A few songs back, in Electric Touch, Swift argued that an epistemology of hope is necessary to begin a romantic relationship. When all prior relationships have failed, profound optimism is required in order to begin a new one. In Foolish One, Swift explores the dark side of that approach. Profound optimism does not serve Swift in the midst of a brutal situationship – in this case she would have benefited from listening to reason.

"The crowd liked Taylor Swift when she was striving, but they do not like who she has become now that she is successful. Indeed, sitting “behind walls of regret,” Swift does not seem to like this version of herself either."

I Can See You reads as a grown up version of Teardrops On My Guitar. The school has been replaced by the workplace and Swift’s secret thoughts about her colleague inspire sexy thoughts rather than despair. 

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 Since breaking up, the full-bodied physical experience of another person has been replaced by a flattened, empty version.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.