walk Cornelia Street again," she sings. "And baby, I get mystified by how this city screams your name," is one of my very favorite lyrics Taylor ever wrote, there is so much emotion and meaning in that single line.
"It's about the things that took place, the memories that were made on that street. I rented an apartment there, and just wanted to write a song about all the nostalgia of, you know, sometimes in our lives we assign, you know, we kind of bond our memories to those places where those memories happened," Taylor recalled in an interview on Elvis Duran's morning show. "It's just something we do if we romanticize life, which I tend to do. And so, I wrote this song about going back over the memories of things that happened in this particular place, and it ended up being one of my favorite songs."
Another one of the greatest songs she has ever made is the intricately written and produced "Death By A Thousand Cuts". Although so much of this album just radiates pure joy and love, Lover also does delve into every facet of a relationship, including the conflicting feelings following a breakup.
This is one of the several songs on this album that was given a whole new perspective in the years to follow the album's release. A lot of music from Lover, folklore, and Midnights specifically were given so much more context following the release of the sprawling 31 track double album The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology in 2024. "If the story's over, then why am I still writing pages", she sings on "Death By A Thousand Cuts". The entirety of The Tortured Poets Department is the result of their story not being over yet, very much digging up the grave another time. The lyric from "Death By A Thousand Cuts" that sticks out the most is "I look through the windows of this love, even though we boarded them up, chandelier's still flickering here 'cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not". That directly mirrors so much of her 2024 album, especially a deep cut from The Anthology called "I Look In People's Windows". "I look in people's windows in case you're at their table, what if your eyes looked up and met mine one more time?" she sings in the final lines of that song. Taylor has never been known for her subtlety in her work at all either, she writes in a way that you will know exactly what each song is referencing and makes the lyrical connections very obvious too.
She can also really build a bridge like no other, "Death By A Thousand Cuts" is easily one of the best she has ever written. "My heart, my hips, my body, my love, tryna find a part of me that you didn't touch, gave up on me like I was a bad drug, now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club," she sings, "Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand, paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans, my time, my wine, my spirit, my trust, tryna find a part of me you didn't take up, gave you too much, but it wasn't enough, but I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts". Structurally, it is one of the strongest examples of her incredible songwriting and among her best vocal performances ever too - maybe only to be rivaled by the 2019 live version recorded in Paris.
This is a song about simultaneously too much and too little for someone, a common theme that she has explored in her writing through the years. It also beautifully captures the great love she and this person shared and how it was "one for the ages". These feelings continue to linger, wondering what could have been if they stayed together. As she went on to show us in future works, those emotions would continue to linger for years to come too. "I ask the traffic lights if it'll be alright, they say, 'I don't know'," she sings in the final lines of the song.
Lover also has several truly devastating moments in which she opens up about topics I would have never imagined she would have delved into with such detail. "Soon You'll Get Better" is one that I really can't ever listen to because it is truly one of the most heart-wrenching songs I have ever heard in my life. This song is about her mom's cancer diagnosis in 2015 and her re-diagnosis again in 2018. Taylor has said this was one of the hardest songs she has ever written and "it was also a family decision whether to even put it on the album," as she said in a live stream prior to the album's release. Anyone that has gone through something similar with their own parents, or anyone in their family, will maybe be able to find some kind of comfort or connection to these really heavy feelings being put into words so eloquently.
"Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus too," is one of the many devastating lyrics from this song, as well as "I'll paint the kitchen neon, I'll brighten up the sky, I know I'll never get it, there's not a day that I won't try". Another lyric that is just so heart shattering and makes me tear up just thinking about is, "And I hate to make this all about me, but who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do, if there's no you?"
"Soon You'll Get Better" also features backing vocals from The Chicks, which is one of her mom's favorite bands and a major inspiration for Taylor to start a career in country music. "The Dixie Chicks taught me that you can have a strong female voice, saying whatever she wants in music, and experimenting with having a very feminine aesthetic, but very tough resilience to them," Taylor said in the iHeart Radio album release party. "And their musicianship, the way that they played their instruments made me wanna play an instrument."
As a complete body of work, though, I think I would love Lover even more if it were just a little bit shorter and more concise in the track list. She also worked with a lot of different producers throughout the album from song to song, so parts of it stick out as inconsistent spots in the narrative. I think she has really found a group of collaborators that bring out the best in her talents with the music she makes now, which is primarily with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Even though her albums have gotten progressively longer (at 31 songs and counting) and she also releases more frequently, they never lack in consistency sonically when she works with them. It's not even that any of the songs are bad necessarily on this album, but there is generally a notable difference between the songs she wrote and produced with Jack versus almost everything else. It does start to drag on a bit in the last third of the track list and I don't tend to return to some parts of Lover often. Songs like "Afterglow" and "It's Nice To Have A Friend" stick out to me as some of the less memorable moments of this record for those reasons.
Lover ends on "Daylight", which is a beautiful showcase of Taylor's growth and maturity as an artist over the years. This song really encapsulates the theme of this album and connects back to so much of her past work. In 2012, she released Red, which was largely focusing on this massive heartbreak she experienced in her early 20s. A major theme of Red is her relationship to love itself and all of the ways it has made her happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time. The title track of that album describes this brief relationship she was in that was as passionate and fiery as it was toxic, but had a lasting impact on her. Red is what she made in the aftermath of trying to process these intense, conflicting feelings of this short-lived romance. She opens with the thesis of the entire album on the first track called "State Of Grace", "Love is a ruthless game, unless you play it good and right".
How she views love has changed significantly since that point, as she describes throughout the entirety of Lover. Now she sings, "I once believed love would be burnin' red, but it's golden like daylight". It's the antithesis of everything she thought she wanted out of love.
"I wrote 'Daylight' about the idea that, Reputation, for me, aesthetically and thematically, felt like a very, very long night of storms and volcanic eruptions, floods, hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, endless fire, an asteroid hit. And so it felt like trying to figure out what's what throughout all that," Taylor said at the iHeart Radio album release party. "I did gain sort of an insight that I didn't have before, which was like, even though all this stuff has happened and you, at times, feel really down about stuff that's happened in your life or your past or whatever, letting it go is a really, really, really, important step. Even if you never fully get there. Reminding yourself to let things go as they present themselves, even if you can't seem to let them go yet, is a helpful exercise. And realizing that you can find love in literally the worst times in your life. You can find friendship in the worst times in your life, you can find the best things in your life that you will have forever in temporary, really awful times that will pass."
In terms of everything that came after it, "So Long, London" plays another pivotal role in connecting back to "Daylight". This was a love that she once described as the feeling of seeing daylight for the first time, but will now just be looked back on as a "moment of warm sun". The final line of "So Long, London" really hits so hard, as she sings that they "had a good run...but I'm not the one," to which she finishes the song with, "you'll find someone". That song serves as an important reflection of their time together and closes the chapter fully on this time in her life.
"Daylight" really feels like the clouds hovering over her in the aftermath of making Reputation have finally lifted and she is now fully able to usher in this new phase of her life and career. She sings about wanting to "step into the daylight and let it go", unwilling to be held back anymore by herself or anyone else. "I've come to a realization that I need to be able to forgive myself for making the wrong choice, trusting the wrong person, or figuratively falling on my face in front of everyone," she wrote in a 2019 essay for Elle.
For those reasons, Taylor almost titled the album after this song because of how much it meant for her to write it. This is such a pivotal song in the narrative of the album, it is such a gorgeous way to close out Lover. The final moments of Lover ends with a spoken word outro of Taylor reading an excerpt from the album's prologue - "I wanna be defined by the things that I love, not the things I hate, not the things I'm afraid of," she says, "I just think that you are what you love"
Lover was a fresh page for the next chapter of Taylor Swift's career, which ended up being a major turning point for her. This album is a celebration of love in every form and a staple in Taylor's ever-growing discography. Something that makes her music so special is that it was hers when she wrote it, her story, her life, her love - and now that it's out in the world, it has become a part of everyone else's stories too. There is something so beautiful about that connection so many feel to her music, which is especially true of Lover. The most important message of all to take away from this album is that we are what we love.
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Photo Credit: Taylor Swift, TAS Rights Management
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