OK, you might remember that two weeks ago Taylor Swift dropped the third single from her upcoming album Reputation – a track called "Gorgeous."
At the time I analysed the hell out of the lyrics and became very confused because things didn't quite add up.
But just as I was beginning to ~~get a life~~ and ~~move on~~, Taylor went and dropped a new video yesterday, which shows her writing "Gorgeous."
View this video on YouTube
And let me tell you, my friends, it has confused the fuck out of me. Here is why.
So, first off, Taylor recently told fans during her Secret Sessions that the song is about her "perfect angel boyfriend of a year," Joe Alwyn.
Now, the official timeline of their relationship states that they met at a Kings of Leon concert on 12 October 2016, and began dating shortly after.
This video, however, leaves little doubt that the song was written and recorded before she'd even met Joe.
And that's because Taylor was spotted in Nashville on 18 September 2016, wearing the exact same outfit she wears in the penultimate clip of the video.
In that same clip she nails the song, singing the exact lyrics that made it to the final version. And the next clip shows her in the recording studio, ready to lay the track down. This suggests that it was written and ready to record four weeks before she met Joe.
However, fans who are trying to make sense of this timeline have now developed a new theory, suggesting that Taylor actually met Joe on 3 May at the Met Gala. This was the same night that she met future boyfriend Tom Hiddleston.
And this is where things get a bit messy.
Because it appears that Taylor wrote the song while she was with Tom, but the original lyrics about him don't quite add up either.
First things first: Let's establish when the song was written. I'm going to put it out there: Taylor's first day of writing the song was 3 September 2016.
And I'm basing it on the timestamps provided in the video. It opens on "Day one" of the songwriting process. The second clip informs us that it's "two weeks later." And the third – which we know was probably shot on 18 September 2016 – is "one day" after that.
Working backwards, then, two weeks and one day before 18 September puts us at 3 September – three days before they broke up.
Now, I KNOW it's possible that there might have been a lag between her splitting with Tom and the news being publicly announced. But if this was the case, then she wouldn't have had a boyfriend at all – so why the lyric?
So, going back to the theory that the song was indeed written while she was still with Tom, then the lyrics must be about him, right?! Well, it turns out that the original lyrics about her "boyfriend" were very different from the final version.
Now, Tom and Taylor's relationship began on 17 June and ended on 6 September. That's roughly three months, right? So, if she hadn't seen him for "a couple of months," that would suggest that Taylor was apart from Tom for two-thirds of their relationship.
And we all know that wasn't the case, because between June and August the pair were together constantly. In fact, within the first month of dating, they were photographed together a staggering 24 times.
Also, if the song was indeed written on 3 September, and we're taking the lyrics literally, this would mean that Taylor hadn't seen Tom since July.
In July, however, they not only packed on the PDA at her holiday party, but spent most of the rest of the month together in Australia where Tom was shooting Thor.
And in actual fact, the last sighting of Hiddleswift was 14 August – a mere fortnight and not a couple of months – before Taylor sat down to write the song.
But then, even more confusingly, in the final clip of the video – filmed after her split from Tom – the lyrics about the boyfriend she hasn't seen in a couple of months are replaced with the version we get in the final song, which appear to point to Calvin Harris.
The eventual lyrics are: "I got a boyfriend / He's older than us / He's in the club doing I don't know what," which definitely evoke images of DJ Calvin Harris rather than Tom Hiddleston. However, she broke up with Calvin on 1 June – three months before writing the song.
Now, we know that Taylor often jots down ideas for songs as she has them, sometimes over the course of years. "Blank Space" is probably the best example.
So, there is a chance that she had inspiration for songs while she was still with Calvin. However, this would certainly have been before she met Joe, given that she and Calvin split four months before she met him, right?!
In order for this song to be about Joe, then, we have to go back to the unconfirmed theory that she met him at the Met Gala.
Furthermore, Taylor and Calvin were still very much together during that time – the last sighting of them was 20 May, after they returned from a vacation together. She was also reportedly with him as he recovered from a car accident on 26 May, too.
So, this suggests that if she did originally write lyrics about Calvin, she then changed them to ostensibly be about Tom despite the timeline not quite adding up, before changing them back to point towards Calvin in the final version of the song?
DO YOU SEE WHY I'M CONFUSED?
Oh and just quickly, we also got insight into some of the other original lyrics which suggest that the subject of the song is gorgeous inside and out.
So if these lyrics were about Joe, we again go back to the theory that they met at the Met Gala and spoke a lot between then and October. In other words, for the duration of the tail end of Tayvin and throughout her relationship with Tom. The plot just thickens, tbh.
So anyway, I'm going to wrap this up, and just take Taylor at her word because I'm too exhausted to analyse anymore.
