My Baby's Fly Like a Jet Stream High Above the Whole Scene Loves Me Like I'm Brand New
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As always happens whenever a new Taylor Swift song comes out, this morn the internet has been scrambling to decode the little references she hides in her songs nigh her love life and tabloid controversies. But peradventure the near interesting matter virtually Swift'southward song writing is the amount she nods to her dorsum catalogue, revisiting erstwhile images with new twists, to attempt and paint a bigger picture of how her life'south changed over time.
"Call It What You Want", like near of the singles released in anticipation of her upcoming album Reputation, is a little defensive – insisting that fifty-fifty though her public life cruel apart cheers to her loftier-profile row with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian final year, her romantic life was really going very well, thank you very much. She deliberately calls back to earlier songs to projection narrative that her current relationship with Joe Alwyn is different to the ones that accept gone before and ended in disaster.
Let's break it downwards, line past line.
Verse 1
My castle1 crumbled overnight
I brought a pocketknife to a gunfight2
They took the crowniii but it'southward alright
All the liars are calling me one
Nobody'south heard from me for monthsfour
I'1000 doing better than I always was
[1] Castles are a recurring paradigm in Swift's piece of work, part of the fairytale imagery that has reappeared since her second anthology Fearless. But from 1989 onwards, they're used in a much more self-referential style, with more reference to people trying to outburst her fairytale bubble (like "I could build a castle / Out of all the bricks they threw at me" from "New Romantics"). She continues that thread here, the innocent image she had build for herself "crumbled overnight" with the Kimye PR scandal.
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[2] Knives and guns are images that only really appear on songs about the media, critics and haters: retrieve the "scars on my back from your knife" from "Bad Blood", "they got the cages and guns" from "I Know Places", and "You said the gun was mine" from "Look What Y'all Made Me Do".
[3] Crowns, kings and queens – more from Swift's fairytale world. All the way back in 2010, on her vocal "Long Live", Taylor was looking at her career with naught but warmth and pride, and images of royalty and kingdoms are earnest metaphors for her relationship with her fandom. "Nosotros were the Kings and the Queens", she sings, as well equally "You traded your baseball cap for a crown", "How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you". In that vocal, only "cynics" wait at their kingdom without smiling. But since then, those images have dissolved. On "Blank Space" Swift sings, "I could show you incredible things / Stolen kisses, pretty lies / You're the Male monarch, baby, I'g your Queen": already, the idea of Taylor Swift as some kind of queen is a "pretty prevarication" – like she'due south realised the saccharine "You lot be the prince and I'll be the princess" dream from "Honey Story" is e'er just that: a dream. In theReputation cycle, everything's got even more biting: glory is imagined as a hollow and faux kingship. On "Look What Yous Made Me Do", she sings "I don't like your kingdom keys / They once belonged to me". Here, "They" (presumably Kim and Kanye) have the crown, then information technology has soured as a symbol. FOR Within THE HOLLOW CROWN THAT ROUNDS THE MORTAL TEMPLES OF A KING KEEPS DEATH HIS COURT.
[4] Swift famously went tranquillity afterwards the Kimye fued – taking a step back from social media, not giving interviews, and appearing in public so little people idea she was hiding in suitcases. This could be a reference to that, or her letting usa know that the aforementioned was true in her personal life, just to emphasise how much the whole scandal afflicted her.
Chorus
Cause… My baby'south fitv like a daydream6
Walking with his head downwardly7
I'm the one he's walking to
So telephone call it what y'all want, yeah
Phone call it what yous want to
My baby's fly like a jet stream8
High above the whole scene
Loves me like I'm make newnine
So call it what y'all desire, yeah
Call information technology what yous want to
[5] A very British give-and-take, 1 that Taylor's never used earlier – information technology feels like some other deliberate reference to her British young man Joe Alwyn – this album bicycle's been littered with them.
[half-dozen] Some other very, very Swift discussion unremarkably used to draw the perfect ideal of a person – information technology'south appeared on every anthology except her 2nd. Each fourth dimension she uses the word, she seems closer to attaining the daydream. On her first album'south "Stay Cute", she worries that her love is a "daydream" she'll "never get to hold". On the championship rails to her third album "Speak Now" she "loses herself" in a fantasize about stopping her crush'south wedding. on "Treacherous" the "fantasize" of love is "dangerous" – considering it could happen. On1989's "Blank Space" and "Style", she uses the word fantasize in conjunction with relationships she does seem to actually be in, just that seem doomed from the kickoff. Now, she's using information technology to talk about a loving, serious relationship with her boyfriend. What graphic symbol development! (You can trace the same blueprint with words like "dream" and "dreamer", too.)
[seven] There could be some call backs hither, likewise. It sounds similar a stretch, but Swift does seem interested in how people carry their heads. In "Mean", Taylor sings "I walk with my head down" when she's feeling run down by snarky critics, and on "Clean", nigh the dissolution of a relationship, she sings "Hung my head as I lost the war". On the triumphant "Long Live" she sings, "You hold your caput like a hero", the tentatively joyful "Brainstorm Once again" has a chorus that mentions her new lover has his "head back laughing like a little child". "Call It What Y'all Want" seems interested in misleading appearances and public disappointments verses individual happiness. So, yes, her young man has his caput down, and she's always thought that hiding and losing are synonymous – simply now she knows better. It looks similar losing, and y'all tin can call it losing if y'all desire, but she notwithstanding feels like a winner.
[viii] "Newspaper airplanes", referenced in Out of the Woods, are a big Harry Styles symbol in the Swift fandom (he used to wear a paper plane necklace, and when they were dating, Taylor Swift did too (hence the "Woods" lyric "Your necklace hanging round my neck"). A jet seems similar a serious level up.
[9] On "Innocent", a song that was widely interpreted to be Taylor'due south song of forgiveness to Kanye West for hijacking her award acceptance speech at the MTV VMAs, Swift sang "I promise you remember / Today is never too late to be brand new". At present it seems like she's saying her new boyfriend reminded her of the same thing when she was cast as the villain.
Poetry 2
All my flowers grew back as thorns
Windows boarded up later the storm10
He built a burn just to continue me warmeleven
All the drama queens taking swings
All the jokers dressing up as kings12
They fade to nothing when I look at him
And I know I make the same mistakes every time
Bridges fire, I never learn13
At least I did one matter right
I did one thing right
I'm laughing with my lover
Making forts under covers
Trust him like a blood brother14
Yeah, yous know I did one thing right
Starry optics sparking upwardly my darkest nighttime15
[10] Flowers, thorns and storms are normally g romantic metaphors for Taylor: see "Blank Space", "Make clean". Hither they're used to emphasise that as the rest of her life was falling apart, her love life was going quietly well.
[xi] Burn down, once more, is ordinarily a metaphor for romantic drama – fireworks, sparks flight, getting burned by relationships, burning old pictures, burning crimson, burning bridges. Information technology's not a word she usually associates with domestic warmth, over again, mayhap Taylor's manner of saying this, for her, is a newer, quieter, more domestic kind of relationship.
[12] More HOLLOW CROWN shit. Queens? More similar DRAMA QUEENS. Kings? More than Like FOOLS. See above.
[thirteen] "Y'all're just another flick to burn down", "All love always does is intermission and burn and end", "Could cease in burning flames", "Burning it down", "Love's a fragile little flame, information technology could burn down out" – so many of Taylor'south songs see relationships end past called-for, and she knows that she has a habit of doing the same things over and over.
[14] Forts, brothers, blankets – these are very kittenish and ideal words when Taylor usually goes for dramatic, sparky, romantic, sexy lyrics. Once more, it feels like she's trying to prove to us that this time it really is unlike. The only time nosotros've seen lyrics similar this before are in "Begin Again" ("you throw your head back laughing like a little kid"; "you lot showtime to talk about the movies that your family unit watches every unmarried Christmas"), which was besides nearly finding new love subsequently trauma, and in songs that deliberately wait back to literal childhood ("Mary's Song", "All Likewise Well", "Never Grow Upwards").
[15] Taylor has used "nighttime" and then many times in her songs, and sung a lot well-nigh finding love in the dark (see also "Last Osculation": "Lit through the darkness", "This Love": "This beloved is glowing in the nighttime"). Merely never "darkest". How'due south that for emphasis.
Bridge
I want to wearable his initial on a chain round my neck
Chain circular my cervixsixteen
Not because he owns me
Simply 'crusade he really knows me
Which is more than they tin say, I
I recall late November, property my breath
Slowly I said, "You don't need to save me
Merely would y'all run abroad with me?"17
[sixteen] She had a paper airplane necklace when she was dating Harry Styles, a lover's locket with Calvin Harris, and now she's dating Joe Alwyn she wears a J around her cervix.
[17] She hasn't asked anyone to run away with her in a song since "Speak Now" – and that was obviously a fantasy. Well done Joe, you're cleaning up.
My Baby's Fly Like a Jet Stream High Above the Whole Scene Loves Me Like I'm Brand New
Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music-theatre/2017/11/taylor-swift-new-song-call-it-what-you-want-analysis
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