I have always been a fan of reading, books and literature, and I have more recently become a fan of Taylor Swift too. In my opinion, they very smoothly go hand in hand, as Swift’s lyrics are so chock-full of evocative language and figurative devices that I could write essays on most of them.
In this piece I want to focus particularly on her use of intertextuality, or that is to say, literary references or allusions to other texts, most of them classics in the literary canon. Because this is such a common feature in Swift’s discography, I do consider there to be a range of quality when it comes to these references, and that’s why I’ve chosen to rank them here. That, and for a bit of fun.
Swift’s upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, is creating quite the buzz in the pop music community, and what better way to get ready for its release on 19th April than with this deep dive into many of her already-released and well-loved songs? The new album’s marketing places Swift herself as chairman of The Tortured Poets Department, and so I think it’s perfectly fitting for us to explore today just how poetic she can be.
Without further ado, let’s begin the ranking!
- ‘When Emma Falls in Love (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)’ – Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
This reference gets last place because, to be honest, I’m reading into it. The titular Emma is described with the simile ‘like if Cleopatra grew up in a small town.’ This could be viewed as a reference to William Shakespeare’s famous play Anthony and Cleopatra, and seeing the song in this light does bring new levels to its principal focus of love and loss, given that the play is a tragedy. However, Cleopatra is such a well-known historical figure outside of this play that it’s all the more possible that Swift is just evoking her fame and (excuse the pun) reputation from the stories we know besides Shakespeare’s.
- ‘Timeless (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)’ – Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
Another possible Shakespeare reference here, but once again with a tenuous link. This song centres a protagonist, presumably Swift herself, who, fuelled by various antique finds, is plunged into a reverie about meeting and falling in love with her current partner at various points in history, illustrating the strength of their connection. Swift sings of a ‘book covered in cobwebs / story of a romance torn apart by fate.’ I can’t help but compare this vague ‘story’ to the classic Montague/Capulet feud that brings about the tragic destiny of Shakespeare’s most famous ‘star-crossed lovers,’ Romeo and Juliet.
- ‘Dear Reader’ – Midnights
The phrase ‘dear reader’ is not only the title of this song on Swift’s most recent album, but is also repeated many times throughout, always followed by a piece of advice that Swift directs to her listeners. She offers plenty of wise dictums that stem from her own troubles and the versatility and durability she has had to develop as her career has progressed. The literary reference here is a simple one, invoking the most famous line from Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre – and one of the most famous lines of all literature – ‘Reader, I married him.’
- ‘Don’t Blame Me’ – reputation
In this power ballad Swift sings of the all-consuming nature of love, comparing its potency and potential for harm to that of a drug: ‘Don’t blame me / my drug is my baby / I’ll be using for the rest of my life.’ Just before the second chorus, Swift sings: ‘I once was poison ivy / but now I’m your daisy.’ From a close reading perspective, this suggests that in both scenarios her love for the unnamed ‘you’ is inevitable and seemingly immortal, just like the two weeds named, although once her love is requited it turns from ‘poison’ into something much more palatable, sweet and pretty: a ‘daisy.’ But from an intertextual perspective, I can’t help but notice the particular choice of a daisy instead of any other flower (it’s not necessary for a rhyme, either). This is the name of Daisy Buchanan, Jay Gatsby’s doomed first love in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. As you’ll see often in this list, Swift makes lots of references to this American classic, and so I don’t think this one is purely coincidental.
- ‘long story short’ – evermore
This fan-favourite alludes strongly to Swift’s own journey through patriarchal media storms and cancel culture, eventually emerging to a more private, mature and tranquil existence. She tells listeners that ‘long story short, I survived’ after describing the struggles both she and her career faced with evocative, often figurative, language. Swift writes that she ‘fell down the rabbit hole,’ a phrase now used in common parlance, but which originally comes from Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. An important difference here is that while Alice intentionally follows the white rabbit into a world of chaos, Swift emphasises that she ‘fell’; her venture into pop culture ‘drama’ was sudden and unwilling.
- ‘the 1’ – folklore
As promised, here’s another bit of Gatsby. A simple reference, but a clever one nonetheless. Swift reminisces on what could have been ‘if my wishes came true’ regarding a lost love. Remembering the good times they spent together, she sings: ‘But we were something, don’t you think so? / Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool.’ Of course, this image evokes Jay Gatsby’s lavish parties, but also, and more poignantly, the emptiness and loneliness he feels, from which the parties are a hollow attempt to distract himself. Swift’s ‘tossing pennies’ is a similarly mindless decadence, perhaps a metaphor for just going through the motions with a partner and faking feelings which have long gone, to avoid confronting the truth.
- ‘…Ready For It?’ – reputation
‘…Ready For It?’, as the first track on reputation – her first album in three years, after being ‘cancelled’ – was Swift’s big comeback, her redemption. It’s a tightly woven song, packed with similes and metaphors sung at a rapid pace. Swift sings that ‘he can be my jailer, / Burton to this Taylor.’ Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were the most famous celebrity couple of their day, but the dark truth of their life behind closed doors is laid bare in Furious Love, a biography by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. Burton and Taylor’s relationship was extremely toxic, and yet the public adored them, and so perhaps here Swift is suggesting that we can never be too careful when it comes to love: things that are beautiful from a distance can be very ugly up close. Swift has said that she read this biography, and so we can assume she is all too well(!) aware of the nuances of this reference.
- ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’ – reputation
This break-up anthem builds a scene of decadence and indulgence in its first verse as a metaphor for the highs of love, and Swift then dedicates the rest of the song to tearing this image apart. Her former lover hasn’t treated her right, so she has taken the initiative to end the relationship before it harms her any further: ‘I’m shaking my head / and locking the gates.’ But let’s go back to the beginning of the song and focus on the language used to describe that life of luxury. ‘Big parties,’ ‘champagne sea’ and ‘chandelier’ are all very roaring twenties, aren’t they? Well, if we weren’t sure, Swift very kindly helps us with a direct mention of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous work: she was ‘feeling so Gatsby for that whole year.’
- ‘The Outside’ – Taylor Swift
This reference isn’t particularly intricate, but it deserves at least a middling spot because it comes from Swift’s debut album, released when she was just 16 years old. This song speaks to the universal struggles of that age, of feeling like you are on ‘the outside’ when it comes to friends, school and love. Swift sings that she fruitlessly ‘tried to take the road less travelled by,’ this line lifted from Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken.’ Nevertheless, whereas for Frost, taking ‘the road less travelled by’ makes ‘all the difference,’ it doesn’t go the same way for teenaged Taylor Swift: ‘nothing seems to work the first few times.’ Swift makes reference to this poem in later songs, as well, so perhaps it’s a personal favourite.
- ‘Lover’ – Lover & ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)’ – Red (Taylor’s Version)
This literary reference in itself isn’t particularly complex, but I’m giving it a decent position on the ranking because Swift uses it twice, to almost opposite effect in each instance. In ‘Lover,’ a ballad so popular that Swifties have begun walking down the aisle to its instrumental version, Swift sweetly muses that ‘all’s well that ends well / to end up with you.’ Here, she steals the title of Shakespeare’s comedy play All’s Well That Ends Well, which indeed does end well, despite some hiccups along the way, just like Swift’s own love described in the song: tried, tested and resilient. On the other hand, in the extended version of her cult hit ‘All Too Well’ released in 2021 but supposedly written all the way back in 2014, all doesn’t end quite so well (or all too well, I should say). Explaining how her relationship with an older man comes back to haunt her after their break up, Swift writes: ‘all’s well that ends well / but I’m in a new hell every time / you double-cross my mind.’ Here the famous phrase is used ironically, to suggest that while her ex-partner might be doing just fine, the mark he has left on Swift leaves her in ‘hell.’
- ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’ – Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
One of Swift’s most popular songs that even self-proclaimed haters will likely know all the words to, ‘Love Story’ centres a sweet teenaged romance that features sneaking around, forbidden love and even a balcony. All the ingredients from Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, just starring twentieth-century American high schoolers instead of fourteenth century lovers from Verona. Again, Swift doesn’t milk this link to Shakespeare for all it’s worth, choosing instead to just take the names Romeo and Juliet, the idea of their all-consuming love, and run with these. We can’t blame her, really, as this was only her second album, and with the global success that this song alone contributed, no-one can say she didn’t pull it off.
- ‘illicit affairs’ – folklore
We’ve already seen one song from Swift’s Grammy-winning 2020 album folklore on this list, and I can promise you there’s a lot more to come. It’s indisputably her most literary album yet, especially considering her choice to move away from a tell-all autobiographical songwriting style in order to explore the world of fiction, creating original characters and stories that aren’t necessarily based on her own life. In this spirit, illicit affairs is about (you guessed it) an affair, detailing the anxiety experienced by both parties, and the eventual and inevitable breakdown of their relationship because of this. It’s another of Swift’s songs that features Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’: Swift sings ‘take the road less travelled by / tell yourself you can always stop.’ For the unfaithful partner, this ‘road less travelled by’ towards infidelity becomes more and more trodden as they continue to cheat on their partner, until at a certain point the tables turn, and the true ‘road less travelled by’ becomes the path towards the one they used to love unequivocally. They turn away from their partner so often that this ‘road’ eventually becomes unwalkable, and the relationship is no more.
- ‘cardigan’ – folklore
Perhaps my favourite Taylor Swift song of all time (although I can never choose just one), this song is part of a trilogy that tells the story of a fictional teenaged love triangle. In ‘betty,’ we learn how James, boyfriend of Betty, cheats on her one summer with August, who gets her own eponymous song too. ‘cardigan’ provides Betty’s perspective, and she definitely gets the listener on her side with her heart-wrenching honesty about how she still loves James despite how much he has hurt her. Riddled with pure poetry, this song features the line: ‘tried to change the ending / Peter losing Wendy.’ Of course this refers to J. M. Barrie’s oft-adapted children’s classic Peter Pan, but Swift (you guessed it again!) changes its ending. In the original story, Wendy must reluctantly return with her brothers to normal life, leaving Neverland behind and thus losing Peter. Swift expertly reverses this to show how James’ actions ‘tried to change the ending’ of his relationship with Betty, from an ending of peace and prosperity to one where instead James (Peter) is ‘losing’ Betty (Wendy) because of his carelessness towards her.
- ‘invisible string’ – folklore
Another stripped back love song, ‘invisible string’ is one of the most autobiographical tracks on the mostly fictional album folklore. Swifties have concluded from lyrical cues that it details Swift’s love with her then-partner of many years. Although they are not together any more, it is clear that Swift wrote ‘invisible string’ when their relationship was at a high as it exhibits a love that is trustworthy, resilient and reassuring. Swift describes this love with the repeated refrain: ‘isn’t it just so pretty to think / that all along there was some / invisible string tying you to me.’ The concept of an ‘invisible string’ is strongly reminiscent of a quote from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The titular character describes the connection she feels towards her love interest, Mr Rochester: ‘I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you.’ Swift modernises this sweet simile for her 2020 song, but the sentiment is all the same.
- ‘mad woman’ – folklore
Once again we have a reference to Jane Eyre here. But this time it’s nothing to do with Jane herself, but alludes much more strongly to Mr Rochester’s wronged first wife, Bertha Mason, often referred to as ‘the mad woman in the attic.’ Long story short (pun intended!), Mason’s story starts in the Caribbean where she grew up, before she gets noticed by Rochester, who decides to marry her and take her back to England with him. All that Brontë shows us of Mason is her rage, and we only find out how racist and sexist abuse come into her story through Jean Rhys’ prequel to Jane Eyre, titled Wide Sargasso Sea. Just like how all we get from Brontë’s original is a crazy woman with no context, Swift’s own story has been full of the media vilifying her without ever digging any deeper and understanding the vicious cycle that they themselves perpetuate. And just like Rhys’ prequel explores what really made Bertha the way that she is, Swift’s song ‘mad woman’ very explicitly states, ‘you made her like that.’
- ‘‘tis the damn season’ – evermore
Robert Frost, again! I promise this is the last time we’ll see ‘The Road Not Taken’ on this list, don’t worry. In this song, the speaker addresses a long-gone lover in apostrophe, reminiscing on their past relationship as she comes home from the holidays and can’t bear to face all the things they used to do together, but this time alone. The nostalgia gets so overwhelming that the speaker considers briefly reigniting things: ‘even though I’m leaving / I’ll be yours for the weekend.’ Swift again evokes Frost, and the particular use of his poem in this song is so poignant; the sense of desperate regret and yearning that it brings to the song as a whole gets me every time: ‘I’m staying at my parents’ house / and the road not taken looks real good now.’ So simple, yet so effective.
- ‘Getaway Car’ – reputation
Swift begins this song with the line: ‘It was the best of times, the worst of crimes.’ Any Dickens fans will instantly recognise this from one of his most famous opening lines: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ from A Tale of Two Cities. But less well-known is the rest of this sentence, which continues: ‘it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’ This accumulation of antitheses for Dickens serves to encompass the contradictions rampant in French society leading up to the Revolution, and for Swift it perfectly encapsulates the confusion and turmoil of a short relationship. Wisdom, foolishness, belief, incredulity, hope and despair are all key components of an ill-judged fling. Swift’s choice to change ‘times’ to ‘crimes’ adds another layer, contributing to the song’s overall theme of danger and criminality: she writes about poison, shotguns and, of course, getaway cars. The love she describes is a unique ‘crime,’ where the two parties are equally perpetrators and victims of their own passion and selfishness.
- ‘Wonderland (Taylor’s Version)’ – 1989 (Taylor’s Version)
Here we have another mention of Lewis Carroll’s all-important ‘rabbit hole’ from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But that’s not where the reference ends in this song, riddled with myriad allusions to the well-loved children’s classic. The lyric body as a whole has quite an anxious madness to it, elevated by the rapid pace and frantic beat of the chorus. Much like in ‘Getaway Car,’ Swift sings of how passion can turn sour, and how obsession with a lover is a dangerous line to walk: ‘you and I got lost in it.’ There are too many references to Alice to include here, but I’ll write down some of my favourites. Obviously the song is titled ‘Wonderland,’ so that’s an obvious one, as well as Swift’s line ‘calm my fears with a Cheshire cat smile,’ but I’m also a big fan of the more subtle thematic allusions, such as in the line: ‘it’s all fun and games until / somebody loses their mind.’ Also, Swift asks ‘haven’t you heard what becomes of curious minds?’, here evoking Alice’s famous line, ‘curiouser and curiouser!’
- ‘tolerate it’ – evermore
This song is strongly influenced by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which centres an unnamed young female protagonist who marries the charming and enigmatic Maxim de Winter, to then discover that he hasn’t fully let go of his last wife Rebecca, who died not too long ago. Swift explained that she felt inspired to write ‘tolerate it’ after reading Rebecca and noticing how the protagonist’s love for Maxim is pure and doting, despite the fact that he consistently pushes her away. The protagonist begins to feel that their marriage is haunted by this ‘other woman,’ and no matter how hard she tries, she can never gain her husband’s full attention. Just like Swift writes, he is ‘so much older and wiser’ than her, and belittles her constantly: ‘I wait by the door like I’m just a kid.’ Swift and du Maurier’s protagonists are one and the same when it comes to their unrequited devotion: ‘I know my love should be celebrated / but you tolerate it.’
- ‘New Romantics (Taylor’s Version)’ – 1989 (Taylor’s Version)
This pure-pop tune is all about having carefree fun with your friends despite what anyone might have to say, a way of life that Swift herself has had to learn the hard way, after a career full of media-prying and patriarchal hyper-criticism. Near the beginning of the song, Swift writes: ‘we show off our different scarlet letters. / Trust me, mine is better.’ This explicitly refers to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the protagonist who has a baby out of wedlock is shamed by her community into wearing a red letter A (for ‘adultery’) in public, meanwhile her baby’s father goes blameless. As explored more in the smash-hit ‘Shake It Off,’ Swift’s career has been plagued with rumours about her dating and sex life, and so this reference to ‘scarlet letters’ is a sardonic boast, poking fun at the media’s overblown image of her lifestyle.
- ‘happiness’ – evermore
Our last mention of The Great Gatsby in this list, and it’s a good one. This evermore track paints a mature rationalising of one’s feelings after a break up. Swift explains how although she may feel awful right now, she recognises even in her darkest moments that ‘there’ll be happiness after you.’ Swift writes: ‘I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool / who takes my spot next to you.’ Avid Gatsby fans will see the resemblance here to Daisy’s line ‘I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ Swift twists this melancholy thought on a patriarchal world into something more personal. She implies that, as a strong woman, life with her previous partner was unsustainable, and so unfortunately only a naive young ‘fool’ – who can be dominated and taken advantage of, unlike Swift herself – can really stand him. Secondly, Swift refers to Fitzgerald’s ‘green light,’ that infamous metaphor that we all came to either love or hate when we studied it. In Gatsby, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolises the strength and yet futility of Gatsby’s love for Daisy, and also of his desperate belief in the American dream. With this in mind, Swift’s line ‘all you want from me now / is the green light of forgiveness’ suggests that this is something that her former lover will never quite reach, no matter how much he desires it.
- ‘the lakes’ – folklore
Another one of my all-time favourites, this track takes inspiration from the Lake poets, a group of famous literary figures who spent a lot of time in the Lake District in the early 1800s. They drew inspiration from the nature around them and created a wealth of beautiful poetry, including ‘Daffodils’ which begins with the oft-repeated line ‘I wander’d lonely as a cloud.’ This poem was of course written by William Wordsworth, but the Lake Poets’ group features other famous names such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, as well as Wordsworth’s own sister, Dorothy. In Swift’s song about the Lake District, she sings the melancholy refrain ‘take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die,’ then explicitly references the most famous lake: ‘those Windermere peaks look like the perfect place to cry.’ What follows are evocative, intricate descriptions of the natural world and the wonders of solitude, including a witty play on words: ‘I’ve come too far to watch some name-dropping sleaze / tell me what are my words worth.’ The song even opens with language of poetry, letting us know right off the bat what we’re in for here, when Swift sings: ‘is it romantic how all my elegies eulogise me?’ Overall, the song is a poignant ode to Swift’s journey through chaos to a more peaceful existence, just like how the Lake Poets saw the Lake District as an oasis from urban and political life. Last year, I myself went to the Lake District for the first time and fell in love with the fact that one can find both tranquillity and community there. Both the Lake Poets and Taylor Swift had it right: it’s the best place in the world to write poetry. As both an English literature student and a lover of the Lake District, I had to award this literary reference first place in my ranking. In this track, Swift implies that she doesn’t belong among such lofty figures of the canon, but I personally think that this entire list of her literary references has proven quite the opposite. She’s a poet for our generation.
