We Unravelled All The Sneaky Lyrical References On Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’
As usual, Swift has hidden plenty of Easter eggs in 'evermore'.
If there’s one thing Taylor Swift loves to do, it’s fuck with our heads.
Swifties know that she carefully plans everything, leaving clues and Easter eggs to be discovered in her music, videos, social media posts, and interviews. Her new album evermore is no exception. It’s probably one of the most lyrically dense records she’s ever put out; telling fictional stories has given her the freedom to be more creative and experimental with her songwriting.
The 15 tracks on evermore contain a lot of references to her past work, probably encouraged by the fact that she’s spent the latter half of this year rerecording her first six albums and keeping them fresh in her memory.
Some of the connections are easy to miss, so here are some of the best ones that we spotted.
‘willow’
Even without seeing the gold thread motif in the ‘willow’ video clip, this track is instantly linked with folklore’s ‘invisible string’ — the opening guitar notes sound very similar. This is perhaps Taylor’s way of noting that while most of evermore is fictional, this song is about her relationship with boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Plus, in the chorus, the line “wherever you stray, I follow” really echoes the ‘Lover’ lyric “can I go where you go”.
Taylor also continues the train metaphor that she’s used a lot in past songs — “You know that my train could take you home” — using a train to represent a relationship. We’ve seen this before in ‘The Archer’ (“I jump from the train, I ride off alone”) and ‘cardigan’ (“I knew you, stepping on the last train”).
‘champagne problems’
Taylor describes this song as “longtime college sweethearts who had very different plans for the same night, one to end it and one who brought a ring”. While it’s not an autobiographical song, she still uses her own brand of writing to describe inflicting heartbreak — ”your heart was glass, I dropped it” is reminiscent of ‘Back To December’s “you gave me roses and I left them there to die”.
Strangely, Taylor includes a line from ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on this track — “one for the money, two for the show” — one of two Elvis Presley references on evermore.
She references Dom Perignon, the same champagne brand that 1950s socialite and Taylor’s muse for ‘the last great american dynasty’ Rebekah Harkness was known for pouring in her swimming pool. Yes, it could be a coincidence, but when it comes to Taylor Swift, there’s no such thing.
‘gold rush’
In her last few albums, and particularly on reputation, Taylor has used the colour gold to represent love and her relationship with Joe Alwyn: “You made your mark on me, a golden tattoo”; “Deep blue but you painted me golden”; “I used to think love would be burning red, but it’s golden”.
In ‘gold rush’, she sings about falling into a daydream and imagining a life with a stranger, using the colour again to evoke the heady feelings of lust and love.
She uses lyrics similar to ones in love songs about Joe: “everybody wants you/everybody wonders what it would be like to love you” echoes ‘Lover’s “everyone who sees you wants you”; and “I see me padding across your wooden floors” has the same vibe as “barefoot in the kitchen” on ‘Cornelia Street’.
‘‘tis the damn season’
In evermore’s album foreword, Taylor revealed that the main character of this song — who goes home for the holidays and hooks up with an old flame — is actually Dorothea, who gets her own song later on the album. It’s a song of ‘what if’ (“the road not taken looks real good now”), much like the folklore track ‘the 1’.
On many love songs in the past, Taylor has written about sleeping late, lazy mornings, and staying in bed all day (‘It’s Nice To Have A Friend’, ‘You Are In Love’), and does the same here with “sleep in half the day/just for old times’ sake”.
‘tolerate it’
Another heartbreaking track five, ‘tolerate it’ might be the saddest song on the album. Taylor once again reveals that she loves to watch her partners as they sleep — “I wake and watch you breathing with your eyes closed” — a reference she’s made before on ‘Last Kiss’ and ‘Paper Rings’.
The line “where’s that man who’d throw blankets over my barbed wire?” has the same metaphor as ‘invisible string’s “something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire”, yet another reference to how Joe came along when she was at her lowest point, saving her from herself.
‘happiness’
This breakup track is one piece of what Taylor calls the ‘unhappily ever after’ anthology of marriages gone bad. While it’s certainly more intense than many of her past heartbreak bops, she still brings her trademark imagery to the song. The idea of self-discovery and change (“I haven’t met the new me yet”) reminds us of “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it” on ‘All Too Well’.
Meanwhile, the lines “I hope she’ll be your beautiful fool/Who takes my spot next to you/No, I didn’t mean that” carry the same vibe of “my words shoot to kill when I’m mad” from ‘this is me trying’.
‘Happiness’ is linked to another of the album’s divorce tracks, ‘closure’, with the line: “all you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness”.
‘dorothea’
We already met Dorothea on ‘’tis the damn season’, but this song is from the point of view of her old friend/lover who she left behind when she moved to Hollywood to chase her dreams. There are some lyric parallels between the two tracks: “you got shiny friends since you left town” and “so I go back to LA / and the so-called friends”.
The album’s second Elvis reference comes in here, with a line mentioning his hometown in Mississippi: “the stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo”. Swifties who go way back might even hear the similarity with her 2006 track ‘Tim McGraw’: “he said the way my blue eyes shined/put those Georgia stars to shame that night”.
‘coney island’
No one writes break up tracks like Swift, and she really shows it off on this track, featuring The National. There’s one verse which makes sneaky references to a few of her exes:
“Did I leave you hanging every single day?
Were you standing in the hallway
With a big cake, happy birthday
Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest grey
A universe away
And when I got into the accident
The sight that flashed before me was your face
But when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name”
First of all, Jake Gyllenhaal dumped Taylor by ditching her at her birthday party (as we know from the song ‘The Moment I Knew’). The line about painting the sky is almost directly lifted from her John Mayer-inspired track ‘Dear John’ (“you paint me a blue sky, then go back and turn it to grey”).
Taylor and Harry Styles got into a snowmobile accident on a ski trip, as referenced on ‘Out of the Woods’ (“remember when you hit the brakes too soon, twenty stitches in a hospital room”).
Finally, the last line could be a nod to Calvin Harris — when she won the 2016 Grammy for Album of The Year she didn’t thank Calvin, even though they were dating at the time. In the Miss Americana documentary Taylor says she felt completely alone, and had no one to share the moment with.
‘ivy’
Taylor loves to use the metaphor of fire when singing about love. Here the line “it’s a fire, it’s a goddamn blaze in the dark” is the total opposite of the line “love’s a fragile little flame, it could burn out” in 1989’s ‘I Know Places’.
She’s also used fire a lot while talking about her relationship with Joe — in ‘Call It What You Want’ and ‘peace’.
‘long story short’
The whole chorus of this song just screams ‘Getaway Car’, escaping one bad relationship and falling into another: “pushed from the precipice/clung to the nearest lips/long story short, it was the wrong guy.”
She also continues the narrative of getting into a relationship with Joe and being able to let go of her armour and stop fighting: “when I dropped my sword, I threw it in the bushes and knocked on your door” calls back to ‘Daylight’s lyric “threw out our cloaks and our daggers”.
‘evermore’
The final track on the album (until the deluxe tracks are released, anyway), this duet with Bon Iver is undoubtedly the sister song to ‘exile’. But while ‘exile’ is a breakup song, this one is about leaving sadness behind and finding peace in a new relationship.
Lyric parallels between the two include: “can’t remember what I used to fight for” / “so what I am I defending now”; and “sending signals” / “I gave so many signs”.
The line “gray November/I’ve been down since July” references the timeline we got in ‘Call It What You Want’ — her and Joe cemented their relationship in November. July is a nod to the Snapchat drama with Kim and Kanye, also alluded to with “motion capture put me in a bad light”.
The album ends with her in a cabin, bringing us back to the image she introduced in the ‘cardigan’ and ‘willow’ video clips, of her finding peace and safety in isolation with her lover. While evermore is undoubtedly a sadder album than folklore — especially with its overarching theme of heartbreak and divorce — it does end on a note of hope: “this pain wouldn’t be for evermore”.
Jemima Skelley is a freelance lifestyle and culture writer. Follow her on Twitter.