One of my biggest complaints with Taylor Swift’s Reputation is that it seemed so scattered, like she was trying to do too much and settle too many beefs and position herself a certain way all at once. “Delicate” didn’t fit with “Look What You Made Me Do,” and on and on. I feel like… Lover may be the same way. Tell me how “ME!” relates to “The Archer” and this new single “Lover.” The Archer and Lover relate to each other and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Taylor wanted to make an album full of love songs and ballads, and then she added a few of the cheesiest upbeat pop songs alongside them. Anyway…I enjoyed “The Archer.” And I enjoy “Lover.” It’s just a sweet love song.
This is one of those situations where I really *get* what Taylor says about how she’s not respected for her songwriting skills. As I listened to this a third time (!!), I realized that I would love to hear other artists cover this – someone like Florence Welch would make this sound utterly bittersweet and sensual. But because Taylor is doing it, it will likely be dismissed as just a silly pop ballad.
So, it’s clearly about Joe Alwyn, yes? What do we expect for JoeTay later on this year? I still feel like we should expect an engagement.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I love it. It’s just so ridiculously sweet. It’s obviously about her relationship but it could be anyone in love. I listened to it last night when it premiered and caught myself singing “take me out and take me home” to my husband this morning.
I really love it, and it’s the first song she’s released from this album that I can say that about. I didn’t like the Archer at all when it first was released, it’s growing on me a little bit but I still don’t really like it. The other two were pretty meh.
also, does saying that she’s loved him for three summers now mean that she’s admitting that summer of 2016 and the Tiddlebanging was just a publicity stunt and she was secretly with Joe? because uhhh did she forget what She was up to three summers ago?
Maybe she just means summers of 2017, 2018, 2019. She probably definitely wrote it in 2018 though.
Yeah, considering the album was finished and announced back in April, I don’t think it should include this summer because she would have had to write it in 2018 or very early 2019 (especially since it’s the title track). That would be an excellent excuse, though.
I think, based off some of the lyrics from reputation, that she’s saying she fell for Joe when they first met, before they got together. There’s a line on rep that goes ‘I loved you in secret, first sight’ and she talks about meeting him when she had bleached hair & he had a buzz cut.
They met at the Met or before, she fancied him but they didn’t get together. I think she probably pursued him when she was properly single after she left Hiddleston.
I’m probably alone in this, but I don’t think Hiddleston was a publicity stunt. I think he was a rebound, a messy way to get over Calvin Harris. Not an upstanding way to behave, but most of us have been messy at least once in life.
I mean, in that case it’s not a cute look to basically say that you were in love with someone else while you were touring the whole world with your new boyfriend, but it is what it is. And if we’re saying they met at the Met or before, then that means she was still with Calvin, and then broke up with Calvin and got together with Tom – all while secretly being in love with Joe? If It wasn’t a publicity stunt then I feel bad for Tom. I have a hard time believing it wasn’t PR, because at the very least she did a lot of purposeful pap strolls and it coincided a bit too neatly with Kim’s receipts.
What I want to know is how she dated Calvin Harris for a year and he has managed not to have a single song written about him.
The song Getaway Car is about how Taylor used Hiddleston as her getaway car. So, you definitely aren’t alone. She has already admitted that is what happened.
@Lu If that’s the case, she’s probably just rewriting history to romanticize things. Of course it was love at first sight while she was still with another man, it’s so much more dramatic that way!
I like The Archer a lot, it’s certainly her most introspective song
She did write a song about calvin (allegedly?) but got someone else to sing it
Little Big Town – Better Man
Better man is a really good song.
It seems you’re right: She’s dating Joe since september 2016. So that mean the song is about Tom Hiddleston.
Damn…this is a good song. There is a wistful quality to the lyrics and some really lovely melodic parts. Definitely one of my faves from her.
Tay-Tay is growing on me as she gets older. I think she looks really good here.
Love the songs acoustic vibe but the lyrics left me void. I guess the beat and acoustic vibe was so good that the lyrics needed to be a bit stronger.
I think she looks great.
I really liked this one, the best one from the album yet. But it really makes me laugh how she makes it seem like Gorgeous Joe is the most beautiful man and that every girl is in love with him lmao oh to be young and in love! (No sarcasm, it’s cute actually)
But yeah, The Archer and Lover go well together but the other two were some… bad choices.
The album is supposedly super long, like 20 tracks, so maybe in the grand scheme the album is cohesive but I don’t see it yet. The Archer and Lover are great, and they work for her but I just don’t see how Me! and YNTCD fit in this era.
It is long! I have it set to add to my library as more songs are released from it and it shows 18 tracks total on the album
Based on the comments from the Secret Sessions, it doesn’t seem to be super cohesive. It actually seems like most people think there are some really great songs, and then a decent amount of filler. Track 17 seems to be the least liked (something about a children’s choir?).
18 tracks???? My god. So that tracklist going around on twitter is true then. It will take me days to listen to all of it, I just can’t pay attention to that many songs. Track 17 is the one that apparently worse than ME!, right? Now I’m curious at how it’s possible. Also I’m excited about the duet (assuming it’s true as well).
Yeah, track 17 is supposed to be the worst of the bunch.
The tracklist was confirmed by an accidental leak on Apple Music that showed the tracklist and length of songs, I believe.
I really like the verses, not in love with the chorus, but I’m digging it as a song
She really wants people to play this at their weddings, right? 1-2-3, 1-2-3…
Absolutely!
I guess I still don’t see anything amazing about her song writing. Is the song catchy and sweet? Sure. Is it something I’m wowed over? No. I think she gets more compliments than she should about her songwriting, because I’ve seen magazines call her genius, which she is not. And to call out the sexist comment- I NEVER hear about Ed Sheeran’s songwriting capabilities (thankfully and deservedly) like I do Taylor.
Yea, her songwriting is catchy and she is good at writing songs that radios love to play. This is completely designed to be played at weddings and proms for the foreseeable future. And that’s fine. Many people aren’t that good of songwriters, so its not “nothing” in terms of her ability/skill. But she’s not a genius.
(personally I hate this song but I don’t feel like i’m the target audience, so whatever, lol.)
Catchy is an intangible quality that is hard to pinpoint. It’s harder than you’d think, and she does have a skill for it (production plays a large part too).
Go listen to All Too Well and tell me she’s not great.
That’s all.
@Holly you are absolutely right, All Too Well is exceptional
I have my own problems with Taylor Swift.
But no one’s hyping up Ed Sheeran on the same level because he is not, in fact, on her level. He writes very good contemporary rock in the “dude with an acoustic guitar” style, which historically has been over-hyped as THE genre to break out one’s singer-songwriter chops… so I can understand the confusion.
But that’s an assumption that’s several decades out of date. Pop, rap/hip hop, and even country have long since proved they can be equally artistic in composition and lyrical styling. Swift became a breakout star in not one but TWO genres, released multiple songs that became cultural memes, and she does it all in a climate where almost no one else who is moving the same number of sales actually writes their own songs — especially in pop music. Arguably this might be the start of her decline and that won’t be true anymore, but she doesn’t have to write anyone’s personal favorite songs to be recognized as a powerful songwriting talent.
Ariana Grande is the only other pop musician I can think of that is also super heavily involved in writing her own lyrics and doesn’t always work with 8000 other people on one song.
Agreed. Ari has really stepped up her songwriting game too. I hate to say it, but I think that all of the trauma in her life for the past few years really amped up Ariana’s creative muscle because her last record was brilliant.
I agree on the songwriting. There are videos on YouTube actually with mashups of several of her songs over a single song’s chord progressions and structure – nearly all of her songs fit into the same recipe and the videos play out like it’s the same song. Especially with the 1989 era tracks and the earlier country ones. You’re basically listening to the same song over and over, just with different lyrics and production. But essentially, she just does the same thing over and over with variations. Genius songwriter? No. Crafty PR & marketing? Always.
I’m pretty sure when people reference songwriting skills they’re usually only talking about her lyrics.
Taylor Swift’s ballads have always been stronger than her uptempo bits, tbh. I’m not the audience for the song, but I can see how it would be a hit at weddings and such.
I actually think she is already engaged to be honest.
Oh, I love this song. It is so sweet
I heard it last night and wondered if they weren’t already married. Google tells me no, but I would be shocked if they weren’t at least engaged.
Swifties are wondering if January 2020 they’ll get married (references to January in both Lover and New Year’s Day, and 20 seconds or 20 years lyric),
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already engaged. Honestly, this is the longest relationship she has had by far and it seems to be the most stable, so I wish them both well.
I love you need to calm down. I really love it, I play it a lot and I find it hilarious. I have known people it really applies to! This one is sweet, but I’m not the target audience.
Help me, I love it.
I LOVE this song!!!
This is Taylor at her very best – songwriter!
Lover is amazing!!
Now I cannot wait for the album next friday …
Let’s not forget that We are Never Getting Back Together was on the same album as All Too Well, her masterpiece.
So this is definitely Taylor’s thing.
And while I do love YNTCD I wish she would put out a straight ballads album.
But yeah I love this song, my sister has claimed it as her future wedding song.
Also I think Taylor and Joe are married already. Apparently another album song is called “paper rings” and it’s literally straight wedding vows.
I think WANGBT is a really excellent pop song, tbh (even with the spoken word bit, which I think is funny). I would say that Stay Stay Stay was the cheesy song on that album.
I’m a Taylor fan so I’m biased but I really like it!
So, I like it. However, her singles strategy just has me baffled. She really hasn’t had a highly successful single in two albums. She’s riding the wave of already having a large set of fans. She will still go to #1. She’ll still probably sell more albums than anyone this year. But how much longer does that last without a true banger?
I was so baffled by the singles she picked for reputation. Delicate was a good choice, but I Did Something Bad, Don’t Blame Me, etc would have been better singles IMO. If she wanted to do a thesis statement song, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things worked way better than Look What You Made Me Do (which I think should have been left off the album, I can’t stand that song or End Game for some reason).
And I feel the same way about ME! in that it should have been left off the album, and definitely not been a lead single. YNTCD is better, but marginally.
I don’t like End Game, either, but overall, I LOVE reputation. I just can’t figure out why she led with the singles she did, and absolutely agree This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things was a better song that would have done the same job as LWYMMD. But Delicate, Dress, King of My Heart, Don’t Blame Me, Getaway Car (hell, I finally came around on Call It What You Want) are great.
I think releasing “ME!” first was to hammer home the end of reputation and the beginning of a new iteration, but I think it’s the weakest of the four that have been released. I enjoy You Need to Calm Down, I think the beat is fun, The Archer grew on me, and Lover is great.
I love this song. She’s so talented. Great wedding song.
If you’re 12 and dressing up in your room, pretending this is the “first dance” in your fairytale wedding with your dreamy husband.
Agree!!
Eh I find Florence to be a way better songwriter. In every way.
LOL yeah that was my thought too upon listening to this. Florence is NEVER going to cover this one.
Exactly. Florence at the same age periods wrote less cliched and juvenile lyrics. They carry a depth to them that you don’t find in Taylor’s songs. Heck Bat for Lashes at 29 wrote way way better lyrics.
Come on. It isn’t even fair to compare Taylor to Florence.
I haven’t heard this song yet but I’ll listen to it when I get out of work, probably to my regret. Her songs ALWAYS get stuck in my head and I hate it LOL.
@Kitten its because Kaiser says in the post that she would want to hear someone like Florence cover this one. That’s why jammy brought her up.
Yeah, Florence is in a whole other league, talent-wise. Taylor Swift can’t hold a candle to Florence Welch, with either her singing or songwriting abilities, IMO.
The lyrics are kind of weak, though, right? Who doesn’t leave their Christmas lights up till January? How about “till February” or “till Valentines”, or, better yet, “till April”?
and why is leaving your Christmas lights up until January the sign that you are some sort of rebel and you do what you want?
@Becks1 Exactly! There’s barely a week between Christmas and New Years—what’s the hurry to take down the lights? LMAO
I don’t think she’s claiming to be a rebel with that line, just acknowledging that it’s their home and they decide what happens. My husband came from a family where Christmas wasn’t celebrated at all and I had a mother who packed up all the Christmas decorations on Christmas Day, and you can be damn sure we go overboard in our house, outside approval be damned.
…or possibly it’s another Easter egg. That’s what someone said upthread
Lol!
If this is her version of being a rebel her life is insanely boring.
Lovely.
It’s okay.
However, it has caused the Crazy Lesbian Conspiracy Swifties to proclaim this is proof she is a lesbian.
I still have a Kaylor blog in my Tumblr feed, just for the laughs. It really is amazing. You want to laugh, but it’s just so sad. I am agnostic as to the details of her love life, but all of their signs that she is a lesbian also could point to her being bad at relationships – romantic, sexual, platonic and friendship.
This kind of sounds a little country-ish. Nod to her Country roots.
This is Taylor musically cosplaying early/mid-90s alt-rock. (Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing)
I liked Mazzy Star’s version a lot better.
(seriously, listen to Fade Into Me and then this)
THANK YOU! For the life of me I could not figure out what it reminded me of. Spot on.
I don’t think it sounds like Fade Into You but I do think it sounds musically similar to other tracks on the FIY album. We listen to that record all the time at my house, and I will swear on a stack of bibles that FIY is the weakest song on it.
Oh God bless you! I could not remember what it reminded me of. It’s a total rip off, IMO.
Wow I didn’t make the connection until I read your comment, but this song had to be inspired by Mazzy Star! Although…Star did it way better.
An artist now has to do albums of songs that “go” together? No wonder pop music is so lame
The lines about how they can let their friends crash in their living room because it’s their call are so weird. They’re both nearing 30, of course it’s their call if they want to have their friends stay over in their house. Taylor’s lived in her own homes for like a decade now, why is that even something that’s in her head?
Also she really needs to stop trying to hype Joe up as this epically gorgeous man who women are launching themselves at. He’s cute and seems nice enough, and it’s lovely that she’s so in love, but there’s a point where love-goggles stop being sweet and just become delusional, and she’s been pushing up against that for a while.
I like that their friends are welcome to sleep in their living room and not one of the countless guest rooms she most certainly has available at every house she owns.
Honestly this feels par for the course with Taylor and her vision board relationship song bs. Whoever she’s seeing at the time is always THE most, and it’s true fairy tale love. She can’t help herself and make even the most mundane relationship high key drama, lest we forget the one time Thanksgiving with the Gylenhall’s that managed to inspire three albums worth of songs.
Harris was her only real relationship imo, because she wasn’t making her wedding Pinterest board album with him.
I suspect this is more of the same, and a break up is more likely than an engagement in 2020. Mostly because if an engagement was on the table it would have happened by now? She’s been giving off Gollum vibes for that ring for years, and at this point it feels like he’s just being withholding. At least if they were normal people I’d definitely think this was bad news in terms of being on separate wavelengths.
I do find it very interesting that aside from Joe, Calvin was her only long-term relationship (everyone else seemed to be around three months), and yet there hasn’t been a single song released that seems to be about him. the closest would be Getaway Car but that’s more about Tom.
I’m guessing she just re-worked songs to make them about Joe instead of Calvin or Tom because of the timing of her albums. She has several songs on Reputation that could be about anyone, but she told her fans they were about Joe so everybody just ran with it.
“vision board relationship song”
Lol! So true.
Dying at vision board relationship 😅
This is probably the song I’ve liked most off the album, but honestly, the direction of this one is baffling to me. None of the songs feel interconnected in the way 1989 or even Reputation had a distinct theme. “ME!” felt very early 2010s pop. “You Need to Calm Down” was very basic pop – actually reminded me a lot of Katy Perry’s stuff, lol. “The Archer” sounded like something you would’ve found on 1989. This sounds like something you would’ve found on “Red” right before she made the genre transition. I generally prefer her pop stuff to her country and think she’s a fairly decent song writing, but this one feels like a miss to me. Not feeling any firm line of inspiration to it.
I found this song spectacularly boring.
Hahaha, it really is!
I appreciated that it was a love song that completely focused on her love without the usual distractions.
So far this album is a snoozefest… will this be her first flop?
Girl, telling us he’s super hot over and over won’t make it so.
Seriously. She’s got some rose colored glasses on with this guy.
How can this woman be 30..?
Her lyrics make it sound like she’s still a teenager. She’s mentally a little girl.
Really boring song. At least she’s admitting she’s the jealous type, but still… so boring.
How anyone can listen to this schlock is beyond me. I love gossip, but the fact that Taylor Swift has adult fans is disturbing. Y’all need to seriously reevaluate your taste in music.
Just because someone doesn’t have your taste in music doesn’t mean they need to re-evaluate their taste in music.
I would agree with you, except when ut comes to listening to Swift.
She looks like she has hormonal imbalances.
This sounds like “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star
Some of the lyrics are great and some are weird. Like the whole “It’s our place and we can make the call” about friends crashing at their house…..? That sounds like an 18 year old in her first apartment. It does make me laugh that she calls him a magnetic force of a man, haha.
I like the “my heart has been borrowed and yours has been blue. All’s well that ends well to end up with you.”
She has an announcement on the 22nd before her album drops on the 23rd. I wonder if she’s announcing her engagement.
This song is pretty. Her voice is great in it. Thumbs up for me. I’d love to learn it for karaoke!
Funny thing: when I tapped it to play I thought I tapped on Miley’s new breakup song and thought “Wow, Miley’s sounding great! What a classy breakup song.” Discovered my mistake pretty quickly though. Lol
This song is great!!!