the breakout single of Lover is gonna be Paper Rings, which is about kink replacing Christianity as the idiom by which non-elite...
the breakout single of Lover is gonna be Paper Rings, which is about kink replacing Christianity as the idiom by which non-elite white people form default bonds
this is gonna be fucking amazing
explain
Okay this is maybe a bit overblown, it triggered existing ideas in my head about #sexual media and all that, a little overenthusiastic “oh my god, if SHE sees it too, it’s real and I’m on the right track.” So maybe it’s better taken as an example of her writing things so specific yet so open-ended that everyone can see what they want in it.
But I can defend it.
Okay to start with this song feels like a sequel to Stay Stay Stay - bouncy healthy, resilient relationship positivity that uses language that’s kind of therapeutic (“you should never leave a fight unresolved”, “who always took their problems out on me”, “I think that it’s best”) and somewhat colloquial (”I just like hangin’ out with you‘), distant from the core Taylor Swift character. You… get a sense this couple owns at least one Funko Pop. Now. First off, the refrain:
I like shiny things/but I’d marry you with paper rings
There are two ways I can see that, first like “the formal bridezilla accoutrements of a wedding sound nice but we’re poor and I’d accept just you.”
Now that’s specifically not the coastal elite model of marriage as a “capstone” once you’ve got the rest of your lifepath sorted. Especially when you factor in the painting the brother’s wall - these are people who didn’t move away from home.
The second is that they retain a respect for the symbolic meaning of marriage - either the “blue” one as a capstone of self-constructed life trajectory, or the “red” one as the sanctified beginning of family and household formation - but that aside, what they really want is just you.
And the last decade in Portland honestly I’ve been seeing that from both sides - couples who moved from the mountain and interior west who have no ‘Merica god, guns, or country in them at all, but who still take it as normal to marry at 22 and have a kid at 24; people who in my generation would have been blue coastal strivers but no longer expect a rise-to-power plotline and might as well settle anyway, into a relationship based on mutual support without external referents
I hate accidents/except when we went from friends to this
Okay but here’s the thing, the song opens with a description of how “this” happened – “the night we first met/went home and tried to stalk you on the internet”, “cat and mouse for a month or two or three”.
That does not sound like an accident, and it goes straight from that to “now I’ve read all the books beside your bed” without a stop at “friends” in between. (also that’s a great example of her words=sex thing that she establishes they’ve been sleeping together by saying she’s been reading his books)
So what is it? It’s a counterfactual. It’s roleplay. Or it’s a romantic idiom so prominent in Funko girl’s mind she puts it under that even if it doesn’t apply - the “friends to lovers” trope that Taylor Swift has been writing all this time, and the acccidental setup that finally brings them together.
OR, she knows it doesn’t apply, but that’s the idiom of “how to get a man” that she grew up internalizing (you ever think about how odd it is that the great 2008 friendzone anthem was written and performed by a woman?) so she was secretly aiming for it the whole time, and as far as he knows that’s what happens but the first lines were the calculations only she saw.
I want your complications too, I want your dreary Mondays, wrap your arms around me baby boy
Like, that’s hurt/comfort, that’s depression reassurance, that’s ASMR, they’re not “kink” per se, but I increasingly see stuff suggesting the old saw is true and women don’t seem to have such a firm distinction between romance and erotica or physical sex acts and relationship power dynamics. That’s also finished off in a gender-swap of “baby girl”, the sub counterpart to “daddy”.
The other thing is the recurring “dirty dreams” as the context for how she wants him and in the outro that resolves to “in all my dreams”
Ohhhh, it’s an Fdom song, I dunno how I missed that conclusion
But that’s kinda what Stay Stay Stay is, isn’t it?
…
wait, Stay Stay Stay is about an abusive relationship, isn’t it?
wait, they’re both about an abusive relationship while sounding like a bouncy positive healthy relationship as told from the female side, is that the joke?
She throws her phone across the room at him, then manipulates him with therapeutic language (this morning I said we should talk about it/’cause I read you should never leave a fight unresolved)
And then he shows up wearing a football helmet! Because when she says she wants to talk he puts on armor against physical blows! Ha!
and then she tells a story about how she had Problems that he’s the solution to - before you she only dated self-indulgent takers, now you carry her groceries and now she’s always laughing
But he never made some dramatic turnaway, he~ee~e… stayed, he gave her no choice but to stay, stay, stay, all those times that he didn’t leave. He acts like it’s funny when she’s mad, mad, mad (no one else is going to love her)
She thinks that it’s best if they both stay, stay, stay stay stay stay
haha wow! I just got that reading!
Fifteen, about how people will tell you fake love stories to manipulate you, was two albums earlier!