The Basics
Cold as You is the fifth song on Taylor Swift’s debut album — a slot that Swift generally reserves for a particularly emotional track. The previous song left our narrator yearning for A Place in this World. By the beginning of Cold as You, Swift has found a place, but it is cold, gray, and rainy. The verses depict an unhealthy relationship where one person seeks closeness (or any reaction) from another who is emotionally unavailable. Swift bemoans this emotional unavailability by declaring, “I’ve never been anywhere cold as you,” a sick burn coming from someone who grew up on an actual Christmas tree farm.
Literary Device - Hyperbole
The statement “I’ve never been anywhere cold as you” is an example of hyperbole — exaggeration for literary effect. We can infer that Taylor Swift has experienced cold temperatures since she grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, where it often dips into the twenties. If his body were actually that cold, he would be dead. This exaggeration functions not as a literal statement, but as an exaggeration that creates the image of a desolate, icy tundra in order to convey how unpleasant and uncomfortable this relationship has been.
Analysis
Swift uses her lover’s emotional inaccessibility to craft an image of an inaccessible location. Swift repeatedly uses the hyperbolic “never been anywhere cold as you” in the chorus to compare her beloved to a location that is inaccessible due to extreme cold. In the second verse, Swift further explores his inaccessibility with the image of a location that is inaccessible because it is walled off. She recalls: “You put up the walls and paint them all a shade of gray. / And I stood there loving you, and wished them all away.” Swift’s lover is not only constructing walls, barriers that separate one space from another, but also carefully painting them. These drab gray walls continue her earlier established theme of “cold” with their lack of color and warmth. They also layer a man-made element into her imagery. While a cold, dreary landscape can be due to nature and geography, painted walls are intentionally created by a human in order to achieve a purpose. Returning to Swift’s experience of her relationship, Swift’s beloved is choosing to put up barriers.
From his perspective, Swift’s beloved may just be establishing healthy boundaries. While we see very little of their relationship, the details that Swift provides are rather concerning. She admits early on: “I start a fight because I need to feel somethin’” and in the bridge, she repeatedly moans about death: “I know you wouldn’t have told nobody if I died, died for you / died for you.”
The song ends with Swift repeating one final time: “I’ve never been anywhere cold as you.” Due to her lover’s self-imposed inaccessibility and/or healthy boundaries, she never will.