Swift thus highlights the power that a single magnetic woman has to change the world around her – whether her name is Emma, Little Miss Sunshine, or Cleopatra. Simultaneously, however, Swift’s intertextual references remind us that with great power comes great responsibility.

Electricity is a naturally-occurring form of power that can either kill you or be harnessed in order to enable technology that is essential to modern civilization. A romantic spark, Swift posits, can similarly lead to significant harm or true love.

Superman is the final bonus track fromSpeak Now. We find Taylor Swift once again critiquing her own tendency to impose tropes from fiction onto her own life.

The Basics:  Six months after her relationship has ended, Taylor Swift sings “come back, come back, come back to meee heeee” to her ex....

The courtroom metaphor, however, illustrates that Swift’s relationship does not belong to a jury of Swift’s peers, but to Swift herself: “The jury’s out, but my choice is you.” Taylor Swift’s relationship is not within the court’s jurisdiction.

We know from Swift’s later work that she was a noted scholar of Greek philosophy during this era of her life “You know how to ball / I know Aristotle” (So High School). It is thus worth digging into Swift name dropping a group of people who were deeply upset by her success – the world-denying philosophers known as the Cynics.

Swift’s relationship was a physical experience. Since breaking up, the full-bodied physical experience of another person has been replaced by a flattened, empty version. For example, Swift sings: “I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep.” When they were together, Swift saw a three-dimensional, moving, human being. After the break-up, she will now see him only through static, pixelated representations on an instagram feed.

As in Never Grow Up, time in Innocent is a double-edged sword. Although growing up is terrible, it also provides healing and growth.

Like quintessential revenge heroes Hamlet or Cady Heron, Swift leaves a wake of destruction behind her when she attempts to become mean.

John relied upon darkness to cover up his misdeeds. Swift becomes a radiant source of light, illuminating not just herself, but a whole town

Taylor Swift uses Speak Now to specifically consider the consequences of not speaking – situations where silence is an action.