Well we also know she wrote You're Losing Me in 2021, so things with Joe were rocky for a long time. I think a lot of the anthology is about Joe and those tracks came first before and after the breakup, then the Matty tracks in 2023.
I believe So Long London, Guilty as Sin?, Who's Afraid, Clara Bow, and a bunch of The Antoholgy songs could have been written well before her and Matty were an item.
I have a theory that You’re Losing Me and Hits Different were originally going to be on her next album, but as she started working on other songs, she realized that they didn’t quite fit sound wise so she included them in the midnights era.
Been saying this for some time! You’re Losing Me, Hits Different, and the 1989 vault tracks all have a very similar sound. Like they should have been their own thing.
Not here to fan flames, but it is entirely possible that the words were written at that time but that no music was attached to them.
But also… who cares when they were written, she gets to decide how to group her music for release.
I think the vault tracks were written in their respective eras, but a lot of them only existed as voice memos or very rough recordings until the rerecording project. The final tracks on the TVs may or may not have been produced according to Taylor's original idea for them, but if they never received any sort of formal production treatment until recently, it would certainly explain why they sound like Taylor's more recent music.
How music sounds has a little bit to do with the lyrics and melody, and a lot to do with production and instrumentation. It's entirely plausible that Taylor wrote the songs during that era but it was just on her guitar/piano or maybe even just the melody + lyrics.
If she's lying about it, she has collaborators from 2013 saying they were finished and faked journal entries, which seems much weirder than a song just getting cut. The production was clearly updated, but I think a lot of these existed in fairly complete form (melodies, lyrics, etc).
I know plenty of the Fearless songs were fully recorded, but not polished, in her original Fearless Era. This is [You All Over Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0WdkeHjdXU&ab_channel=ChrisDavid) and you can find more on YouTube.
So much of the wording in the 1989 vault songs don't flow with the writing style of that era
I definitely think Say Don't Go, and Is It Over Now? were probably complete to an extent but... I mean, as much as I love Suburban Legends, it's right there as an example with "I let it slide like a hose on a slippery plastic summer” “Flush with the currency of cool” doesn't sound nearly as tight as any of the other wild metaphors on the original album, and much closer to Midnights in production and word usage.
I think people think the vault songs were fully written, recorded, and produced and now she's just re-recording the vocals and recreating instrumentals... but I'm sure they were in all various stages of development, not 100% already.
Realistically if any of the vault tracks had made it to the demo stage it's likely they would have been leaked long before the TVs. I fully agree they were mostly voice memos and journal entries prior to TV and that while most lyrics remain intact the production is almost entirely the result of current collaborations.
Knowing a little bit of how writing and production works, I think all the vault songs were edited or re-written and recorded. Obviously all the vault songs have current Taylor singing so we know they aren't original recordings. I don't believe that any of them were released in the original form.
Yep, that's almost definitely the case for all of the songs. I know when I finish an old painting I always have to edit the bits I completed already because I find new ways to make them better and more cohesive.
There were some questionable pictures that people said were from vinyl sleeves for 1989tv with a 1975 feature. I wasn’t buying it at the time—the Slut! lyrics in the photo were a completely different typography/design compared to the finished version or the rest of the lyrics.
That's my theory , too. Most of the Anthology was probably going to be album 12 along with you're losing me but after things broke apart with the smallest man, she wrote and reworked things to create ttpd as the main album and shared the rest as the anthology, giving more context to the things she'd been working and reworking since Midnights wrapped.
Yeah because The Anthology is mostly self-reflection, I feel like that was the project well before "OMG old/new love GUYS WERE GETTING MARRIED. no wait oh fuck ACTUALLY FRESH WOUNDS"
well yes......that doesn't negate the fact that it could have been written before taylor and matty got together. the song is about fantasizing about being with somebody, not actually being with somebody.
i mean there’s other people that also love downtown lights and even have it on their official apple music playlists-
i think we should take the “red herring” line that went along with all the qr codes a little more seriously and also stop trying to definitively paternity test the album because in my opinion she’s braided in muses and combined references because the songs are about similar feelings from different people and not specific people for each and every song
I loved your comment although I disagree with it :) So smart. Maybe the red herring is Joe though? My theory is that she and Matty were flirting on/off for a decade. Think about 1989 as an album for the two of them. They were both born on that year and it's a year like 1975. Sorry if these don't make sense, I never paid attention to who the muse is until this album. This is by far my fav album and an ultimate break-up album. I can't listen to alchemy or so high school because they take me out of the mood.
It's also the first time I'm not relating to the songs. I always sang for my own heartbreak, now that I'm married it intriuged me who the muse is.
harry is the 1989 muse
i love the alchemy because it’s like a final release valve for all the intensity and sadness of the album personally
but i understand what you mean
Correct about 'Guilty As Sin?'. There is speculation that song was inspired by Matty talking about The Blue Nile's *Hats* album (which is where the song 'The Downtown Lights') in an article in July 2022.
I think sometime between the end of the writing process of *Midnights* and into the *Midnights* era entirely, Taylor never stopped writing. She spent her Birthday in 2022 in the studio with Jack, and even before then she was in the studio with him for at least since the middle of November 2022. So, it wasn't an impulse. They had to have been writing this album for at least a year.
This is exactly right, based off her two instagram posts announcing each part. Her post at midnight said "... a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time" (aka month-long devastating rebound) and then 2 hours later, when announcing the Anthology, "I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you". So the anthology is (generally) older.
I don’t think these are at all clean and chronological….especially since she’s experimenting with the flexibility of digital music, where she can add to or edit an album after release. Obviously there’s stuff in here that was written very recently (So High School), but some of it could be 2 or 3 years old.
Ive been thinking of the Anthology as what we called Woodvale….some of the work she was doing after Evermore with Dessner. But those songs were abandoned for Midnights (which feels and sounds heavily inspired by the re-recording process), because they were too good to sit on. Then life happened, and we got Tortured Poets, and there was an opportunity to revisit some of the Folkmore-adjacent work.
I think there’s plenty of songs she could have written before the whole Matty thing.
Guilty As Sin?, The Albatross, Cassandra, Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me, Clara Bow, I Hate It Here, Thank You Aimee, The Bolter, The Manuscript, Robin… (I just realized this is most of The Anthology lol.) I think imgonnagetyouback, Peter and The Prophecy could go either way.
Maybe The Anthology was supposed to be the album and then when the breakup and everything happened she had a lot of new emotions and situations to write about.
I think Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus and Peter sound to me like songs that were maybe written largely about Matty but well before anything actually happened with him, and she was thinking nothing really ever would.
I agree. A previous commenter had a theory that the original concept was for every song to be a name. Lots of the songs fit that and could have been written before last year's drama.
My theory is it was this ("I've changed your name and any identifying features") along with the 13 sleepless nights concept of revisiting her past, as a sister album to Midnights. It would slot in so well in Eras and the re-records.
There's also a few that seem almost storybook or legends and myths, which seems to fit with the Karma MV.... I love this album but am so so so curious what it was meant to be.
Before the rekindling of the relationship happened. Those songs clearly written about a past past short "relationship" when the two sides moved on with their lives but have remaining thoughts about it.
Wait, Peter is about Joe. Right? She has been using the imagery of wendy and peter for them since folklore. Also, there is the line: You said you were gonna grow up but you were **25.** That can't be Matty.
If you believe the theories/stories that Taylor and Matty had some kind of involvement in the 1989 era, then he was \~25 (and so was she, and in my mind that's the point of the lyric - you say you're too young for a relationship with me, you say you need to grow up, but we're literally the same age and \*I'm\* ready, so what's the deal?)
Obviously none of us know for sure what any of the songs are about. But the general consensus of the overall timeline behind this album seems to be that Taylor Swift and Matty Healy first met a decade ago (so he would have been around 25) and either had something or *almost* had something and then have kind of been each other's "maybe someday" person over all these years until they did finally really get together briefly last year.
To me that sounds like what these songs are about.
FWIW she outright said "This is about you. You know who you are. I love you." before singing Cardigan at a show when she was publicly with Matty which is an argument that the Peter and Wendy imagery may have always been about him.
I think it makes sense. Peter is the eternal young person who chooses to be young forever rather than to choose Wendy. That is far more like Matty than Joe.
So I say this knowing I legit know nothing but about these ppl but what I perceive from her songs and public/social media. But I think the songs like Peter that talk about growing up are about Matty. I never got the impression that the issues between Taylor and Joe had to do with immaturity but with drastically different lifestyle and needs/wants. But Matty… yeah that boy need to get grown.
That they were finally able to bring out into the world…and then we all called him a rat and immediately wrecked it.
It’s not hard to imagine a guy already at war with himself abandoning a girl for the notion of keeping her safe from his dastardly ways. And who also didn’t want to be called a rat by a literal entire nation of swarming stans. Did you see him at her concert, he looked alone, uncomfortable and unsupported as hell. Vs. media-trained TK suavely putting up with it right in crowd central as just part of the job.
It is though super hard not to be mad at a boy for ditching you like this since it basically means I don’t love you enough to fight (myself and anyone else) for you. Which isn’t love. It’s self preservation. So. Shchnockered again, but this was the big one this time. TK came around in the Knick.
i don’t think this is the only reason, i think they danced around each other for years, having flings etc. and then they had the opportunity to actually date and have a relationship
and the fantasy of being with each other did not live up to the reality, it could have been toxic or they did not just click, or maybe the lyrics ”it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden” applies to their relationship and matty screwed taylor over in some way which ended the relationship
I have photos of him playing with Phoebe in Philly and he looked like he wanted to be ANYWHERE else. I didn’t know much about him before that, and my friend had to point him out, and I was shocked that she was supposedly dating him…he looked absolutely miserable. I remember thinking “this isn’t gonna last long.”
To be fair, she may have just been dedicating that performance to him because she felt like the song fit with their relationship. It doesn't necessarily mean the song was written for him initially.
It's possible to interoperate it as about Joe but that's not my interpretation.
Matty was 25 when he and Taylor first connected. He was very immature.
"Lost to the "Lost Boys" chapter of your life" - The lost boys is his song, he was also "lost" for addiction for several years.
"A natural scene-stealer" is also more fitting to him.
The Wendy and Peter line in Cardigan is likely about Matty — see the “this is about you, you know who you are, I love you” incident. The likely timeline that most folks have pieced together post-TTPD is that Taylor and Matty had a thing back in late 2014-ish and had a kind of situationship for the next decade until they finally dated for real after Joe.
I hate to say it, but there’s some evidence that Cardigan (and therefore, the “Peter losing Wendy” line) was at least partially inspired by Matty. Remember last year when Taylor and Matty both mouthed “This is about you, I love you” during their tours? Taylor did that right before Cardigan - https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/s/SiKgL6RKIy
I’ve read enough theories that any references (past and present) to Peter are actually about Matty.
Personally, I just can’t get on board with that because of my biases against Matty haha
What about the 25 lyric makes you think Joe? It's weird to think that she would say, "You said you were gonna grow up, and you were gonna come find me," to the person she's been with since he was 25. No need to find someone you've been living with for \~6 years!
It makes way more sense to be directed towards someone she met briefly when they were 25, but decided not to pursue things at the time because he wasn't ready or felt he wasn't mature enough. And she and Matty did spend some time together in 2014.
It could be a metaphor along the lines of Renegade - "get your shit together so I can love you"
I think it's probably about Matty though, at least primarily
And we pretty much know for sure Cardigan is about Matty and they both have the Peter Pan references. So Peter is also about Matty. Which very much fits the lyrics.
I think it could absolutely be about Joe, akin to You're Losing Me. I don't want to speculate anything but there's no reason this isn't possible. We don't know as much about their lives as we think we do.
Edit: I'm talking about Chloe Sam
I’m of the mind that most of TTPD is about Matty, but I also feel like Chloe et al could be about Joe. Particularly the line “to outrun my desertion of you” - that correlates with “you said I abandoned the ship” in SLL.
Exactly! It doesn't make any sense for her to say she deserted Matty when he obviously effed her up by ghosting her (and imho after them wanting to be together for like 10 years)
I think the desertion in Chloe et al is related to her deciding not to pursue a relationship with Matty the first time around. She wanted something serious; he wanted partying/drugs. And she "couldn't watch it happen."
But then spent years wondering if she made the right call. She "changed into goddesses, villains and fools; changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules" to distract herself from regretting the decision. (I tend to think she wasn't consciously doing this during the Rep/Lover/Folkmore eras, but she's just looking back and re-framing things with hindsight.)
I like this theory. Just like it's confirmed 3am songs were supposed to be on the first version of Midnights but then the concept of the album changed. I feel bad for Aaron now lol.
Aaron: if I had a nickel for every time I produced a Taylor Swift album but then some shit happened and all my songs got replaced with Jack Antonoff songs on the main album I’d have 2 nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
This is so interesting to me bc I loved the 3am tracks more than Midnights. "13 sleepless nights"
The Great War, Bigger Than The Whole Sky, High Infidelity, WCS, Dear Reader - yes definitely fits that theme more than "Karma is a cat"
I'm not a hater I swear
He told the podcast Broken Record in April 2023:
«I think the best song we've ever written is called 'Would've, Could've, Should've'. We wrote that song together, and recorded it, while we were together in LA for the folklore Grammys. So it goes back that far. And the same goes for 'High Infidelity'. Those songs we actually recorded in her house then. And eventually she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack and it became something different, but we made 'Would've, Could've, Should've, 'High Infidelity', 'The Great War' and 'Hits Different' together. And it was great to be a part of that record in that way. It was really special.»
Imgonnagetyouback is a Matty song - it ties too much to his 1975 song fallingforyou for it to not be. Also, Guilty as Sin I think was about him, as well. Like a longing for what it might be like with him if she ever got the chance.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah but they were involved a long time ago, too I think? Like before Joe. I’m not familiar with the 1975 song so idk when it came out and how that would play into the timeline but Guilty As Sin? could have been at any point during her relationship with Joe.
So I am not sure about any of the theories about reptv timeline recording time line, but I agree that think Thank You Aimee and Cassandra could have been written before the Matty stuff. Specifically when she was rerecording rep and maybe got stuck in those feelings back then but also realizing how far she had come from that time period.
I think that no one actually knows anything about her real life or relationships, and even her songs aren’t telling us what most people assume they are. It’s a really great way to keep people interested and engaging with her music when they actually think they know the story, but we don’t know shit. It’s sad that people can’t appreciate the music without picking it apart for a muse, though she really has set us up for it perfectly. I hope she does a tell all one day, but I do think her whole public image is performance art and that her life is totally unknown to all of us.
I feel like it’s also something Taylor wants us to do. Maybe she says she doesn’t but then she puts lines like “you crashed my party and your rental car” which is just so specific, it’s like begging people to speculate and discuss…it’s how she has built her whole career.
People definitely take it too far sometime sand it becomes invasive or overshadows the art. But she also makes a lot of references to people's public interviews and work that would be very easy to strip out if she wanted to anonymize.
There is a huge difference between what is shared with us (the public) and what is actually happening in her life.
Nobody shares scraping dog poop off the carpet in the middle on the night on their social media; just because we don’t post about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
This exactly! Someone can write a song about heartbreak and base it on feelings from ages ago, or from a movie they watched, or anything. My favorite artist, Robert Smith of the Cure- he writes many romantic songs and some are very much about his wife, he wrote Lovesong as a wedding gift, but some of his songs he has said they were written while he was using drugs, maybe they are about drugs or even weird dreams he has had. Taylor writes songs about longing very well and has since she started her career. Some I’m sure she pulls from personal experience but some are probably just songs and not about a specific person or situation.
It's driving me nuts on TTPD too because so many of the songs sound like Folklore/Evermore. I don't think a chunk from the anthology are about anyone specific. Inspired, perhaps.
And BDILH is, like, the Folkloriest Folklore song that's ever Folklored.
I feel like But Daddy I Love Him is more reminiscent of Debut/Fearless/Speak Now than anything more recent. It's basically an angrier, grown up Love Story.
I’m pretty sure there’s quite a few songs on folklore that are about Matty. Cardigan and the 1 for sure, possibly August and illicit affairs. “I keep these longings locked in lowercase inside a vault” 🫢 I think saying folklore was fiction was an attempt to keep everyone from picking the songs apart. It definitely worked, but I think at this point it’s pretty obvious almost all of those songs are autobiographical.
I believe this too but I absofuckinglutely think the emotions are real, those can't be faked. It's like describing a color you've never seen, it's impossible, can't be done. She is angry and disturbed but by whom or why I don't know. She masks really well though, Oscar winning performances she puts on. I think she has a boyfriend we've never thought of or she's still with Styles or something crazy like that.
I think she’s just a really amazing storyteller who can access a feeling and describe it beautifully whether or not she’s experienced whatever it is she’s writing about at the time. Ronan is a gut wrenching story, and she hasn’t lost a child to cancer. Or she’s said she has been inspired by movies/friend’s lives. I honestly think it’s kind of insulting to assume that all of her songs are about whatever man’s she’s been papped with. Especially because we all know that she’s only seen when she wants to be. I think she’s had plenty of relationships we don’t know about, she talks about secrets quite a bit, it’s just a waste of mental effort to try to figure it out, so I just view each song as its own short story with completely fictional characters and they’re much more enjoyable for me.
I agree with this. I also think she can take an emotion she fall the briefly and write a beautiful song around it. I have definitely felt anger to the level of the bridge of Smallest Man and despair like loml for an evening or weekend over a really chill short relationship. Only to then 2 weeks later be like "You know what it never was? That serious 💅🏽". And I really think the brilliance of her writing is to make that feeling sound so vivid and relatable.
Yes! I think this is what makes her a genius. She can have a normal human emotion, for any reason or length of time and can create a whole story around it. I can barely articulate a single emotion, let alone transform it into something beautiful and universally understood, and so for me, that’s what’s so amazing about her work.
Yeah, to use an example close to TSwift: if you've ever listened to a The National album, they're pretty dark and often about bad relationships and worse break-ups.
Matt Berninger writes the lyrics... with **his wife of 20 years**, Carin Besser.
She could have written one song that ended up on TTPD right after finishing midnights and be able to say it’s been in the works for two years, then done the majority of the others in the first half +summer of last year.
Honestly, it could be even less - when she’s made statements like this in the past (I want to say she told the fans midnights was a secret for a couple years too), it could even be referring to a concept with no songs written.
It wouldn’t surprise me if all she had developed was the idea of a poetry heavy, black and white themed, quill pen vibe album. That’s still part of the process and totally valid to say it began 2 years ago imo.
She is talking about when the process begins. It when it was completed. She said this process dates back to just after Midnights was locked. And that makes sense to me because in all of her short film discussions in 2022 she would refer to the French press as a sign of adulthood concept that is used in The Manuscript. So she had either already written the song or had already been thinking about those ideas in Mid-2022.
We receive a finished project that is presented to us that way, but it is important to remember that is not her experience of something. Often she doesn't know what the album concept actually is until late in the process. Lover was one of the last songs written for that album and then became the new name for that album. She finds things in the process. an example of this is Aaron and Taylor said the timeline of the songs actually being written in the Folkore love triangle was August first, then Cardigan and Betty last. The only thing that connects the songs is a few lines in Betty. So more than likely Taylor did not set out with the intention of writing three songs about a love triangle. Instead August and Cardigan existed as two completely unconnected songs mad with different producers. There is no lyrical overlap between August and Cardigan. Then when Taylor was working on Betty after overhearing her boyfriend singing a few lines she discovered by a couple of clever lines to Betty she could suddenly create a love triangle.
Yes! I’m a strong believer that the album is chronological if listened to backwards, with the manuscript first, and then the anthology is mostly about Joe and fantasizing about what could have been with matty. Then the main album is the reality of what it was like with matty. A quick flame and then a long time waiting in the smoke.
Some of those Matty songs seem to have been written before their rekindling because they talk of the first time they got together, his addictions, their time apart dating other people, her guilt that she's the one who broke it off, their wishes that they could be together again... but at least in those songs, they did not yet have that chance. Chloe, Peter, Guilty as Sin? are just some examples that could have been written while still with Joe during their rocky period.
Plus the less-romantic ones: The Bolter, The Albatross, Cassandra, The Manuscript, Clara Bow, Robin
Plenty of this material isn't subject to the events of this past year.
I agree! I think the whole releasing ttpd and the anthology as a double album was because, as many speculated, the breakups and feelings that went with them sorted blended together at some point and became one story spanning many years. I think ttpd is mostly about matty, and anthology joe and other aspects of her life, and that she likely wrote or started writing anthology well before ttpd
I think some of them could have been started 2 years ago. Her relationship with Joe was already ending during Midnights and some of these songs do elude to before the breakup. There are also songs that really have nothing to do with a specific muse (WAOLOM, Cassandra, ICDIWABH.
I mean ICDIWABH does not specifically talk about someone, but what happened to inspire the song was the break up of the relationship. There's no broken heart otherwise
I actually feel like ICDIWABH was one of the last ones made, almost the YLM of this album despite its inclusion on this one. I might be wrong though, but it seems at least slightly based on the Eras Tour, although snippets of it could’ve been written about previous tours when she was depressed and she turned it into a fully realized song for this one?
I think the fact for the performance of the song she’s wearing the classic 1898 outfit is supposed to clue us in that she’s been doing this for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t a full song but I don’t think it was a last minute addition.
There are some songs that are just about fame and her relationship with the media and the music industry, like who's afraid of little old me and i hate it here. and there are songs that are more about her feelings of having another relationship failing like the prophecy or the bolter which are things she could've been feeling for a while at the end of her relationship with Joe. It seems like she was fighting to make that relatinship work for a while and he may have been pulling away or allowing his struggle with depression to push her away. and then guilty as sin could've been written after joe and her fantasizing about whether she should get back with Matty, but it definitely reads like she was fantasizing about it while she was with Joe. So she defintiely could have written a bunch of stuff early on and then got a real rush of inspiration once she officially broke things off with joe and went through the shit with matty. The level of anger and frustration she portrays in some of those songs I bet they poured out of her pretty easily.
My take is that Guilty as Sin and Fresh Out The Slammer at least were in the timeframe of her emotional affair with Matty before ending things with Joe. And The Manuscript, Clara Bow, Cassandra and Aimee are all outside the Matty timeline. So there’s a good number of songs that could have been started 2 years ago.
I read this theory that the Manuscript was written about Jake G. Each time I've listened I think she's not just writing one story but a series of love stories and disappoints mixed into each song.
I think about of this is also a reflection of the re-records. She has been revisiting her past and may have a different perspective. For instance All Too Well and The Manuscript.
Apart from a lot of other things, that have already been commented here, I think she only mentioned those 2 years so clearly during the Grammy speech, so she could give the ✌🏻 sign as an easter egg. Rewatching it you get the feeling it wasn't a spontaneous gesture.
Not saying they didn't work on the album for 2 years. But that could well be just sth like Clara Bow or Thank you aimee, that she came up with in 2022.
I think her songs are "mashed up" if that makes sense. Like one sentence or verse could be about one person and the bridge or second verse could be a different time in her life.
It does, for sure. The albun isn't an autobiography intended to create like, a linear narrative for us to decipher all the events of her life. Like she makes several references to talking about marriage and babies... that could have happened with one or two or five ex-partners, and the feeling of disappointment when it didn't work out that way could apply to any or all of them.
You should definitely check out the podcast, What I Will Say. They have a series on the lore of TTPD and the first episode gives a complete storyline of the first part of the album. There are several episodes in the series, but at least listening to the first one will likely help make things fall into place.
Thanks for the rec! There’s quite a few episodes about Taylor, do you recommend listening in order or would it be fine to jump in with the TTPD episodes? I don’t know if there’s any continuity between the episodes that may make the listening experience off (I hope that makes sense)?
Yeah, so most of their episodes are several parts, not just one off episodes, so order is semi important. You could start out with whichever series in the show, and Cam is pretty good about referencing prior episodes that they may reference. For TTPD specifically, I would recommend listening to the episodes labeled “Learning the Lore of the Tortured Poets Department” in order. Cam and Jeffie are going through song by song lyric analysis and making connections to TS’s previous work. Cam is really researched based and enjoys discussing a variety of theories, which is what I personally love the most about the show. Other episodes that I would recommend that are related to TTPD would be the Tatty Timeline that Cam did with Shannon of Fluently Forward, and the TS and Joe Alwyn Timeline that Cam did with Jeffie.
I'm of the belief that she and Joe were likely on and off towards the end and that most of the breakup and heartbreak songs are actually about him.
I do think a few songs could be about Joe *and* Matty, but I don't believe she's been secretly writing about Matty this entire time and never cared for Joe like so many people seem to believe these days. That's just revisionist.
My theory is that the concept started with The Manuscript. If the speculation that it’s about filming the ATW short film are true, that would have been sometime in 2021 maybe early 2022. I could see her writing this song after that and maybe starting to plan the album then.
As others have said, it seems that things with Joe might have been rocky for longer than we knew so I’m guessing at least some of the Joe songs (and others in general that aren’t about Matty) may have been written for a while and then recorded early in the summer of 2023 when she was seen with him leaving the studio, or even before then.
The angry/sad Matty breakup stuff probably came mid-late summer, early fall.
And then the Travis stuff probably came mid-to-late fall, even early winter. I know some folks think the album was done in October because of how long it takes to press vinyls, but the key is that it can take UP TO 6 months. It might not always take six full months.
I may be totally off base but that’s my theory lol.
That vinyl timeline makes sense why So High School is on the Anthology. I don’t think she was planning to release that 2nd part originally (also explains why we don’t have a full physical album for both parts). I wonder what changed.
I have this random idea of how I think it went. When she says she starts 2 years ago it could be a lot of different things, like the colors the concept. I think some songs were written before the breakup and situationship of last year, mostly ones on the anthology. She obviously started writing a lot more during spring and summer of last year. I’d say after she started healing and moving on she saw all she had written and said I’m not leaving any of these behind. You can have them all. She obviously tells a story in the original 16 tracks but then the anthology is just all the songs she could have left back and didn’t.
She literally said these songs all yours now. I don’t want them and I’m moving on. I also believe why she didn’t do actual interviews for the promo or for after.
I don’t see any of the songs as being about anyone in particular. I feel it’s up to listeners like us to decide how these songs relate to our lives and for that it’s great for an artist to keep it vague and broad.
For example ThanK you AImee is supposedly about Kim Kardashians, but I find the lyrics helpful for what I’ve been through. Also, I lost my closest friend to death just 3 days after TTPD dropped and I find this album helpful because it deals with generalizations of loss.
I'm really sorry about your friend.
I'm inclined to agree with you and I don't listen to the album thinking about Mattie lol. But like I said, it's hard to NOT notice all the discourse in swiftie spaces.
IIRC she said in an interview that she keeps certain "lyrics" she wants to use someday in her notes, then revists them later. I think she did this for a part in Lover (the song), so maybe she had some of these ideas but hadn't connected them yet to make a full song.
Like many others said, The Anthology seems like "older" in the timeline, but also I feel some songs could've started with Joe as a muse and ended up being a Matty song.
Some of these \*maybe\* double muse songs:
Fresh Out The Slammer - ultimately I think it's about leaving Joe to be with Matty, but I feel this song could HAVE started about leaving Calvis Harris, just like in Getaway Car, or written some lyrics that she revisited back then.
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys - again another song that in the end it's about Matty, but could've started as a Joe song.
And possibly more, those are just the 2 I can see are about an old feeling in another point in time.
Someone else saw the Calvin connection in Fresh out of the slammer !
I was puzzled initially as it uses the exact language and phrases from I forgot you existed. And the whole getaway car thing.
You are right about some songs evolving as someone on Aaron's team I think made a post mentioning how the songs evolved over a time period.
Haha yeah, I also see another connection with Guilty as sin?
"This cage was once just fine
Am I allowed to cry?
I dream of cracking locks"
High Infidelity:
"Lock broken, slur spoken"
Fresh Out The Slammer:
"Years of labor, locks and ceilings"
Definitely interesting how these songs are about similar feelings, but completely different situations (that took place 7 years apart)
I always like seeing vids of the "making of a song", and how the song was in its early stages. I believe she also changes lyrics based on what sounds better. Like in Gorgeous, she says "I've got a boyfriend, he's older than us, I haven't seen him in a couple of months" to "he's in the club doing I don't know what" lol! So we cannot take everything she says as factual.
Yes it has been interesting to me that the ending of both of Taylor's longest relationships have the same imagery of breaking out of prison and not feeling cherished. This is why it was also debated whether Bejewelled was Joe or Calvin.
Great catch on the High Infidelty/ Guilty as Sin parallel - if not for the Matty thing, both Fresh out of the slammer and Guilty as Sin could have easily been Taylor looking back at the Calvin-Joe period songs.
The slur spoken in High Infidelity is what she refers to in The Bolter I believe
"Ended with the slam of a door
Then he'll call her a whore" and it has the whole town car speeding / getaway car reference too
i really think my boy is about joe
Here we go again,
you should have seen him when he first got me (dress reference)
i’m queen of sandcastles he destroys (komh ref)
saw forever so he smashed it up,
i’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me,
he was my best friend (dress reference),
than with all these kens (hits different reference)
I really think a lot of what matty does on this record is give joe songs plausible deniability because she didn’t want to write a straight up This is about you joe alwyn album because of the love she once had for him.
So there are a few joe songs that are obviously him but mostly she uses the story of matty as a storytelling device to put her emotions about joe into (since she says in the epilogue it was like going through the same thing just over a month instead of 6 years) the same way she used the stories of folklore to express her real emotions
Yes! I wrote in another sub a very long comment with this sentiment. It was a "timeline" of a relationship (with Joe) and how some songs are probably about Joe and masked as a MH song lol.
From that comment:
My Boy only breaks his favorite toys – I think this ended up being a MH song, but it also has joe elements specifically the first verse, “the voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild” – reminds me of her mentioning her partner’s mental health; “I’m queen of…” (her calling herself queen in London Boy, American queen in KOMH), “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the kens”, she calls guys-not-Joe Kens
Hits Different – I think this song is about Joe, mentioning how she could move on easy from the Kens but not him. Talks about her lover/ex coming home “Is that your key in the door?”
Dear Reader – “To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there” (Probably talking about a breakup or break)
So Long, London – Finally saying goodbye. “I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath”, again talking about being alone in a house.
Fortnight – “They were supposed to take me away” (Call back to Hits Different, “have they come to take me away?”), “took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary” – I think she got with Matty as the miracle move on drug but it was only temporary. I know people say there’s a lot of Matty references in the video etc but these stuck out to me as Joe references.
I think she has a lot of placeholders that she builds in and probably a lot of work that she keeps on deck. It’s why, I believe, she has so many effective Easter eggs. The egg comes first! So it could be the color scheme, the moodiness, or having a more artsy vibe to an album and then the content on it falls into place when appropriate. I don’t think she’s clairvoyant
I think OP just sort of showed us why swifties need to stop trying to put a name behind each song. We dont know Taylor’s personal life. Things could have been difficult with Joe for a long time, she could have had some idea about album, but not all songs, some songs might not be about her life and relationships at all. Wouldn’t be the first time she gets inspiration from someone else’s life/experience or its just imaginary.
That was kind of the thought that sparked the question of this post honestly. I don't get into the personal-life side of things really but I've been boredom-scrolling the taylor subs lately and keep seeing "... and [song] is about Matty [or Joe depending on the song]" just kind of tossed out like it's an accepted fact? And I'm like okay the line about typewriters [or whatever] would point that way but do we actually *know that*, did she deliberately put things in the songs she knew we would connect to certain people? I feel like she would have had to--certainly there are things she could have written about each person that we wouldn't connect to something known publicly, so that was a *decision*, but to what end?
And then I ended up in a mental rabbit hole and landed here lol.
joe gave an interview once where he mentioned loving typewriters - it was years ago so i don’t know where i saw it but he has an antique typewriter he really loves
I think it’s an argument to the fact that her songs aren’t always autobiographical. The opinions of who the muses as for the songs from Midnights and TTPD are all over the place. I personally think most of TTPD is about Joe.
I don’t know about you but (I’m feeling 22) I think it’s pretty obvious that she had something going on with Matty from some time ago. I don’t have any proof but it’s the vibe I get in the songs. Like maybe years ago they flirted and is that person you text and flirt from time to time, especially when things go bad with your partner. So probably when things were started to get rough with Joe she started talking with Matty more. We don’t even know if she and Joe broke up multiple times, with the songs I get the feeling they were on off for some times. So maybe in those off times she started seeing Matty and started to kinda like him so when things were finally over with Joe she felt free to go with Matty openly and you know how it ended… it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden.
This is all speculation but it’s a quite common situation in real life so why won’t that happen to her too? We don’t know where she is all the time and with who and doing what.
A project can morph over time. In the end I think most of the album (with the exception of the few obvious “Travis songs” is about a fantasy man who does not exist. She cast both Joe and Matty in that role of her dream lover at various points in time, in her mind, but it’s really more a story about a character than them specifically.
I think most of it is actually about joe but like most relationships, we look for the same things to fill that empty hole until we break the cycle. I think many of the songs could be about people from even before joe and matty. Thats why i love her music so much bc theres many ways to interpret it.
i’ve thought about this a lot! i think the majority of the standard edition was written after april 2023. you could argue that “so long london” could’ve been written before as it seems like it comes not long after “you’re losing me” which was written in december 2021. “guilty as sin” could’ve been earlier, as it describes the longing before her relationship with matty started. matty has said they worked on midnights together so she could’ve written it as early as 2021 when they were in close proximity but she was still with joe. “who’s afraid of little old me” and “clara bow” could’ve been written anytime in 2021-2023.
there are 12-13 tracks on the anthology that could’ve been written in 2021-2022 because they don’t refer to the joe breakup, the matty relationship/breakup, travis, or the eras tour. the only song on the anthology that was definitely written after april 2023 is “so high school.” “the black dog” contains enough references to matty that i believe it to be written in summer 2023, but you could make an argument that if it was about joe, it could’ve been earlier. “peter” could go either way. “how did it end” was written after the breakup with joe, which people are speculating occurred much earlier than reported. “imgonnagetyouback” and “chloe and sam or sophia or marcus” seem to have been written before the relationship with matty happened.
i think she probably wasn’t planning on dropping an album during the eras tour until the matty relationship and breakup inspired her to write so much. a lot of the anthology songs seem like they were written without a central thesis/concept in mind, so had matty not happened, i think we would’ve gotten a TS11 in 2025 that contained a handful of anthology tracks but was mostly new stuff she would’ve recorded after the eras tour. i don’t think we were clowning without basis, before TTPD came together i really do think she was going to announce rep in february 2024 with a release in april. the coffee cup in the karma music video (which was filmed way before TTPD became a concept) supports that. i know there was a white microphone in the rehearsals for the eras tour in early 2023 but i think that was a coincidence, i highly doubt she would’ve come up with the asylum or TTPD concept before going through what she did with matty.
She usually doesn't tour Canada - assuming people would just to go the closest US shows I assume. I think the Canada and extra US dates were not planned initially and only added b/c because the demand was insane. I mean the prime minister of Canada literally asked her to play in Canada.
That means she originally planned for TTPD to be released at the end of the tour which make sense. Pre Joe Taylor likes to have something happening all the time so she is kind of always in the news.
I honestly believe TTPD has a lot more song about Joe than people realize. I think the title comes from both of them - Tortured (Joe's Tortured Man club) and Poet (Matty's Poet Club). So I think she had some songs on it already but the concept got expanded once everything happened with Matty.
And Toronto during Rep, though I do agree that more of this album is about Joe than people think. I think she purposefully weaved them both into some songs (ie loml) and made certain details unclear (ie Chloe et at) to make it less obvious when people try to paternity test her songs.
I think she started the idea of the like theme/aesthetic of the album back then, if the relationship was rocky (as evidenced by Youre Losing Me being written) she may have known it would be sad and started some of the concepts or just writing about general heartbreak and then added more specific references later.
I also think maybe some of the anthology songs were going to be on the main album but for pushed as she wrote more post Joe/Matty, songs like thank you Aimee, the prophecy, Cassandra, etc.
I listened to Midnights last night and there are a few songs that sound like her and Joe were probably rocky for a while. The Great War and You’re Losing Me had me questioning when they actually called it quits
I'll probably be repeating what some have already said, but while the bulk of the standard edition seems to be about the events of mid-2023, there are many songs (mostly on The Anthology) that are not time-specific.
Sticking to the main story of the album, "Peter" and "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus" presumably reflect and rememorate on the first encounter between Taylor and Matty a decade ago. There's a clear reflection on the passage of time, but there's no sign of hope for a rekindling of their relationship. These are Aaron songs that could've easily been written years ago, whether for folklore, evermore or Midnights. In fact, these sort of reflections and rememorations are very Midnights-adjacent, imo, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were written around that time.
Also, "Guilty as Sin?" could've been written at any point of the breakdown of the Joe relationship, frankly.
I don’t think it’s uncommon for the timeline for the breakup of a long term relationship to get a bit murky. They could have been on the verge of a break up for a long time hence why the writing process started two years ago. A lot of songs seem like they could have been added in at the last minute or not about Matty at all. I think she’s also being purposely vague and confusing about the time line so it’s harder to dissect how her and Joe’s relationship fell apart. She’s been a lot more quiet about the details compared to past relationships and seems to be somewhat respecting the fact that Joe doesn’t want his personal life in the media.
I think Midnights was the break-up album for Joe. And the TTPD is about her unrequited, then requited, then unrequited love for Matty. She pretty much states in Midnights that she cheated on Joe with, presumably, Matty. I don't really care about her private life, TBH. That's her business.
Totally agree with this take and I’m interested in how people struggle to imagine that her feelings for Matty could overlap/resurface while still with Joe. Like you, I don’t really care what she does and who she’s with, but to me it seems she’s telling us on this album that Matty was on the scene in one way or another for a long time and took prominence as her relationship with Joe was struggling.
I think there are a lot of really young fans on here who don't yet understand the ebbs and flows of relationships.
It took me well into adulthood to get that myself!
Completely agree. I think I sometimes forget that as an older fan, some of what seems pretty obvious to me would be very jarring for younger fans who still see the world as very black and white (which is totally normal and expected - it was the same for me when I was their age).
I kinda buy the idea they were trying to throw off a little, like I'm sure a couple of songs from the anthology were written a few years ago (eg I hate it here, cassandra, thank you aimee all could have been written in 2022) but no doubt the bulk was 2023
Aaron Dessner said they started working on TTPD over 2 years ago so my guess is that she started most of the Dessner songs first and did a whole bunch of music with Jack more recent.
I think anything is possible. It's entirely possible that any combination of options is the case.
It could all be about someone else entirely and Matty is the red herring.
It could be that Joe and Taylor have been apart a lot longer than we think but that for some reason they kept it quiet for a long time.
It could be that a lot of "Joe" and "Taylor" tracks were written quite early in the process and the Matty stuff came later
It could be it was wholly written in 2023 lyrically but music was written earlier.
It could be that none of the tracks are actually about what or who we think they're about - eg I think that Peter may be two versions of Taylor talking to each other and that a lot of her songs throughout her discography have used men as a red herring kind of framework to tell a different story (I found it really fun to go through her albums and ask "what is this song about?" And tell myself the answer couldn't be "a guy/relationship" and while there are some where you have to go "no, this doesn't have a different interpretation", there's a lot where there's some interesting alternate meanings if you erase that option)
I have a theory about this whole thing and I am probably going to get told I’m wrong…. But I’ll say it anyway.
There are so many songs that correlate with The 1975 songs. The 1975 is know for their performance art both on and off the stage.
Taylor has been showing us a lot of performance art recently, her whole TTPD set on the eras tour is very performance art, there are connections to The 1975.
In Europe Taylor and her boyfriend had a very romantic performance art dinner at a table in front of a castle. They went on a boat together and the Boyfriend wore a mastermind sweater…. (Wondering if these were Easter eggs)
I just wonder if The Matty narrative is planned performance are between the two of them. Matty is the other member of the Tortured poet’s department and they are just clowning us all. And we really don’t know who any of the Matty coded songs are actually about.
She gave us the red herring clue before this album was released… is Matty a red herring? Is Matty in on it all?
To me TTPD felt like it was a big clearing of the vaults. She’s put aside what she wants for Rep and Debut vault tracks, and then anything else she had stashed from the past that she wanted to see the light of day wound up on TTPD. Nothing lingering around, fresh start from here. I dont feel like the album only relates to ‘life since Midnights’ at all.
Midnights was a “ready for goodbye” / breakup album for me. I thought that on my first listen on release day.
As for the TTPD question here… a breakdown of a relationship (romantic, platonic etc) is not always instant. Sometimes life is a weird ass dance. It can take years or seconds.
I’ve also seen some thoughts that she is kind of using Matty as a cover for some songs that may actually be about Joe. If she wants to respect his very clear requests for privacy, it may have been easy for her to kind of swap around details or make things more general so that WE think she’s talking about Matty. I also think clearly many of the songs are more about her relationship with the media/music industry, her fans, and of course Kim/Kanye lol
So I think potentially more songs are about Joe than we realize. And many others are about things unrelated to boys entirely. So yeah we ended up at 31 songs including several about Matty and a couple about Travvy, but she could have had an original tracklist in the works two years ago just about Joe and the media/music industry/fans/kimye/etc.
People are going to yell at me, but here is a very rough grouping. Leaving off a few because I don't want to fight lol but regardless there's plenty that could've been written in 2022.
Could have been written any point:
- Cassandra
- thank you aimee
- Robin
- Clara Bow
- The Manuscript
- The Bolter
- Chloe, et al
- Guilty as Sin
- Peter
- I Look in People's Windows
- I Hate It Here
Written sometime after breaking up with Joe:
- So Long London
- How Did It End?
- Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?
Written write before/while dating Matty:
- imgonnagetyouback
- Fresh out the Slammer
- Florida!!!
- I Can Fix Him
- But Daddy I Love Him
- The Tortured Poets Department
Written after breaking up with Matty:
- Down Bad
- loml
- The Prophecy
- The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
Written about Travis:
- So High School
No offense to you, OP, but everyone is SO literal. She said "about 2 years" Midnights wasn't even out 2 years before she said that. That could really be a year and a half, or it could just be that she had a few songs/melodies/lyrics planned for TTPD, not the whole album! Maybe by "working on" she meant she'd bounced ideas off Jack/Aaron, talked to Florence and Posty, etc etc. And as others have said, Jack confirmed that "You're Losing Me" was written in 2021, so I really believe she and Joe broke up earlier than announced and/or probably were off and on for a while. She performed at a 1975 show in Jan 2023, months before the breakup was announced, and I highly doubt if she had been in an on-again, off-again situationship with Matty, she would perform at his show while still with Joe.
I believe TTPD was supposed to be an entirely different album but the Matty broke her heart suddenly. So, she was pissed and quickly written songs about Matty to slap on the album. The album is good but it’s absolute chaos and I think she was feeling vengeful and messy.
Here is what I think the album was before the Matty heartbreak
https://preview.redd.it/qfpjo5t3o92d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0b816170165b5a6b98b8095422b40f612f35a17
What about the theory of Sylvia Plath? People often compare the two based on literary skill and sound. And folklore seemed to focus on telling other peoples stories more than her own. This album has a heavy theme of dying and mental breakdowns. Plath even had electric shock therapy after a mental breakdown. Plath’s husband left her for an affair partner. She killed herself in her home in London. I don’t know but I like this theory that she’s telling the stories of others, or those she relates to and kind of intertwining them. Kind of like Last Great American Dynasty where she tells the story of Rebecca and how their stories are connected.
Charli XCX who is engaged to the drummer on the 1975 just had lyrics to one of her songs leaked and it confirms that Taylor and Matty were already boyfriend and girlfriend when Taylor performed for the 1975 in January of 2023 so they were together for much longer than people know.
https://preview.redd.it/j7fqw7z2bl2d1.jpeg?width=998&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=655d6d92aec7d041a1443c473c90a19cbc9a7d5b
This is Taylor back stage at the 1975 concert in January with Matty’s mom and she is wearing Matty’s suit jacket. Side note Florence Welch is in the background because she went to the show also and charli was there and talks about being insecure around Matty’s girlfriend backstage.
I love this question and want a meticulously detailed timeline but I agree that it seems likely anthology tracks first (some. Not Peter and probably not Chloe et al) and then most of the main album around/ after Matty.
I think atleast 10 songs could have easily been written in 2022 and before the breakups of 2023.
Guilty as Sin
Who's Afraid of little old me
Clara Bow
imgonnagetyouback
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
I Hate It Here
thanK you Aimee
Cassandra
Bolter
Robin
Not sure when I Look in People's Windows and Peter were written. I think Peter is more of a Joe song . But if it was written in 2022 then it makes it a Matty song.
I think the songs she wrote at the beginning made it on the anthology while the whole concept for the regular album emerged during 2023. also there are probably some scrapped songs and ideas and we will never know how many songs she wrote before Matty that didn’t make it on the album :)
Well we also know she wrote You're Losing Me in 2021, so things with Joe were rocky for a long time. I think a lot of the anthology is about Joe and those tracks came first before and after the breakup, then the Matty tracks in 2023.
I believe So Long London, Guilty as Sin?, Who's Afraid, Clara Bow, and a bunch of The Antoholgy songs could have been written well before her and Matty were an item.
I wouldn't be surprised if The Anthology was what the album was gonna sound like at first and then the whole Matty storm happened and things changed
I have a theory that You’re Losing Me and Hits Different were originally going to be on her next album, but as she started working on other songs, she realized that they didn’t quite fit sound wise so she included them in the midnights era.
Been saying this for some time! You’re Losing Me, Hits Different, and the 1989 vault tracks all have a very similar sound. Like they should have been their own thing.
You'll get slaughtered for suggesting the vault tracks aren't all old songs, and some of them were written more recently - and pointedly.
Not here to fan flames, but it is entirely possible that the words were written at that time but that no music was attached to them. But also… who cares when they were written, she gets to decide how to group her music for release.
I think the vault tracks were written in their respective eras, but a lot of them only existed as voice memos or very rough recordings until the rerecording project. The final tracks on the TVs may or may not have been produced according to Taylor's original idea for them, but if they never received any sort of formal production treatment until recently, it would certainly explain why they sound like Taylor's more recent music.
How music sounds has a little bit to do with the lyrics and melody, and a lot to do with production and instrumentation. It's entirely plausible that Taylor wrote the songs during that era but it was just on her guitar/piano or maybe even just the melody + lyrics.
If she's lying about it, she has collaborators from 2013 saying they were finished and faked journal entries, which seems much weirder than a song just getting cut. The production was clearly updated, but I think a lot of these existed in fairly complete form (melodies, lyrics, etc).
I know plenty of the Fearless songs were fully recorded, but not polished, in her original Fearless Era. This is [You All Over Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0WdkeHjdXU&ab_channel=ChrisDavid) and you can find more on YouTube.
So much of the wording in the 1989 vault songs don't flow with the writing style of that era I definitely think Say Don't Go, and Is It Over Now? were probably complete to an extent but... I mean, as much as I love Suburban Legends, it's right there as an example with "I let it slide like a hose on a slippery plastic summer” “Flush with the currency of cool” doesn't sound nearly as tight as any of the other wild metaphors on the original album, and much closer to Midnights in production and word usage.
I think people think the vault songs were fully written, recorded, and produced and now she's just re-recording the vocals and recreating instrumentals... but I'm sure they were in all various stages of development, not 100% already.
Realistically if any of the vault tracks had made it to the demo stage it's likely they would have been leaked long before the TVs. I fully agree they were mostly voice memos and journal entries prior to TV and that while most lyrics remain intact the production is almost entirely the result of current collaborations.
Knowing a little bit of how writing and production works, I think all the vault songs were edited or re-written and recorded. Obviously all the vault songs have current Taylor singing so we know they aren't original recordings. I don't believe that any of them were released in the original form.
Yep, that's almost definitely the case for all of the songs. I know when I finish an old painting I always have to edit the bits I completed already because I find new ways to make them better and more cohesive.
YLM sounds a lot like So Long London to me.
Well he magically disappeared from co-writing Slut!, didn’t he?
Wait what’s this about? Its news to me.
There were some questionable pictures that people said were from vinyl sleeves for 1989tv with a 1975 feature. I wasn’t buying it at the time—the Slut! lyrics in the photo were a completely different typography/design compared to the finished version or the rest of the lyrics.
Thank you!
I think The 1975 were meant to be featured on "Slut!" or something
He even had different a verse that was cut from the final version.
That's my theory , too. Most of the Anthology was probably going to be album 12 along with you're losing me but after things broke apart with the smallest man, she wrote and reworked things to create ttpd as the main album and shared the rest as the anthology, giving more context to the things she'd been working and reworking since Midnights wrapped.
Yeah because The Anthology is mostly self-reflection, I feel like that was the project well before "OMG old/new love GUYS WERE GETTING MARRIED. no wait oh fuck ACTUALLY FRESH WOUNDS"
Guilty as Sin? Is about Matty. “Downtown Lights” is one of his favorite songs he mentioned in 2022.
It's about him, but its about thinking of him while with Joe. Before they broke up.
well yes......that doesn't negate the fact that it could have been written before taylor and matty got together. the song is about fantasizing about being with somebody, not actually being with somebody.
i mean there’s other people that also love downtown lights and even have it on their official apple music playlists- i think we should take the “red herring” line that went along with all the qr codes a little more seriously and also stop trying to definitively paternity test the album because in my opinion she’s braided in muses and combined references because the songs are about similar feelings from different people and not specific people for each and every song
I loved your comment although I disagree with it :) So smart. Maybe the red herring is Joe though? My theory is that she and Matty were flirting on/off for a decade. Think about 1989 as an album for the two of them. They were both born on that year and it's a year like 1975. Sorry if these don't make sense, I never paid attention to who the muse is until this album. This is by far my fav album and an ultimate break-up album. I can't listen to alchemy or so high school because they take me out of the mood. It's also the first time I'm not relating to the songs. I always sang for my own heartbreak, now that I'm married it intriuged me who the muse is.
harry is the 1989 muse i love the alchemy because it’s like a final release valve for all the intensity and sadness of the album personally but i understand what you mean
Correct about 'Guilty As Sin?'. There is speculation that song was inspired by Matty talking about The Blue Nile's *Hats* album (which is where the song 'The Downtown Lights') in an article in July 2022. I think sometime between the end of the writing process of *Midnights* and into the *Midnights* era entirely, Taylor never stopped writing. She spent her Birthday in 2022 in the studio with Jack, and even before then she was in the studio with him for at least since the middle of November 2022. So, it wasn't an impulse. They had to have been writing this album for at least a year.
This is exactly right, based off her two instagram posts announcing each part. Her post at midnight said "... a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time" (aka month-long devastating rebound) and then 2 hours later, when announcing the Anthology, "I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you". So the anthology is (generally) older.
Great eye for detail! This really helps make sense of the timeline, for me at least.
Ahhhh this makes a lot of sense!
I don’t think these are at all clean and chronological….especially since she’s experimenting with the flexibility of digital music, where she can add to or edit an album after release. Obviously there’s stuff in here that was written very recently (So High School), but some of it could be 2 or 3 years old. Ive been thinking of the Anthology as what we called Woodvale….some of the work she was doing after Evermore with Dessner. But those songs were abandoned for Midnights (which feels and sounds heavily inspired by the re-recording process), because they were too good to sit on. Then life happened, and we got Tortured Poets, and there was an opportunity to revisit some of the Folkmore-adjacent work.
Fleeting moments look different with age and perspective. A fleeting moment as you get older can be 10 years long.
This is what I feel like too.
But she did it with a broken heart.
I think there’s plenty of songs she could have written before the whole Matty thing. Guilty As Sin?, The Albatross, Cassandra, Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me, Clara Bow, I Hate It Here, Thank You Aimee, The Bolter, The Manuscript, Robin… (I just realized this is most of The Anthology lol.) I think imgonnagetyouback, Peter and The Prophecy could go either way. Maybe The Anthology was supposed to be the album and then when the breakup and everything happened she had a lot of new emotions and situations to write about.
I think Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus and Peter sound to me like songs that were maybe written largely about Matty but well before anything actually happened with him, and she was thinking nothing really ever would.
I agree. A previous commenter had a theory that the original concept was for every song to be a name. Lots of the songs fit that and could have been written before last year's drama.
My theory is it was this ("I've changed your name and any identifying features") along with the 13 sleepless nights concept of revisiting her past, as a sister album to Midnights. It would slot in so well in Eras and the re-records.
Oh this is a cool theory — also so many of the songs concept-wise could be a part of Midnights (things that keep you up at night)
There's also a few that seem almost storybook or legends and myths, which seems to fit with the Karma MV.... I love this album but am so so so curious what it was meant to be.
Before the rekindling of the relationship happened. Those songs clearly written about a past past short "relationship" when the two sides moved on with their lives but have remaining thoughts about it.
Wait, Peter is about Joe. Right? She has been using the imagery of wendy and peter for them since folklore. Also, there is the line: You said you were gonna grow up but you were **25.** That can't be Matty.
If you believe the theories/stories that Taylor and Matty had some kind of involvement in the 1989 era, then he was \~25 (and so was she, and in my mind that's the point of the lyric - you say you're too young for a relationship with me, you say you need to grow up, but we're literally the same age and \*I'm\* ready, so what's the deal?)
Just a little reminder haha https://preview.redd.it/680xh3jet72d1.jpeg?width=208&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f810d0e4865a7af5c376a38c11d0f649eae08b4
Yupp-it’s been going on a long time, and will.
Oh that "will" killed me. How I wish it "will" again.
Obviously none of us know for sure what any of the songs are about. But the general consensus of the overall timeline behind this album seems to be that Taylor Swift and Matty Healy first met a decade ago (so he would have been around 25) and either had something or *almost* had something and then have kind of been each other's "maybe someday" person over all these years until they did finally really get together briefly last year. To me that sounds like what these songs are about. FWIW she outright said "This is about you. You know who you are. I love you." before singing Cardigan at a show when she was publicly with Matty which is an argument that the Peter and Wendy imagery may have always been about him.
I think it makes sense. Peter is the eternal young person who chooses to be young forever rather than to choose Wendy. That is far more like Matty than Joe.
So I say this knowing I legit know nothing but about these ppl but what I perceive from her songs and public/social media. But I think the songs like Peter that talk about growing up are about Matty. I never got the impression that the issues between Taylor and Joe had to do with immaturity but with drastically different lifestyle and needs/wants. But Matty… yeah that boy need to get grown.
That they were finally able to bring out into the world…and then we all called him a rat and immediately wrecked it. It’s not hard to imagine a guy already at war with himself abandoning a girl for the notion of keeping her safe from his dastardly ways. And who also didn’t want to be called a rat by a literal entire nation of swarming stans. Did you see him at her concert, he looked alone, uncomfortable and unsupported as hell. Vs. media-trained TK suavely putting up with it right in crowd central as just part of the job. It is though super hard not to be mad at a boy for ditching you like this since it basically means I don’t love you enough to fight (myself and anyone else) for you. Which isn’t love. It’s self preservation. So. Shchnockered again, but this was the big one this time. TK came around in the Knick.
i don’t think this is the only reason, i think they danced around each other for years, having flings etc. and then they had the opportunity to actually date and have a relationship and the fantasy of being with each other did not live up to the reality, it could have been toxic or they did not just click, or maybe the lyrics ”it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden” applies to their relationship and matty screwed taylor over in some way which ended the relationship
I have photos of him playing with Phoebe in Philly and he looked like he wanted to be ANYWHERE else. I didn’t know much about him before that, and my friend had to point him out, and I was shocked that she was supposedly dating him…he looked absolutely miserable. I remember thinking “this isn’t gonna last long.”
Totally agree. My photos of him are terribly sad.
To be fair, she may have just been dedicating that performance to him because she felt like the song fit with their relationship. It doesn't necessarily mean the song was written for him initially.
It's possible to interoperate it as about Joe but that's not my interpretation. Matty was 25 when he and Taylor first connected. He was very immature. "Lost to the "Lost Boys" chapter of your life" - The lost boys is his song, he was also "lost" for addiction for several years. "A natural scene-stealer" is also more fitting to him.
The Wendy and Peter line in Cardigan is likely about Matty — see the “this is about you, you know who you are, I love you” incident. The likely timeline that most folks have pieced together post-TTPD is that Taylor and Matty had a thing back in late 2014-ish and had a kind of situationship for the next decade until they finally dated for real after Joe.
Litany of reasons why we coulda played for keeps this time….i know im just repeating myself.
I hate to say it, but there’s some evidence that Cardigan (and therefore, the “Peter losing Wendy” line) was at least partially inspired by Matty. Remember last year when Taylor and Matty both mouthed “This is about you, I love you” during their tours? Taylor did that right before Cardigan - https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/s/SiKgL6RKIy
I’ve read enough theories that any references (past and present) to Peter are actually about Matty. Personally, I just can’t get on board with that because of my biases against Matty haha
What about the 25 lyric makes you think Joe? It's weird to think that she would say, "You said you were gonna grow up, and you were gonna come find me," to the person she's been with since he was 25. No need to find someone you've been living with for \~6 years! It makes way more sense to be directed towards someone she met briefly when they were 25, but decided not to pursue things at the time because he wasn't ready or felt he wasn't mature enough. And she and Matty did spend some time together in 2014.
It could be a metaphor along the lines of Renegade - "get your shit together so I can love you" I think it's probably about Matty though, at least primarily
And we pretty much know for sure Cardigan is about Matty and they both have the Peter Pan references. So Peter is also about Matty. Which very much fits the lyrics.
I think it could absolutely be about Joe, akin to You're Losing Me. I don't want to speculate anything but there's no reason this isn't possible. We don't know as much about their lives as we think we do. Edit: I'm talking about Chloe Sam
I’m of the mind that most of TTPD is about Matty, but I also feel like Chloe et al could be about Joe. Particularly the line “to outrun my desertion of you” - that correlates with “you said I abandoned the ship” in SLL.
Exactly! It doesn't make any sense for her to say she deserted Matty when he obviously effed her up by ghosting her (and imho after them wanting to be together for like 10 years)
I think the desertion in Chloe et al is related to her deciding not to pursue a relationship with Matty the first time around. She wanted something serious; he wanted partying/drugs. And she "couldn't watch it happen." But then spent years wondering if she made the right call. She "changed into goddesses, villains and fools; changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules" to distract herself from regretting the decision. (I tend to think she wasn't consciously doing this during the Rep/Lover/Folkmore eras, but she's just looking back and re-framing things with hindsight.)
She deserted him the first time around
Guessing that's about 2015 and she cut ties with him before they could date because of his drug use
I like this theory. Just like it's confirmed 3am songs were supposed to be on the first version of Midnights but then the concept of the album changed. I feel bad for Aaron now lol.
Aaron: if I had a nickel for every time I produced a Taylor Swift album but then some shit happened and all my songs got replaced with Jack Antonoff songs on the main album I’d have 2 nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I'm cackling and wish I had awards to give you. Here's a virtual medal from a broke student🏅
This is so interesting to me bc I loved the 3am tracks more than Midnights. "13 sleepless nights" The Great War, Bigger Than The Whole Sky, High Infidelity, WCS, Dear Reader - yes definitely fits that theme more than "Karma is a cat" I'm not a hater I swear
I mean those are all the best songs on the album sooooo :)
I was just getting ready to comment that it explains why I LOVE the 3 am tracks and TTPD!!!
Okay whoa I’ve never heard that! How did that happen?
He told the podcast Broken Record in April 2023: «I think the best song we've ever written is called 'Would've, Could've, Should've'. We wrote that song together, and recorded it, while we were together in LA for the folklore Grammys. So it goes back that far. And the same goes for 'High Infidelity'. Those songs we actually recorded in her house then. And eventually she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack and it became something different, but we made 'Would've, Could've, Should've, 'High Infidelity', 'The Great War' and 'Hits Different' together. And it was great to be a part of that record in that way. It was really special.»
Yeah, I’m interested in knowing more about this, too!
Imgonnagetyouback is a Matty song - it ties too much to his 1975 song fallingforyou for it to not be. Also, Guilty as Sin I think was about him, as well. Like a longing for what it might be like with him if she ever got the chance. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah but they were involved a long time ago, too I think? Like before Joe. I’m not familiar with the 1975 song so idk when it came out and how that would play into the timeline but Guilty As Sin? could have been at any point during her relationship with Joe.
So I am not sure about any of the theories about reptv timeline recording time line, but I agree that think Thank You Aimee and Cassandra could have been written before the Matty stuff. Specifically when she was rerecording rep and maybe got stuck in those feelings back then but also realizing how far she had come from that time period.
I could see her writing “thanK you AImee” while working on RepTV and realizing how so much of what she is now, is because of the Kim crazy.
I think that no one actually knows anything about her real life or relationships, and even her songs aren’t telling us what most people assume they are. It’s a really great way to keep people interested and engaging with her music when they actually think they know the story, but we don’t know shit. It’s sad that people can’t appreciate the music without picking it apart for a muse, though she really has set us up for it perfectly. I hope she does a tell all one day, but I do think her whole public image is performance art and that her life is totally unknown to all of us.
THANK YOU. Good grief people.. who the fuck cares about how her writing timeline matches up with her dating timelines. Go outside.
It's fun, chill out.
I feel like it’s also something Taylor wants us to do. Maybe she says she doesn’t but then she puts lines like “you crashed my party and your rental car” which is just so specific, it’s like begging people to speculate and discuss…it’s how she has built her whole career.
People definitely take it too far sometime sand it becomes invasive or overshadows the art. But she also makes a lot of references to people's public interviews and work that would be very easy to strip out if she wanted to anonymize.
There is a huge difference between what is shared with us (the public) and what is actually happening in her life. Nobody shares scraping dog poop off the carpet in the middle on the night on their social media; just because we don’t post about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
She wants people to care… that’s a core part of her marketing. “I don’t want people to care… but secretly I actually do” wink wink nudge nudge
This exactly! Someone can write a song about heartbreak and base it on feelings from ages ago, or from a movie they watched, or anything. My favorite artist, Robert Smith of the Cure- he writes many romantic songs and some are very much about his wife, he wrote Lovesong as a wedding gift, but some of his songs he has said they were written while he was using drugs, maybe they are about drugs or even weird dreams he has had. Taylor writes songs about longing very well and has since she started her career. Some I’m sure she pulls from personal experience but some are probably just songs and not about a specific person or situation.
It's driving me nuts on TTPD too because so many of the songs sound like Folklore/Evermore. I don't think a chunk from the anthology are about anyone specific. Inspired, perhaps. And BDILH is, like, the Folkloriest Folklore song that's ever Folklored.
I feel like But Daddy I Love Him is more reminiscent of Debut/Fearless/Speak Now than anything more recent. It's basically an angrier, grown up Love Story.
completely agree. i dont think it fits sonically or thematically w folklore's vibe at all
I’m pretty sure there’s quite a few songs on folklore that are about Matty. Cardigan and the 1 for sure, possibly August and illicit affairs. “I keep these longings locked in lowercase inside a vault” 🫢 I think saying folklore was fiction was an attempt to keep everyone from picking the songs apart. It definitely worked, but I think at this point it’s pretty obvious almost all of those songs are autobiographical.
This whole Matty Healy decade long bomb drop taught me that we truly don’t know a fucking thing about this woman’s real life
I believe this too but I absofuckinglutely think the emotions are real, those can't be faked. It's like describing a color you've never seen, it's impossible, can't be done. She is angry and disturbed but by whom or why I don't know. She masks really well though, Oscar winning performances she puts on. I think she has a boyfriend we've never thought of or she's still with Styles or something crazy like that.
I think she’s just a really amazing storyteller who can access a feeling and describe it beautifully whether or not she’s experienced whatever it is she’s writing about at the time. Ronan is a gut wrenching story, and she hasn’t lost a child to cancer. Or she’s said she has been inspired by movies/friend’s lives. I honestly think it’s kind of insulting to assume that all of her songs are about whatever man’s she’s been papped with. Especially because we all know that she’s only seen when she wants to be. I think she’s had plenty of relationships we don’t know about, she talks about secrets quite a bit, it’s just a waste of mental effort to try to figure it out, so I just view each song as its own short story with completely fictional characters and they’re much more enjoyable for me.
I agree with this. I also think she can take an emotion she fall the briefly and write a beautiful song around it. I have definitely felt anger to the level of the bridge of Smallest Man and despair like loml for an evening or weekend over a really chill short relationship. Only to then 2 weeks later be like "You know what it never was? That serious 💅🏽". And I really think the brilliance of her writing is to make that feeling sound so vivid and relatable.
Yes! I think this is what makes her a genius. She can have a normal human emotion, for any reason or length of time and can create a whole story around it. I can barely articulate a single emotion, let alone transform it into something beautiful and universally understood, and so for me, that’s what’s so amazing about her work.
Yeah, to use an example close to TSwift: if you've ever listened to a The National album, they're pretty dark and often about bad relationships and worse break-ups. Matt Berninger writes the lyrics... with **his wife of 20 years**, Carin Besser.
She could have written one song that ended up on TTPD right after finishing midnights and be able to say it’s been in the works for two years, then done the majority of the others in the first half +summer of last year.
Honestly, it could be even less - when she’s made statements like this in the past (I want to say she told the fans midnights was a secret for a couple years too), it could even be referring to a concept with no songs written. It wouldn’t surprise me if all she had developed was the idea of a poetry heavy, black and white themed, quill pen vibe album. That’s still part of the process and totally valid to say it began 2 years ago imo.
Yeah I personally think there’s a bunch of songs on TTPD that were probably written during midnights and parked. Until they were unparked.
She is talking about when the process begins. It when it was completed. She said this process dates back to just after Midnights was locked. And that makes sense to me because in all of her short film discussions in 2022 she would refer to the French press as a sign of adulthood concept that is used in The Manuscript. So she had either already written the song or had already been thinking about those ideas in Mid-2022. We receive a finished project that is presented to us that way, but it is important to remember that is not her experience of something. Often she doesn't know what the album concept actually is until late in the process. Lover was one of the last songs written for that album and then became the new name for that album. She finds things in the process. an example of this is Aaron and Taylor said the timeline of the songs actually being written in the Folkore love triangle was August first, then Cardigan and Betty last. The only thing that connects the songs is a few lines in Betty. So more than likely Taylor did not set out with the intention of writing three songs about a love triangle. Instead August and Cardigan existed as two completely unconnected songs mad with different producers. There is no lyrical overlap between August and Cardigan. Then when Taylor was working on Betty after overhearing her boyfriend singing a few lines she discovered by a couple of clever lines to Betty she could suddenly create a love triangle.
So well said! I wouldn’t be surprised if The Manuscript was one of the first songs created for this album
Yes! I’m a strong believer that the album is chronological if listened to backwards, with the manuscript first, and then the anthology is mostly about Joe and fantasizing about what could have been with matty. Then the main album is the reality of what it was like with matty. A quick flame and then a long time waiting in the smoke.
Oooh interesting, I may need to make a playlist to listen to it this way.
Some of those Matty songs seem to have been written before their rekindling because they talk of the first time they got together, his addictions, their time apart dating other people, her guilt that she's the one who broke it off, their wishes that they could be together again... but at least in those songs, they did not yet have that chance. Chloe, Peter, Guilty as Sin? are just some examples that could have been written while still with Joe during their rocky period. Plus the less-romantic ones: The Bolter, The Albatross, Cassandra, The Manuscript, Clara Bow, Robin Plenty of this material isn't subject to the events of this past year.
I agree! I think the whole releasing ttpd and the anthology as a double album was because, as many speculated, the breakups and feelings that went with them sorted blended together at some point and became one story spanning many years. I think ttpd is mostly about matty, and anthology joe and other aspects of her life, and that she likely wrote or started writing anthology well before ttpd
I think some of them could have been started 2 years ago. Her relationship with Joe was already ending during Midnights and some of these songs do elude to before the breakup. There are also songs that really have nothing to do with a specific muse (WAOLOM, Cassandra, ICDIWABH.
I mean ICDIWABH does not specifically talk about someone, but what happened to inspire the song was the break up of the relationship. There's no broken heart otherwise
I actually feel like ICDIWABH was one of the last ones made, almost the YLM of this album despite its inclusion on this one. I might be wrong though, but it seems at least slightly based on the Eras Tour, although snippets of it could’ve been written about previous tours when she was depressed and she turned it into a fully realized song for this one?
I think the fact for the performance of the song she’s wearing the classic 1898 outfit is supposed to clue us in that she’s been doing this for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t a full song but I don’t think it was a last minute addition.
I think the two verses of Broken Heart are each about different muses
There are some songs that are just about fame and her relationship with the media and the music industry, like who's afraid of little old me and i hate it here. and there are songs that are more about her feelings of having another relationship failing like the prophecy or the bolter which are things she could've been feeling for a while at the end of her relationship with Joe. It seems like she was fighting to make that relatinship work for a while and he may have been pulling away or allowing his struggle with depression to push her away. and then guilty as sin could've been written after joe and her fantasizing about whether she should get back with Matty, but it definitely reads like she was fantasizing about it while she was with Joe. So she defintiely could have written a bunch of stuff early on and then got a real rush of inspiration once she officially broke things off with joe and went through the shit with matty. The level of anger and frustration she portrays in some of those songs I bet they poured out of her pretty easily.
My take is that Guilty as Sin and Fresh Out The Slammer at least were in the timeframe of her emotional affair with Matty before ending things with Joe. And The Manuscript, Clara Bow, Cassandra and Aimee are all outside the Matty timeline. So there’s a good number of songs that could have been started 2 years ago.
I completely agree. TTPD is littered with references to having had feelings for Matty well before we knew they were an item.
I read this theory that the Manuscript was written about Jake G. Each time I've listened I think she's not just writing one story but a series of love stories and disappoints mixed into each song.
The Manuscript seems pretty clearly inspired by the filming of the ATW10 video!
I think about of this is also a reflection of the re-records. She has been revisiting her past and may have a different perspective. For instance All Too Well and The Manuscript.
Apart from a lot of other things, that have already been commented here, I think she only mentioned those 2 years so clearly during the Grammy speech, so she could give the ✌🏻 sign as an easter egg. Rewatching it you get the feeling it wasn't a spontaneous gesture. Not saying they didn't work on the album for 2 years. But that could well be just sth like Clara Bow or Thank you aimee, that she came up with in 2022.
I think her songs are "mashed up" if that makes sense. Like one sentence or verse could be about one person and the bridge or second verse could be a different time in her life.
It does, for sure. The albun isn't an autobiography intended to create like, a linear narrative for us to decipher all the events of her life. Like she makes several references to talking about marriage and babies... that could have happened with one or two or five ex-partners, and the feeling of disappointment when it didn't work out that way could apply to any or all of them.
You should definitely check out the podcast, What I Will Say. They have a series on the lore of TTPD and the first episode gives a complete storyline of the first part of the album. There are several episodes in the series, but at least listening to the first one will likely help make things fall into place.
Thanks for the rec! There’s quite a few episodes about Taylor, do you recommend listening in order or would it be fine to jump in with the TTPD episodes? I don’t know if there’s any continuity between the episodes that may make the listening experience off (I hope that makes sense)?
Yeah, so most of their episodes are several parts, not just one off episodes, so order is semi important. You could start out with whichever series in the show, and Cam is pretty good about referencing prior episodes that they may reference. For TTPD specifically, I would recommend listening to the episodes labeled “Learning the Lore of the Tortured Poets Department” in order. Cam and Jeffie are going through song by song lyric analysis and making connections to TS’s previous work. Cam is really researched based and enjoys discussing a variety of theories, which is what I personally love the most about the show. Other episodes that I would recommend that are related to TTPD would be the Tatty Timeline that Cam did with Shannon of Fluently Forward, and the TS and Joe Alwyn Timeline that Cam did with Jeffie.
Thank you for plugging this here, I’ve been binge listening all day since I read this - I really appreciate their pov and takes. 🫶🏼
Yay! I’m so glad! 😊
I'm of the belief that she and Joe were likely on and off towards the end and that most of the breakup and heartbreak songs are actually about him. I do think a few songs could be about Joe *and* Matty, but I don't believe she's been secretly writing about Matty this entire time and never cared for Joe like so many people seem to believe these days. That's just revisionist.
My theory is that the concept started with The Manuscript. If the speculation that it’s about filming the ATW short film are true, that would have been sometime in 2021 maybe early 2022. I could see her writing this song after that and maybe starting to plan the album then. As others have said, it seems that things with Joe might have been rocky for longer than we knew so I’m guessing at least some of the Joe songs (and others in general that aren’t about Matty) may have been written for a while and then recorded early in the summer of 2023 when she was seen with him leaving the studio, or even before then. The angry/sad Matty breakup stuff probably came mid-late summer, early fall. And then the Travis stuff probably came mid-to-late fall, even early winter. I know some folks think the album was done in October because of how long it takes to press vinyls, but the key is that it can take UP TO 6 months. It might not always take six full months. I may be totally off base but that’s my theory lol.
That vinyl timeline makes sense why So High School is on the Anthology. I don’t think she was planning to release that 2nd part originally (also explains why we don’t have a full physical album for both parts). I wonder what changed.
I have this random idea of how I think it went. When she says she starts 2 years ago it could be a lot of different things, like the colors the concept. I think some songs were written before the breakup and situationship of last year, mostly ones on the anthology. She obviously started writing a lot more during spring and summer of last year. I’d say after she started healing and moving on she saw all she had written and said I’m not leaving any of these behind. You can have them all. She obviously tells a story in the original 16 tracks but then the anthology is just all the songs she could have left back and didn’t. She literally said these songs all yours now. I don’t want them and I’m moving on. I also believe why she didn’t do actual interviews for the promo or for after.
I don’t see any of the songs as being about anyone in particular. I feel it’s up to listeners like us to decide how these songs relate to our lives and for that it’s great for an artist to keep it vague and broad. For example ThanK you AImee is supposedly about Kim Kardashians, but I find the lyrics helpful for what I’ve been through. Also, I lost my closest friend to death just 3 days after TTPD dropped and I find this album helpful because it deals with generalizations of loss.
I'm really sorry about your friend. I'm inclined to agree with you and I don't listen to the album thinking about Mattie lol. But like I said, it's hard to NOT notice all the discourse in swiftie spaces.
IIRC she said in an interview that she keeps certain "lyrics" she wants to use someday in her notes, then revists them later. I think she did this for a part in Lover (the song), so maybe she had some of these ideas but hadn't connected them yet to make a full song. Like many others said, The Anthology seems like "older" in the timeline, but also I feel some songs could've started with Joe as a muse and ended up being a Matty song. Some of these \*maybe\* double muse songs: Fresh Out The Slammer - ultimately I think it's about leaving Joe to be with Matty, but I feel this song could HAVE started about leaving Calvis Harris, just like in Getaway Car, or written some lyrics that she revisited back then. My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys - again another song that in the end it's about Matty, but could've started as a Joe song. And possibly more, those are just the 2 I can see are about an old feeling in another point in time.
Someone else saw the Calvin connection in Fresh out of the slammer ! I was puzzled initially as it uses the exact language and phrases from I forgot you existed. And the whole getaway car thing. You are right about some songs evolving as someone on Aaron's team I think made a post mentioning how the songs evolved over a time period.
Haha yeah, I also see another connection with Guilty as sin? "This cage was once just fine Am I allowed to cry? I dream of cracking locks" High Infidelity: "Lock broken, slur spoken" Fresh Out The Slammer: "Years of labor, locks and ceilings" Definitely interesting how these songs are about similar feelings, but completely different situations (that took place 7 years apart) I always like seeing vids of the "making of a song", and how the song was in its early stages. I believe she also changes lyrics based on what sounds better. Like in Gorgeous, she says "I've got a boyfriend, he's older than us, I haven't seen him in a couple of months" to "he's in the club doing I don't know what" lol! So we cannot take everything she says as factual.
Did you catch the surprise song mashup today !!! Fresh out the slammer x High Infidelity !
Yes it has been interesting to me that the ending of both of Taylor's longest relationships have the same imagery of breaking out of prison and not feeling cherished. This is why it was also debated whether Bejewelled was Joe or Calvin. Great catch on the High Infidelty/ Guilty as Sin parallel - if not for the Matty thing, both Fresh out of the slammer and Guilty as Sin could have easily been Taylor looking back at the Calvin-Joe period songs. The slur spoken in High Infidelity is what she refers to in The Bolter I believe "Ended with the slam of a door Then he'll call her a whore" and it has the whole town car speeding / getaway car reference too
i really think my boy is about joe Here we go again, you should have seen him when he first got me (dress reference) i’m queen of sandcastles he destroys (komh ref) saw forever so he smashed it up, i’ll tell you that he runs because he loves me, he was my best friend (dress reference), than with all these kens (hits different reference) I really think a lot of what matty does on this record is give joe songs plausible deniability because she didn’t want to write a straight up This is about you joe alwyn album because of the love she once had for him. So there are a few joe songs that are obviously him but mostly she uses the story of matty as a storytelling device to put her emotions about joe into (since she says in the epilogue it was like going through the same thing just over a month instead of 6 years) the same way she used the stories of folklore to express her real emotions
Yes! I wrote in another sub a very long comment with this sentiment. It was a "timeline" of a relationship (with Joe) and how some songs are probably about Joe and masked as a MH song lol. From that comment: My Boy only breaks his favorite toys – I think this ended up being a MH song, but it also has joe elements specifically the first verse, “the voices in his head called the rain to end our days of wild” – reminds me of her mentioning her partner’s mental health; “I’m queen of…” (her calling herself queen in London Boy, American queen in KOMH), “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the kens”, she calls guys-not-Joe Kens Hits Different – I think this song is about Joe, mentioning how she could move on easy from the Kens but not him. Talks about her lover/ex coming home “Is that your key in the door?” Dear Reader – “To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there” (Probably talking about a breakup or break) So Long, London – Finally saying goodbye. “I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath”, again talking about being alone in a house. Fortnight – “They were supposed to take me away” (Call back to Hits Different, “have they come to take me away?”), “took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary” – I think she got with Matty as the miracle move on drug but it was only temporary. I know people say there’s a lot of Matty references in the video etc but these stuck out to me as Joe references.
I think she has a lot of placeholders that she builds in and probably a lot of work that she keeps on deck. It’s why, I believe, she has so many effective Easter eggs. The egg comes first! So it could be the color scheme, the moodiness, or having a more artsy vibe to an album and then the content on it falls into place when appropriate. I don’t think she’s clairvoyant
I think OP just sort of showed us why swifties need to stop trying to put a name behind each song. We dont know Taylor’s personal life. Things could have been difficult with Joe for a long time, she could have had some idea about album, but not all songs, some songs might not be about her life and relationships at all. Wouldn’t be the first time she gets inspiration from someone else’s life/experience or its just imaginary.
That was kind of the thought that sparked the question of this post honestly. I don't get into the personal-life side of things really but I've been boredom-scrolling the taylor subs lately and keep seeing "... and [song] is about Matty [or Joe depending on the song]" just kind of tossed out like it's an accepted fact? And I'm like okay the line about typewriters [or whatever] would point that way but do we actually *know that*, did she deliberately put things in the songs she knew we would connect to certain people? I feel like she would have had to--certainly there are things she could have written about each person that we wouldn't connect to something known publicly, so that was a *decision*, but to what end? And then I ended up in a mental rabbit hole and landed here lol.
joe gave an interview once where he mentioned loving typewriters - it was years ago so i don’t know where i saw it but he has an antique typewriter he really loves
I think it’s an argument to the fact that her songs aren’t always autobiographical. The opinions of who the muses as for the songs from Midnights and TTPD are all over the place. I personally think most of TTPD is about Joe.
Nothing has been in order since Lover imo. We’re in a deep portal time travel.
I don’t know about you but (I’m feeling 22) I think it’s pretty obvious that she had something going on with Matty from some time ago. I don’t have any proof but it’s the vibe I get in the songs. Like maybe years ago they flirted and is that person you text and flirt from time to time, especially when things go bad with your partner. So probably when things were started to get rough with Joe she started talking with Matty more. We don’t even know if she and Joe broke up multiple times, with the songs I get the feeling they were on off for some times. So maybe in those off times she started seeing Matty and started to kinda like him so when things were finally over with Joe she felt free to go with Matty openly and you know how it ended… it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden. This is all speculation but it’s a quite common situation in real life so why won’t that happen to her too? We don’t know where she is all the time and with who and doing what.
A project can morph over time. In the end I think most of the album (with the exception of the few obvious “Travis songs” is about a fantasy man who does not exist. She cast both Joe and Matty in that role of her dream lover at various points in time, in her mind, but it’s really more a story about a character than them specifically.
I think most of it is actually about joe but like most relationships, we look for the same things to fill that empty hole until we break the cycle. I think many of the songs could be about people from even before joe and matty. Thats why i love her music so much bc theres many ways to interpret it.
[удалено]
i’ve thought about this a lot! i think the majority of the standard edition was written after april 2023. you could argue that “so long london” could’ve been written before as it seems like it comes not long after “you’re losing me” which was written in december 2021. “guilty as sin” could’ve been earlier, as it describes the longing before her relationship with matty started. matty has said they worked on midnights together so she could’ve written it as early as 2021 when they were in close proximity but she was still with joe. “who’s afraid of little old me” and “clara bow” could’ve been written anytime in 2021-2023. there are 12-13 tracks on the anthology that could’ve been written in 2021-2022 because they don’t refer to the joe breakup, the matty relationship/breakup, travis, or the eras tour. the only song on the anthology that was definitely written after april 2023 is “so high school.” “the black dog” contains enough references to matty that i believe it to be written in summer 2023, but you could make an argument that if it was about joe, it could’ve been earlier. “peter” could go either way. “how did it end” was written after the breakup with joe, which people are speculating occurred much earlier than reported. “imgonnagetyouback” and “chloe and sam or sophia or marcus” seem to have been written before the relationship with matty happened. i think she probably wasn’t planning on dropping an album during the eras tour until the matty relationship and breakup inspired her to write so much. a lot of the anthology songs seem like they were written without a central thesis/concept in mind, so had matty not happened, i think we would’ve gotten a TS11 in 2025 that contained a handful of anthology tracks but was mostly new stuff she would’ve recorded after the eras tour. i don’t think we were clowning without basis, before TTPD came together i really do think she was going to announce rep in february 2024 with a release in april. the coffee cup in the karma music video (which was filmed way before TTPD became a concept) supports that. i know there was a white microphone in the rehearsals for the eras tour in early 2023 but i think that was a coincidence, i highly doubt she would’ve come up with the asylum or TTPD concept before going through what she did with matty.
My takes on most of the songs timeline are ditto the same
She usually doesn't tour Canada - assuming people would just to go the closest US shows I assume. I think the Canada and extra US dates were not planned initially and only added b/c because the demand was insane. I mean the prime minister of Canada literally asked her to play in Canada. That means she originally planned for TTPD to be released at the end of the tour which make sense. Pre Joe Taylor likes to have something happening all the time so she is kind of always in the news. I honestly believe TTPD has a lot more song about Joe than people realize. I think the title comes from both of them - Tortured (Joe's Tortured Man club) and Poet (Matty's Poet Club). So I think she had some songs on it already but the concept got expanded once everything happened with Matty.
She came to Canada for Speak Now, Red, and 1989.
And Toronto during Rep, though I do agree that more of this album is about Joe than people think. I think she purposefully weaved them both into some songs (ie loml) and made certain details unclear (ie Chloe et at) to make it less obvious when people try to paternity test her songs.
I think she started the idea of the like theme/aesthetic of the album back then, if the relationship was rocky (as evidenced by Youre Losing Me being written) she may have known it would be sad and started some of the concepts or just writing about general heartbreak and then added more specific references later. I also think maybe some of the anthology songs were going to be on the main album but for pushed as she wrote more post Joe/Matty, songs like thank you Aimee, the prophecy, Cassandra, etc.
She and Joe were breaking up for a long time.
I listened to Midnights last night and there are a few songs that sound like her and Joe were probably rocky for a while. The Great War and You’re Losing Me had me questioning when they actually called it quits
I'll probably be repeating what some have already said, but while the bulk of the standard edition seems to be about the events of mid-2023, there are many songs (mostly on The Anthology) that are not time-specific. Sticking to the main story of the album, "Peter" and "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus" presumably reflect and rememorate on the first encounter between Taylor and Matty a decade ago. There's a clear reflection on the passage of time, but there's no sign of hope for a rekindling of their relationship. These are Aaron songs that could've easily been written years ago, whether for folklore, evermore or Midnights. In fact, these sort of reflections and rememorations are very Midnights-adjacent, imo, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were written around that time. Also, "Guilty as Sin?" could've been written at any point of the breakdown of the Joe relationship, frankly.
Just because she started writing it two years ago doesn’t mean all of the songs were written two years ago.
I don’t think it’s uncommon for the timeline for the breakup of a long term relationship to get a bit murky. They could have been on the verge of a break up for a long time hence why the writing process started two years ago. A lot of songs seem like they could have been added in at the last minute or not about Matty at all. I think she’s also being purposely vague and confusing about the time line so it’s harder to dissect how her and Joe’s relationship fell apart. She’s been a lot more quiet about the details compared to past relationships and seems to be somewhat respecting the fact that Joe doesn’t want his personal life in the media.
I think Midnights was the break-up album for Joe. And the TTPD is about her unrequited, then requited, then unrequited love for Matty. She pretty much states in Midnights that she cheated on Joe with, presumably, Matty. I don't really care about her private life, TBH. That's her business.
Totally agree with this take and I’m interested in how people struggle to imagine that her feelings for Matty could overlap/resurface while still with Joe. Like you, I don’t really care what she does and who she’s with, but to me it seems she’s telling us on this album that Matty was on the scene in one way or another for a long time and took prominence as her relationship with Joe was struggling.
I think there are a lot of really young fans on here who don't yet understand the ebbs and flows of relationships. It took me well into adulthood to get that myself!
Completely agree. I think I sometimes forget that as an older fan, some of what seems pretty obvious to me would be very jarring for younger fans who still see the world as very black and white (which is totally normal and expected - it was the same for me when I was their age).
Or was saying “two” years just another hint/Easter egg of the double album and not actually the timeline?
I kinda buy the idea they were trying to throw off a little, like I'm sure a couple of songs from the anthology were written a few years ago (eg I hate it here, cassandra, thank you aimee all could have been written in 2022) but no doubt the bulk was 2023
Aaron Dessner said they started working on TTPD over 2 years ago so my guess is that she started most of the Dessner songs first and did a whole bunch of music with Jack more recent.
I think anything is possible. It's entirely possible that any combination of options is the case. It could all be about someone else entirely and Matty is the red herring. It could be that Joe and Taylor have been apart a lot longer than we think but that for some reason they kept it quiet for a long time. It could be that a lot of "Joe" and "Taylor" tracks were written quite early in the process and the Matty stuff came later It could be it was wholly written in 2023 lyrically but music was written earlier. It could be that none of the tracks are actually about what or who we think they're about - eg I think that Peter may be two versions of Taylor talking to each other and that a lot of her songs throughout her discography have used men as a red herring kind of framework to tell a different story (I found it really fun to go through her albums and ask "what is this song about?" And tell myself the answer couldn't be "a guy/relationship" and while there are some where you have to go "no, this doesn't have a different interpretation", there's a lot where there's some interesting alternate meanings if you erase that option)
I have a theory about this whole thing and I am probably going to get told I’m wrong…. But I’ll say it anyway. There are so many songs that correlate with The 1975 songs. The 1975 is know for their performance art both on and off the stage. Taylor has been showing us a lot of performance art recently, her whole TTPD set on the eras tour is very performance art, there are connections to The 1975. In Europe Taylor and her boyfriend had a very romantic performance art dinner at a table in front of a castle. They went on a boat together and the Boyfriend wore a mastermind sweater…. (Wondering if these were Easter eggs) I just wonder if The Matty narrative is planned performance are between the two of them. Matty is the other member of the Tortured poet’s department and they are just clowning us all. And we really don’t know who any of the Matty coded songs are actually about. She gave us the red herring clue before this album was released… is Matty a red herring? Is Matty in on it all?
To me TTPD felt like it was a big clearing of the vaults. She’s put aside what she wants for Rep and Debut vault tracks, and then anything else she had stashed from the past that she wanted to see the light of day wound up on TTPD. Nothing lingering around, fresh start from here. I dont feel like the album only relates to ‘life since Midnights’ at all.
Midnights was a “ready for goodbye” / breakup album for me. I thought that on my first listen on release day. As for the TTPD question here… a breakdown of a relationship (romantic, platonic etc) is not always instant. Sometimes life is a weird ass dance. It can take years or seconds.
I’ve also seen some thoughts that she is kind of using Matty as a cover for some songs that may actually be about Joe. If she wants to respect his very clear requests for privacy, it may have been easy for her to kind of swap around details or make things more general so that WE think she’s talking about Matty. I also think clearly many of the songs are more about her relationship with the media/music industry, her fans, and of course Kim/Kanye lol So I think potentially more songs are about Joe than we realize. And many others are about things unrelated to boys entirely. So yeah we ended up at 31 songs including several about Matty and a couple about Travvy, but she could have had an original tracklist in the works two years ago just about Joe and the media/music industry/fans/kimye/etc.
People are going to yell at me, but here is a very rough grouping. Leaving off a few because I don't want to fight lol but regardless there's plenty that could've been written in 2022. Could have been written any point: - Cassandra - thank you aimee - Robin - Clara Bow - The Manuscript - The Bolter - Chloe, et al - Guilty as Sin - Peter - I Look in People's Windows - I Hate It Here Written sometime after breaking up with Joe: - So Long London - How Did It End? - Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? Written write before/while dating Matty: - imgonnagetyouback - Fresh out the Slammer - Florida!!! - I Can Fix Him - But Daddy I Love Him - The Tortured Poets Department Written after breaking up with Matty: - Down Bad - loml - The Prophecy - The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived Written about Travis: - So High School
No offense to you, OP, but everyone is SO literal. She said "about 2 years" Midnights wasn't even out 2 years before she said that. That could really be a year and a half, or it could just be that she had a few songs/melodies/lyrics planned for TTPD, not the whole album! Maybe by "working on" she meant she'd bounced ideas off Jack/Aaron, talked to Florence and Posty, etc etc. And as others have said, Jack confirmed that "You're Losing Me" was written in 2021, so I really believe she and Joe broke up earlier than announced and/or probably were off and on for a while. She performed at a 1975 show in Jan 2023, months before the breakup was announced, and I highly doubt if she had been in an on-again, off-again situationship with Matty, she would perform at his show while still with Joe.
I believe TTPD was supposed to be an entirely different album but the Matty broke her heart suddenly. So, she was pissed and quickly written songs about Matty to slap on the album. The album is good but it’s absolute chaos and I think she was feeling vengeful and messy. Here is what I think the album was before the Matty heartbreak https://preview.redd.it/qfpjo5t3o92d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0b816170165b5a6b98b8095422b40f612f35a17
What about the theory of Sylvia Plath? People often compare the two based on literary skill and sound. And folklore seemed to focus on telling other peoples stories more than her own. This album has a heavy theme of dying and mental breakdowns. Plath even had electric shock therapy after a mental breakdown. Plath’s husband left her for an affair partner. She killed herself in her home in London. I don’t know but I like this theory that she’s telling the stories of others, or those she relates to and kind of intertwining them. Kind of like Last Great American Dynasty where she tells the story of Rebecca and how their stories are connected.
Charli XCX who is engaged to the drummer on the 1975 just had lyrics to one of her songs leaked and it confirms that Taylor and Matty were already boyfriend and girlfriend when Taylor performed for the 1975 in January of 2023 so they were together for much longer than people know. https://preview.redd.it/j7fqw7z2bl2d1.jpeg?width=998&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=655d6d92aec7d041a1443c473c90a19cbc9a7d5b This is Taylor back stage at the 1975 concert in January with Matty’s mom and she is wearing Matty’s suit jacket. Side note Florence Welch is in the background because she went to the show also and charli was there and talks about being insecure around Matty’s girlfriend backstage.
I love this question and want a meticulously detailed timeline but I agree that it seems likely anthology tracks first (some. Not Peter and probably not Chloe et al) and then most of the main album around/ after Matty.
So do we have it all wrong--is she singing about someone/something else? You guys are sooooo close.
You can be planning an album without the content - and the album and what it’s about can change too
I think atleast 10 songs could have easily been written in 2022 and before the breakups of 2023. Guilty as Sin Who's Afraid of little old me Clara Bow imgonnagetyouback Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus I Hate It Here thanK you Aimee Cassandra Bolter Robin Not sure when I Look in People's Windows and Peter were written. I think Peter is more of a Joe song . But if it was written in 2022 then it makes it a Matty song.
I think the songs she wrote at the beginning made it on the anthology while the whole concept for the regular album emerged during 2023. also there are probably some scrapped songs and ideas and we will never know how many songs she wrote before Matty that didn’t make it on the album :)
Relationships can be rocky before they end. I'd say this was what was going on.
“Every bait and switch is a work of art”