#cardigan Tumblr posts

the last great american dynasty by taylor swift

@taylorswift @taylornation

Are there still beautiful things?👑

@taylorswift @taylornation

♥

Does anyone know how can i help stream Cardigan if i am Apple Music user but not live in the us ???

i knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired.

‘cause I knew you stepping on the last train, marked me like a bloodstain…

nasvhille by david meade  ↑

from taylor’s cover of nashville, speak now tour 2011 ↑

clean by t.s.

@taylorswift is Folklore just a bunch of references to movies and stories we loved as kids…. cause listen i just rewatched the 2003 Peter Pan and lemme tell you Cardigan just seems like one huge reference. Also seven is what I felt as a child watching 1995 Little Princess….so listen……I love this rewriting and reimagining of these things we loved as kids.

Cause I knew everything when I was young

not a ship edit!!! Just thought this lyric emphasized the relationship Lucy had with Aslan, esp in terms of the innocence and childlike faith. After losing Narnia/Aslan after the LWW, she was able to come back in PC and feel renewed. 

I’m doing it guys. I’m making “the cardigan”

the way you guys are sleeping on this bridge —

“and it’s hard to be at a party when i feel like an open wound. it’s hard to be anywhere these days when all i want is you. you’re a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town.”

— despicable. do better.

WAIT YALL.

okay so from the very start i had a feeling betty and james were childhood-friends-to-lovers, the whole ‘oh theyre gonna date when theyre older’ kind of couple. i just thought of it from the fact that the whole album deals with adolecence and coming of age, plus a lot of childhood games being mentioned in cardigan.

ive been wanting to put a full love story together, maybe even write a small novel for it, and have been brainstorming about where exactly betty and james are in their relationship, how they met, why james is so guilty/why august happened in the first place.

then i realized…..its nice to have a friend.

THAT IS THEM. first verse is their meeting/ friendship. second verse is how their relationship started—probably only a month or a year before august happened.

what about the third verse though?

lemme introduce you to….

“I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs.”

im tellin you. ESPECIALLY because the inthaf narrator seemed very lonely by basically saying theyve never had a friend before that. which really deals with “and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someones bed, you put me on and said i was your favorite”.

i still dont have my laptop so excuse the everything about this but this is definitely the theory im sticking to.

To kiss in cars and downtown bars

Was all we needed❣ @taylornation

I am a massive Taylor Swift﹣I mean I love her more than some relatives﹣and when I woke up to news of an entirely new album, I just about lost my mind. folklore truly embodies the power of storytelling and how powerful music can be. In this fabulous surprise album, Taylor Swift explores the lives and stories of other people, fictional and real, through an emotional, indie-alternative sound. Just as a note, these rating will probably change as I’m constantly finding new favorite, but for now, here are my ratings of all sixteen songs from the folklore:

the 1: 4 stars

Opening up the album, we start with the 1. In the 1, Taylor Swift contemplates an alternate life if she had been able to end up with an ex-lover. This song is surprisingly poppy with a bouncing beat. While sticking to the folk theme of the rest of the album, the 1 manages to be a good transitional song from Lover’s pop paradise to folklore deeper and more intricate alternative sound. There’s this wonderful wry and clever humor among this incredibly raw emotion. Overall it was a wonderful song to kick start the album.

cardigan: 5 stars

This song is my absolute favorite off folklore, and I’m absolutely thrilled that Taylor Swift chose this to be her first single off the album. Over the years, Taylor has often gotten flack for some of the songs she’s chosen to be singles like ME! and Endgame, but cardigan is a win! Part of the famous “teenage love triangle” strung throughout this album, cardigan follows a young seventeen year old girl named Betty as she mourns the betrayal of her boyfriend, James, and reminisces on their past together. There’s such beautiful longing and sadness in Swift’s voice that calls back to emotions everyone experiences in some capacity in their youth.

the last great american dynasty: 5 stars

This is a perfect narrative song, truly embodying what Taylor Swift intended to do with this album: tell stories. the last great american dynasty recounts the life of Rebekah Harkness, the woman who once owned Taylor’s own Rhode Island house. It’s very clear that Taylor relates in some capacity to Rebekah’s wily and extravagant nature. Throughout her entire career, Taylor Swift has been criticized from everything from her love life to her appearance and often painted as this egotistical, selfish, egregiously rich celebrity, and Rebekah was often viewed in the same way. This song is wonderfully heartwarming as it celebrates the life of Rebekah Harkness and closes with Taylor hoping to carry on her legacy.

exile: 4.5 stars

A dramatic, slow building duet with Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, exile depicts a couple combing through the wreckage and mess of their broken relationship. This song offers two different perspectives of the relationship, Vernon on how quickly someone can move on and Swift on being trapped in a dying relationship. Vernon’s low register, raspy voice set against Taylor’s smoother, lighter one further goes to contrast their differing characters. One of, if not the best from the album, the bridge in exile is simply art. Swift and Vernon’s lyrics began to blend together as if they’re shouting at each other. All the way up to the last chord you’re just so captivated by the story, and even when it finishes, you just kind of rest your head back and think “wow.”

my tears ricochet: 5 stars

Taylor Swift described this song on Instagram as “embittered tormentor showing up at the funeral of his fallen object of obsession,” but I, as well as other fans, feel that the song is actually about Scott Borchetta’s betrayal of Swift after she left Big Machine records. Lyrics like “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace and you’re the hero flying around, saving face” and “you wear the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me” feels like she’s referencing Borchetta’s deceit in selling her Masters to Scoot Braun for 300 million dollars. Perhaps the line that sells this theory for me the most is the line “and when you can’t sleep at night, you hear my stolen lullabies.” Everything about this song, the composition, the music, the lyrics, Taylor’s voice, they’re all meant to stick in your mind, and whether or not this song is about Scott Borchetta, I think we can all agree that Taylor’s songs, emotions, and feelings from the past decade should’ve never been sold, and my tears ricochet is only one of many beautiful songs Taylor Swift will continue to write no longer under the thumb of greedy and self-serving record labels.

mirrorball: 3 stars

mirrorball is a beautiful dizzying eighties-nineties’s haze surrounded by glittering guitar chords. In this song, Swift compares herself to a disco ball who can change herself to appeal more to those she’s entertaining but is also very easily breakable. This is certainly a specific type of song and while I do like it, I don’t often find myself reaching to listen to it like the others, but altogether a wonderfully atmospheric and emotional song.

seven: 4 stars

seven is about one of Taylor’s childhood friends who seems to have an unhappy life at home, and Taylor reflects back on their childhood innocence. In some ways, I feel like this song strikes a certain personal chord with everyone. Whereas everyone may not have lived in Pennsylvania or lived through a hard home life, seven harkens to a more innocent time where life and people weren’t so complicated, and all that was important was how much you loved each other. Like its predecessor, seven has a very specific feel to it that inhibits me from putting it on repeat like some of the others on folklore but this is still a gorgeously nostalgic tune nonetheless.

august: 5 stars

The second addition to “the teenage love triangle,” august is from the point of view of the girl Betty’s boyfriend, James, slept with over the course of the titular month. This girl is obviously in love with James and has such strong feelings for him, but he sees this simply as a “summer thing” as stated in his song betty. A gorgeous melody of strings and horns and guitars, august is one of the many songs on folklore that sympathetically depicts the complexity of relationships and love.

this is me trying: 3 stars

this is me trying sees Taylor Swift accepting fault for relationship issues and making an effort to repair them. Taylor is definitely on top of her metaphor game in this song. Lines like “You’re a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town” make us all remember what a brilliant lyricist she truly is. This song manages to blend both mournful tune with a lazy swagger that could be reflective of someone who has drowned their sorrow and pain in something like alcohol before coming to plead before who they’re apologizing to. this is me trying is a raw and vulnerable song that cuts you open in the same way it does the narrator.

illicit affairs: 4 stars

Having written songs from the age of seventeen, Taylor’s view of relationships and their complexity has certainly been reflected in her more mature works. This can be seen especially in illicit affairs. A sharp-witted narrative song, illicit affairs is about a woman having an affair with a man, recognizing the toxicity and wrongness of the relationship. This is one of the songs on the album that really feels like a folk song. The visuals and storytelling skills are just incredible, and you really feel sympathy for the woman. Swift’s view of infidelity has changed over time from songs like Should’ve Said No and Better Than Revenge from being a cut and dry black and white situation to something gray and more complicated.

invisible string: 4 stars

One of the more romantic and obviously personal songs on folklore, invisible string is about Taylor Swift’s relationship with actor Joe Alwyn and how she ponders all the ways they’ve been tied together since before knowing each other. As has been the theme with some of the previous songs, Taylor Swift acknowledges her past heartbreaks with newfound maturity and gratitude through lines like “cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart; now I send their babies presents” referencing Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner recent baby. Overall a lovely addition to folklore, invisible string memorializes Swift’s happiness and joy in her life.

mad woman: 5 stars

Taylor Swift has received much criticism and scrutiny from the public often painting her as delusional and the villain. mad woman ties back to the common perception of female hysteria and how people often paint women as crazy. My favorite line in this entire song is “women like hunting witches too doing your dirtiest work for you.” It plays so much into how women are so often pitted against each other, and, without even raising her voice, you can hear her scathingly scream the lyrics. Taylor Swift has overcome much in the past decade of her career, being able to finally own the narrative and claim her truth and this song feels like through her freedom, she can finally express her rage.

epiphany: 2 stars

epiphany touches on Swift’s grandfather’s experiences in the military while also going on to parallel emotions many medical professionals have been experiencing through the Covid-19 pandemic. This song has an angelic and heavenly sound, contrasting the story of death and pain. Compared to the rest of the album, epiphany’s sound and lyrics don’t particularly stand out, making it a song I often skip when listening to the album.

betty: 5 stars

The final piece to the “teenage love triangle,” betty concludes the story from James’ point of view as he sings to Betty about his mistakes and regrets. Compared to august and cardigan’s more complex and intricate lines, you can see James’ youth and ignorance in betty. I don’t know how she did it, but Taylor Swift managed to perfectly capture and give the audience the ability to easily slip into the mind of a teenage boy. Perhaps the most narrative song from all of folklore, betty has a more straightforward storytelling method without lingering too long on dreamy metaphors like the other two songs, representing James’ more childish approach to love. While he loves Betty quite a bit he isn’t as able to convey his feelings with the most responsibility or maturity leading to his eventual betrayal. In cardigan, we see that Betty is very in tune with her emotions and thoughts as she sings “when you are young they assume you know nothing,” but James is quite naive as his main defense is that “I’m only seventeen, I don’t know anything.” betty ends as James arrives at Betty’s party asking for forgiveness, and whether or not she accepts is unknown. I suppose as with much folklore, that’s up to what the listener takes away from the story.

peace: 2 stars

A calm tune against a funky bass, Taylor Swift recognizes her maturity and asks her lover if it’s okay that she can’t ever fully give him peace but will love him as best as she can. It’s a wonderfully, self-aware song that acknowledges that love can’t automatically fix everything and you must continuously express it to each other no matter the struggles. Compared to the other songs on folklore, peace seems more akin to a confession than anything. It’s not a song you can scream in a car sailing down the highway or one you can dance around your room to, but it is one that expresses an honest and vulnerable truth in love and that’s what makes it meaningful.

hoax: 2 stars

peace and hoax have always gone hand in hand together for me. They both reveal so much about the human condition, and in some way, I wish I was analyzing them both as pieces of literature rather than music. hoax is a recognition that you take on the burden of your loved ones, their triumphs and struggles. A departure from Swift’s common tradition of ending albums on upbeat notes, hoax ends folklore with a magical and haunting note. folklore is obviously a conceptual album and I believe hoax’s purpose is to not perfectly conclude every story you’ve just heard in folklore, but to make you feel left a little shocked by the sadness, so that when you step away, you don’t forget these stories, but rather let them linger in your mind. They are meaningful and you should remember what they now will mean to you.

nothing much, just working on a gif 🤭✨

You drew a star around my scar do u like it @taylorswift

Ours was released as the sixth single off Speak Now and sent to country radio on December 5th, 2011, is track 15 off the album’s deluxe edition, and is a Taylor-only written song.

It peaked at #13 (😏) and is certified platinum.

Taylor said she wrote it about a guy that nobody thought she should’ve been with and this song was a way for her to show him that she didn’t care what anyone said.

The MV has over 91 million views.

Ours was nominated for a CMT Music Award and 2 American Country Awards in 2012 and won a BMI Award in 2013.

Ours was performed at the 2011 CMA Awards, a regular on the SN Tour for about the last 1/3 of shows (see video), some shows on the Red Tour, and as the surprise song on the third night in Foxborough during the Rep Tour.

I’ve always felt this was such a cute song and the line “people throw rocks at things that shine” is my favorite lyric from it because it’s so true. People will try to bring you down but don’t let them take away your sparkle ✨💜💜

filled her pool with champagne and swam with the big names, and blew through all the money on the boys and the ballet (the great gatsby x the last great american dynasty by taylor swift)

cardigan is so sexy like yes bby you knew EVERYTHING.

Okay but 🥺 you drew stars 🥺 around my scars 🥺