Everyone remembers the first album that they owned. I rediscovered mine recently, scrolling through an old iPod that I had found from a decade ago. At the very bottom of my albums happened to be Red by Taylor Swift. While I was sitting there, re-listening to the album, core memories flooded back to me. I grew up with her songs constantly on repeat, dancing around my room to “22.” It made me so happy to watch her release newer music, even as she shifted away from her traditional country songwriting. Through each album that she releases, she constantly proves that her talent for songwriting is undeniable. It wasn’t until I was older that I appreciated the beautiful stories she tells through each song, filled with vivid metaphors.
These past few months, I, along with the rest of the world, have been entranced by her re-released Red album. This album is like a double-edged sword, taking the listener along her happiest times of a relationship, as well as her most tragic, heartbreaking experiences with love. She titles the album Red because she writes each song with a passion, similarly to the color. Red (Taylor’s Version) has 30 songs. Below I have analyzed a number of Taylor’s songs in chronological order to help long-term “Swifties” and new fans better understand the meanings behind this popular re-released album.
1) State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)
“This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right”
Throughout the first track of her album, Taylor explains how life can be so busy, filled with meaningless relationships, before love comes out of nowhere and surprises her. Even though the relationship wasn’t perfect in the slightest, she shows no regret, describing this love as “brave” and “wild.” In the bridge of the song, she repeats the lyric, “Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right.” This ultimately serves as a foreshadowing for the entire album, a warning to the listener: that the love that she writes about in the following songs can either end in a happily ever after or tragedy.
2) Red (Taylor’s Version)
In one of her more well-known songs, she describes in vivid imagery how she feels across her entire relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. Just as any young love, it is filled with ups and downs. Each line is composed almost entirely of similes, encapsulating the happy and the sad of the relationship in screaming color. Ultimately, she reminds the listener at the end of the chorus that the relationship was undeniably “red”—passion filled in both its highs and lows.
3) Treacherous (Taylor’s Version)
Taylor explains how she knows this relationship is not good for her, but she keeps going back, in desperation, thinking it will be different each time. Every girl has faced the question of whether to stay, knowing that it’s not in her best interest, or to learn to say goodbye. She describes her lover as “quicksand” that she just can’t seem to escape, no matter how much she knows that this path is a destructive one. Toward the end of the song she rationalizes her decision to stay by explaining “That nothing safe is worth the drive,” and she will always “follow [him] home.”
5) All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)
This song is my favorite on the album for a number of reasons. I love how Taylor illustrates the happiness and sadness of her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal in a fluid manner. Each verse is filled with the happiest memories of their relationship, leading up to the bridge of the song, where she perfectly exemplifies how the pain of the heartbreak hurt her. Just as she remembers their lovely time together, the painful memories ultimately left a deep scar. However, she doesn’t just stop at heartbreak; the song brings the listener through a powerful verse portraying the healing and how it’s not always an easy process. She explains how she feels paralyzed by time and describes the lasting impact the relationship had on her life. She remembers it all too well.
7) I Almost Do (Taylor’s Version)
High in the rankings for one of Taylor’s most beautifully heartbreaking songs, “I Almost Do” talks about how she and a past lover both have moved on with their lives, yet sometimes, she still thinks about reaching out to him. The lyrics highlight the strange, universal feeling you experience when a person whom you used to be so close with is now gone. In an interview, Taylor explains that she wrote this song to stop herself from calling her ex. Throughout the song, the listener can feel Taylor’s pain. She wanted to tell him everything and to try again in the relationship, yet she always stopped herself, hence the title “I Almost Do.”
10) The Last Time (Taylor’s Version)
“This is the last time you tell me I’ve got it wrong
This is the last time I say it’s been you all along
This is the last time I let you in my door
This is the last time, I won’t hurt you anymore”
Taylor Swift collaborates with Gary Lightbody on “The Last Time,” and together they perfectly exemplify the difficulty of getting out of a toxic relationship. The song is split into two parts. The first describes a guy showing up on a girl’s doorstep, a situation that has occurred many times before. He has come back to ask for another chance with her, even though he knows how much he has hurt her in the past. The second part of the song is the girl’s response. The girl describes how she knows that if she takes him back, he will just leave her again, causing even more hurt. This song encapsulates the toxic cycle some relationships fall into: one partner says this is the last time they will hurt them, while the other says that this is the last time they will take them back.
11) Holy Ground (Taylor’s Version)
“Cause darling, it was good
Never looking down
And right there where we stood
Was holy ground”
Taylor fondly looks back on her relationship with Joe Jonas in “Holy Ground.” This song has a fun and upbeat tune, just like their relationship. Throughout the song, she reminisces about the fun times and lovely memories they had together. Even though they are no longer together, she is not bitter. Taylor takes on a new perspective on previous relationships, describing how she and Joe “fell apart in the usual way” and that she holds nothing against him. Instead, Taylor recalls her time with him as a whirlwind of young, blissful, and precious memories.
13) The Lucky One (Taylor’s Version)
“The Lucky One” represents Taylor’s greatest fear regarding the rise to fame. The song is supposedly inspired by Joni Mitchel and Kim Wilde, Taylor’s icons, and the journey through life in notoriety. Toward the beginning of the song, she describes how entering the spotlight “look[s] like a dream.” The second verse shows that things aren’t always how they seem, and how her solitude is stolen from her. Taylor explains that just because things look lovely from the outside, does not necessarily mean that she is “the lucky one.”
19) Girl At Home (Taylor’s Version)
Taylor decides to call out a boy for his disloyalty, as he pursues Taylor while still being in a relationship. She describes in the song how she imagines his poor girlfriend waiting for him to come home unknowing that he is out flirting with other girls. She sings, “Call a cab, Lose my number, let’s consider this lesson learned,” encouraging the boy to stop what he is doing before he loses his relationship. Later in the song, Taylor reveals why she is so saddened by the situation. Taylor explains that she was in the same position as the girlfriend, and she knows how much disloyalty can hurt a relationship.
26) I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)
In Taylor’s re-release of her Red album, one of Taylor’s new tracks include “I Bet You Think About Me” featuring Chris Stapleton. This song has an angry, impassioned undertone, further enhancing Taylor’s frustration of her ex leaving because “they were too different.” Throughout the song, the listener can hear the disappointment Taylor has toward him and the fact that if he cared enough, the relationship could have worked out. Unfortunately, the reality was that he never took her seriously, since he thought that she was too young, and their lives were “too different.” Still, Taylor knows that their relationship had an impact on his life, even if he refuses to admit it.
30) All Too Well (10 Minute Version)
Undoubtedly, the best track on Red goes to Taylor’s (newly released to the public) “All Too Well” (10-minute version), and the best and longest track deserves the longest and most in-depth analysis. The first time I listened to the song, it was astonishing to hear the maturity in her voice, after a decade of her Red release. Now an experienced song-writer, Taylor interweaves deeper meanings and connections to unpack in nearly every line. Her lyrics touch the heart of every young girl as she takes her listeners through the happiness, the hurting, and the healing, all beautifully connected within 10 minutes.
The song starts as she “walks through the door with [him],” the word “with” signifies them entering into a relationship together, on an even ground. She explains how the air was cold. This means that their relationship started in the fall, but it also foreshadows their relationship’s downfall through the coldness in the air. In describing how “Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place,” just as autumn leaves are fragile, so became their relationship, yet everything seemed to fit together so perfectly. At the beginning of the song, Taylor also describes how “something about it felt like home somehow,” explaining how she instantly felt comfortable in this relationship.
In her first unreleased verse, she describes how they “always skip town,” and throughout this time, she waited for him to say that he loved her, yet he “never called it what it was.” It was not until three months later that Jake Gyllenhaal would try to rekindle this relationship, whilst Taylor was hurting, finally claiming that he loved her and tried to convince her that everything was fine. Recalling the pain of this situation, she describes herself as a “lifeless frame,” further emphasizing how helpless she felt. Taylor tells how she “forget[s] about [him] long enough to forget why [she] needed to.” This is a truly a powerful line, encapsulating the difficulty of leaving this unhealthy cycle.
In the bridge, the climax of the story, Taylor pours her heart into the pain of the breakup and questions why it had to end, explaining that “this thing was a masterpiece ’til [he] tore it all up.” The theme of trust reoccurs as she recalls how he “break[s] [her] like a promise” and how he was “casually cruel in the name of being honest.” Taylor then goes on to describe herself as a crumpled-up piece of paper, symbolizing how she will never be the same again since a paper that has been crumpled up will never be the same as it was originally. She then recalled his lazy excuse for breaking up, saying that she was too young, and “if [they] had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine.” Her sadness then turns to anger, as she questions what she was to him, if anything at all.
Transitioning from the hurting to the process of healing, Taylor remembers how she felt as if time was at a standstill, as though the relationship “paralyzed” her. She desperately tries to feel a sense of normality again, looking for who she was before this relationship, yet it is so difficult because it had such an immense impact on her life. A major shift in the song occurs in the fifth verse, transitioning to the chorus, where she changes the lyrics from “I remember it all too well,” to “You remember it all too well.” This change represents her healing process and the clarity that came with it. Now no longer in a relationship with Gyllenhaal, she now understands that what they had was real and not a construct of her own mind and challenges Gyllenhaal to do the same.
As the song concludes, she recalls how she remembers the “First fall of snow, and how it glistened as it fell,” making a direct parallel to the lyric in the first verse, “Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place.” The snow symbolizes how the relationship turned too cold in the end. Throughout the very last lines of the song, Taylor repeats “I was there, I was there” as if questioning if this did happen, yet in the end, she reassures herself that it did by saying, “It was rare, you remember it all too well.”
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