I've been a massive Taylor Swift fan since around 2008, and now that I'm willing and financially able, I intend to show how much I love her incredible lyrics by tattooing them on to me. I'm already well on my way in that mission as this is my 2nd Taylor Swift tattoo, (you can read about my first here), and I absolutely love it. I do talk about my intense love for her songwriting for a bit in this post so feel free to skip and scroll all the way down if you're just here to see the tattoo, but I thought I'd explain a bit about what the lyric means to me.
Out of all of Taylor's albums, Lover is my favourite. You can probably tell by how distraught I was about the Loverfest tour being cancelled in 2020 even though I didn't even have tickets - but I was so obsessed with the entire Lover era, not only the album itself but the super adorable, sparkly nature of the outfits that Taylor wore around the time, the florals, the glitter, the PINK. It's all very me! (pun intended). I even wrote a What I Would've Worn To Loverfest post last year on the one year anniversary of what would've been the start of the tour.
The songs about love are beautiful and meaningful, and I love that not all of them are slow, some of them are dance numbers but they still capture the feeling of being in love just as perfectly. The songs about loss are heartbreakingly well written, (I still can't listen to Soon You'll Get Better because it makes me bawl), and there are also some really fun sassy songs in there as well like The Man and I Forgot That You Existed, which is another fave of mine.
Anyway, the last song on the album, Daylight, has one of my favourite bridges of any song ever, and you don't need to be a Taylor Swift fan to understand why. In the last few lines of it, she sings 'I once believed love would be burning red, but it's golden, like daylight'. If you follow me on any of my social media, you'll recognise that line because I captioned a few of our wedding photos where we're dancing in front of our fairy lights with it, as the golden light fits the theme of that song perfectly, and I wasn't the only person to caption any of our wedding photos with that particular lyric which makes me incredibly happy to think that our friends see our love the same way that I do - having Swifties as friends is such a blessing!
The lyric is a throwback to her 2006 album Red, (speaking of, the re-recording of that album comes out on November 12th and honestly, could I BE any more excited?!), and it's often been said that it's her most heartbreaking album. In the title song, she sings 'loving him was red', alluding to past loves which were, in her words, 'tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I've experienced in the last two years [...] All those emotions - spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion - in my mind, all those emotions are red. There's nothing in between; there is nothing beige about any of those feelings.' So, from that we can gather that she only knew love to be intensely frustrating with the ability to spontaneously combust.
So now that she's been with her current long-time partner of five years, and she knows that love isn't supposed to be 'red' anymore, because she can now see that it's actually radiant, magical, and 'golden like daylight', I'm just truly happy that she's found that, and the line will never not make me emotional as it's so uplifting and special. As someone who grew up listening to her music while I was experiencing my own version of red relationships, it's nice that I'm in the same position as her now too, who understands what a real and healthy relationship (and now, marriage!) feels like, and that's what this tattoo represents for me. It’s such a gorgeous song which is a true celebration of love, and now I get to wear one of my favourite bridges on my arm forever, and it’s amazing.
Aside from the subtle reference to Red which tells us that Taylor has fully understood what love is now, it's also a very positive, and happy song about stepping out into the daylight and letting all of the negativity go, which is what I aim to do in my life. I love the sunshine, and I like to think that I leave people's day a little brighter after I've spent time with them, and so, I got the sun rays to represent walking through life with positivity.
Thank you for coming to my Taylor Swift TED talk. Here is the tattoo! I absolutely love it - it took about 45 minutes, and I would say it was about a 5 on the pain scale - in that it didn't hurt horrendously, but it is the biggest tattoo I have so far, (which means it's also the first tattoo I have that is big enough to have bruised underneath so that's pretty cool), and the pain just lasted a little longer than usual - especially on those long sun beam lines - they hurt the most! The line work is so beautifully crisp and perfect, and the font is the absolute prettiest, I'm totally in love with it!
As always, I've popped this into the 'tattoos' category on my blog, so feel free to have a scroll through that if you missed any of my previous run-downs of my tattoos. I already have my final tattoo of 2021 booked in and I’m very excited about it, so stay tuned for that. It’ll be the fifth tattoo I get this year which is absolutely wild to me considering that I got my first ever tattoo on October 28th 2020, and I’ll be ending 2021 with six of them!
Have a lovely Monday! xo