The Subtle And Not So Subtle Gayness Of Red (taylor’s Version)

My Tears Ricochet Theory

Kaylors, This post is low-key for you but I think everyone should be open to this interpretation regardless of shipping.

My Tears Ricochet is actually about watching someone you thought you were going to marry someday, marry someone else. The opening line “We gather here, we line up, weeping in a sunlit room” is referencing a wedding. We Gather Here Today to see the union of person A and person B. However the following parts : Weeping in a sunlit room, sounds more like a funeral. This is because this Wedding marks the death of the writer (Taylor) upon seeing her Lover marry someone else. Their love is dead, forever.

“Cause I loved you, I swear I Loved you, I loved you until my dying day”  Sound like would-be wedding vows, except now they will never be said.

“We gather stones, never knowing what they mean, some to throw some to make a diamond ring” This lyric marks Taylor’s intention to marry Person A, although life clearly had other plans. Perhaps this wedding is a slap to the face of Taylor, Person A throwing rocks. 

“You know I didn’t want to have to haunt you, but what a ghostly scene” once again playing with the theme of a funeral or the death of love, now it is cursed. “You were the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me” All the “Stones” that Taylor gave her lover before a possible wedding ring.

To add to this: I think Person A is settling with Person B. Taylor and Person A didn’t work out for whatever reason but it would seem that Taylor begged them to stay “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace, cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave” Person A clearly still misses Taylor though “If I’m dead to you why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I’d stayed”

Furthermore, The Last Great American Dynasty is a metaphor for this exact concept. Person A married for superficial reasons, not love. Money, Loud Parties, Filling pools with champagne. But in the night Person A will always hear Taylor’s “Stolen Lullabies” the songs written about them, and wonder the same as what Taylor does “It could’ve been fun, if you were the one”

I really love this line as well “You turned into your worst fears And you’re tossing out blame, drunk on this pain Crossing out the good years” 

Person A never wanted to be the person marrying for money, they are a hopeless romantic. Perhaps they didn’t come from money, like Rebecca in The Last Great American Dynasty, they were Middle Class. They were the type to make fun of people like that, now taylor writes of Person A’s friends of privilege “Bitch Pack Friends” 

And yet Person A for some reason blames Taylor for the outcome, they can’t let go of the love either, they are drunk on the pain of losing the love of their life and crossing out the good years, forgetting the innocence of youth and trading it for the corruption of wealth.

Let me start by saying that I’ve loved all of Taylor’s previous albums. They’re magical and fantastic, each in their own way. They each represent a phase/era in her life. I love that. But you know what I love even more? This album feels like such a natural evolution. This album wasn’t focused on singles and touring. It was made purely for the craft of it. This album seems so much more intimate and personal than anything we’ve ever had from her before. This album is full of reminiscing, which is something I’ve really started to do now that I’m older. As soon as I heard this album and the vibe each song has and the lyrics (THE LYRICS!!!), it just hit me right in the feels. This album is MY album. It’s the one I connect to the most. It’s the album that makes me feel so many emotions from start to finish. This album is helping me process my own childhood, difficult feelings from past relationships, and an array of feelings I’ve had when reminiscing on fading memories. Music can mean so many things to lots of people. Music has this stunningly beautiful magic of helping us escape, process or enjoy various periods in our life and the emotions that come with them. All of her albums have helped me in some way. But Folklore is the album that is helping me process the difficult emotions I’ve encountered in my life. This album is my therapy. Folklore will always be my favorite thing she’s ever done. I am so insanely proud of Taylor for writing this album. 

Make an analysis of Lover and it’s MV. I would especially love to hear your thoughts about the bridge. It’s so heartbreakingly beautiful. 😭🤧

Ok ok. Let’s settle in because I’m going to talk about a lot of stuff in this post.

It’s starts out with the girl sitting on the living room floor of a modest, sort of suburban house on Christmas morning, alone, looking at her new snow globe. Inside the snowglobe is a large house. Taylor said this was inspired by the snow globe mentioned in YAIL, about “her friends” falling in love. Of course I believe YAIL is about when she and KK fell in love. The snow globe metaphor doesn’t really make sense being about anyone else. But it fits kaylor perfectly (VSFS13, and also the glass closet.)

Home is an important theme is this album, especially in this song but I’d also argue that it is what Cornelia St is about. And it’s referenced in INTHAF. Home is a place, but it’s also a feeling. Feels like home. And I think that her person is what feels like home to her. And since they have a secret love, home is the only place they can truly be themselves. Wherever that home is at any given moment.

So having this video for this song, which is the title track of the album and TS has said is her favorite song she’s written, take place in their imaginary home (and a future home with a family) I think is very important.

As we enter the house our first visual is a long zoom into a long hallway full of doors covered in Christmas lights.

I almost immediately thought of the 1989 tour visuals for IKP:

 https://youtu.be/mfIuMrXxkcI.

I just reblogged a couple of posts about this tour visual which I think is extremely interesting. To summarize, it represents the surreal nature of the closet. IKP was written in Jan 2014 and I believe it is about how she would approach her new relationship with KK, and the tour visuals would have been created after kissgate. When you watch it, please note the Magritte imagery and the panther wearing a Magritte bowler hat, and that there are no panthers anywhere in this song (KK’s fashion nickname is the panther, and Magritte’s main theme in his art is playing with perceptions and the bowler symbolizes hiding in plain sight.)

Another thing I noticed in this tour visual is the hallway turns upside down toward the end: 

This reminds me of the orange room in the Lover video, which is also a very surreal place.

Ok, so now that we’ve established a link to IKP and that is set in Jan 2014, let’s move into the rest of the video.

We start off with the two of them hanging pictures in the green room. Green represents newness and hanging pictures is symbolic of settling into a new place. In this case, the home represents their early relationship. Next we have them in the surreal orange room, playing games on the ceiling. I’ve mentioned before we have multiple references to them playing games at the start of their relationship. And here they are literally playing games in this upside down, surreal world of the closet. I would also argue that orange girl from the YNTCD MV represents a closeted lesbian who lives in the gaylor park but who doesn’t participate in any of the activities, because she can’t, and she is eating oranges whole, which adds a surrealism to the scene. And of course we have Taylor in orange in the giant cage in the LWYMMD video. So orange=closet. Closet=surreal.

Next we move into the Red room. But first we glimpse the two of them frolicing up the stairs. They are giddy. You can really see the excitement of a new relationship. This is the sort of mood captured in I Think He Knows.

On the wall is a painting of…a fox hunt.

HANG AWN, is that a IKP reference? 

They dance in the red room and TS sings happily on her guitar. The love interest is wearing a yellow tie and pants that matches TS’ yellow dress. The red room is the only room where their clothes don’t match the color of the room. So I think the yellow clothes are an important symbol of happiness (sunshine/golden) and this may indicate that even though they are in the red room, this love isn’t red, or at least not all red. It’s golden.

And then we cut to a…blue sink?

What the heck? why would you show a sink? Just a sink. A close up and a long shot of. a. sink. It must mean something. HANG AWN is that a reference to ships sinking? Well not this time! Ha, you see what I did there? So we’ve moved into the blue room, which contains the fishbowl. TS agreed this room represents 1989 era and that the fishbowl represents her lover jumping into her fishbowl life without hesitation. So what we’ve seen so far is the implementation of the plan from IKP (glass closeting, Tree was hired, they are BFFs to the public.)

We continue switching from room to room showing various scenes of domestic bliss. There’s a lot of dancing. Remember TS called KK her favorite person to dance with.

But then, a change. Instead of just the two of them, now there is a party. It’s new years and they’ve invited others into their home. The love interest’s yellow tie has turned orange

and Taylor seems to get jealous as another woman hits on him. His reassuring smile should calm her jealousy but instead it leads to a fight. I believe this represents them hiding their relationship from the public. Again, orange represents the closet. So someone is hitting on her love right in front of her because no one knows they are together. I don’t think this is an actual New Years Party scene that happened. In fact I think the whole New Years party theme from NYD and here is a metaphor for the party that was the 1989 era. Gazelessstares did a wonderful post about this over a year ago. It’s also a metaphor for how they don’t necessarily get to spend time together at big events like New Years eve anymore, but they get the metaphorical new years day (the quiet, private day that represents the future.)

So they have a fight. This seems to be a big one. Does it represent one fight or an ongoing argument they have about how to handle things? Either way, the middle part of the video shows this difficulty. The love interest tries to reason with her in the bedroom, but TS is not having it. She goes off to be by herself. We see her in every room playing music alone, while her love interest is agonizing over things in the Red room. Finally the love interest joins TS in the attic. She is surprised and happy he joined her, they reconcile and reflect on all their happy times (watching the home movies.) Once again, we have joy in the relationship. This episode solidfies their status and the rest of the video continues with happy domestic scenes in their home, while they are still sometimes seen in the upside down orange room playing PR games.

Finally, we pull out from their rainbow home and come out of the snowglobe and see that the modest home from the opening scene shows the future. They now have a child and are continuing their domestic bliss as a family.

So in summary, I believe this video is telling the chronoglical story of their relationship, from early 2014 to sometime recently, with a lovely glimpse at what they hope for in their future. The brilliant thing about this is that it almost fits just fine with the Toe narrative. This is of course because the Toe narative was designed to mimic kaylor. But one thing I always find fascinating about I Know Places is that she wrote it in the middle of the night and recorded it the next day, with an urgency to make sure it got on the album. In Jan 2014. And yet, she was publicly single at the time. And then when she got into a public relationship more than a year later, she did not follow the advice from IKP. Nor did she for her next public relatioship, 2.5 years after writing IKP. It was only when she was ready to take a break from public life that she got herself a public secret relationship (an oxymoron, but it’s what we have.) 

This video makes me so soft.

Imagine living your life believing that Taylor wants this..

____

When Kaylor exisits 🥰🍟🌈🍪☀️👸🏼

Spade, summer 2019

♠️ Without judgement or question, she bent to the ground and picked up the pieces. Blood ran from her hands as she cut herself so I could be whole. - 07/24/2019

Taylor, summer 2021

And if I would've known

How sharp the pieces were you'd crumbled into

I might've let them lay

😭🥺

i’m posting this gay little powerpoint i made ranking potential ts partners due to popular demand…please enjoy my correct opinions :)

This is important

I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.

so you mean to tell me

taylor was seen exiting Waverly Inn with some of her friends on October 11th 2016, bodyguard with infamous “its all part of the f*cking story* paper tablecloth covering in hand

followed by Calamity Joe getting papped (video) for the first time on October 12th, along with the rumored “kings of leon” first meeting with taylor that night...

and then on the following night of October 13th taylor is papped also at the bowery ballroom with karlie kloss and serena williams (and the maker of her sweater is “Elizabeth & James”??)

and upon further inspection now we all see that taylor is wearing the golden neck tattoo that you can also peep her sporting in the “making of” delicate video...

meaning that

taylor got to the point in writing delicate that she deemed good to go ahead and film herself... quite possibly the day after the first documented date that she had with beau de jour...?

with lyrics like these..???

Dive bar on the East Side, where you at?

Third floor on the West Side, me and you

Sometimes I wonder when you sleep

I pretend you're mine, all the damn time

how much could be crammed in to this 24-48 hour period?!

this puts so much weight on the idea that they first met at the met 😂😂 and you all know what i have to say about that...

like... like...?!

taylor: i am obviously very heterosexual 🙄

also taylor: remember when we hung out in closets and then you left me inside the closet, back when you were mine, and then said you’d come back for me after you grew up? are you still a natural scene-stealer? can you still read my mind, twin? things were always so easy for you and i’m jealous and think about you and our oceans of promises every time we cross jet plane paths. i waited through a bunch of useless, masquerading men for you to come back

also taylor: once you touch up your makeup i’m going to flip you around and fuck you inside this closet and then leave you there like a house party and torpedo your life the cars you’re really bad at driving

also taylor: bisexual lover of mine from a decade ago, do you remember when i switched out all my partners over the last decade and it still wasn’t enough to keep us together and i still wonder if we would’ve worked out and how it would’ve been if we were brave? i changed myself a million times hoping you’d come back and i guess i am trapped in this scarlet maroon hell i built with my former roommate.

♠️ The turn of the decade befalls the facade. - 11/09/2019

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but... have we considered that the “facade” could be Jerklie’s relationship?

Rumors started (deliberately) swirling in the press in November 2012 that KK and JK were dating.

Us Weekly 11/8/12:

Daily Mail 11/27/12:

Four years later, KK implied she met JK in June 2012. So we are supposed to gather their “relationship” started sometime between June and November 2012.

Was Spade trying to tell us Jerklie’s contract ends in 2022? And that’s why Taylor dropped some random references to ‘22’? (There is some debate about how long a decade actually is but at least one definition fits with this timeline).

There’s this from an Entertainment Weekly video in the Lover era (5/9/19). Right before she does this she is talking about the palm trees she posted on IG when she finished Lover. She says “A palm try symbolizes rebirth, new beginnings, positive energy. So...” *precedes to sort of randomly/awkwardly throw two “peace” signs up before the video cuts to the next topic.

Taylor later referenced ‘22’ with freaking lavender icing in her hair (4/27/20).

Now I bet there have been a million pivots behind the scenes so even if this was what Spade was trying to convey, it may not mean anything now. And the implications of KK potentially signing on two a two year contract ending in the midst of a potential second Trump term are complicated.

All I really know is that Taylor will be releasing her version of Red on 11/19/21. And she made sure to remind us the album resembles a heartbroken person before referencing a friend who calls in the middle of the night to talk about their ex..

Cc @spade-riddles