Midnights by Taylor Swift- A Lyrical Analysis

Now, let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to write about Taylor Swift. For whoever doesn’t know, she just released her 10th studio album (not including the rerecords) on October 21st, titled Midnights. Taylor has always written incredible lyrics, she’s got a talent for storytelling that I’m extremely envious of. So, I thought I’d take the chance to analyse some of her lyrics, and some themes I noticed cropping up across this album. In fairness, they’re in every album but I don’t have the time to analyse over 200 songs. So I’ll just stick to this latest one, and try to keep it as brief as possible, because I could go on forever if I let myself. Also, as of this week she’s the first artist ever to occupy every spot of the top 10 in the Billboard chart, which is cool as fuck, not to mention all the other records she’s smashed with this album. After all, she is the moment.

Anyway, on with the analysis.

Flowers

First of all, I’m a slut for floriography, so jot that down. Floriography is a form cryptological communication through flowers. And, who do we know who loves to be cryptic and hide secret meanings in everything? Mentioning one or two flowers on a 20 track album is a coincidence, but for it to be this many (I counted 9, technically), I knew Miss Swift was at it again. Floriography has been around for thousands of years, and notably used by Shakespeare in Hamlet, before becoming extremely popular in Victorian England. So, I had a look at what all these flowers meant on their own, the historical context of some of them, and whether the meaning changed at all within the context of the songs.

Lavender

Technically, lavender isn’t mentioned as a flower at all, but as part of the phrase ‘Lavender Haze’ (the opening track of the album). However, as a colour and a flower, lavender is very interesting. When talking about this song, Taylor said she pulled the phrase from the television show Mad Men where it’s used to describe the feeling of just starting to fall in love, and the phrase was apparently quite popular in the 1950s, although I can’t find any evidence to support that fact.

And, not to be that bitch, but you know what was a popular way to use the word lavender in the 1950s? In connection with the LGBTQ+ community. Let’s clear one thing up before I go any further, I’m not saying Taylor Swift is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m also not not saying that. Believe whatever you want, I’m just analysing the lyrics and her personal life is, frankly, none of my goddamn business.

Anyway, the phrase ‘lavender boys’ was originally used in the 1950s and 60s as a way to refer to effeminate men, and the phrase having ‘a streak of lavender’ was used in the same way a few decades earlier, and (fun fact) was used by his biographer to describe Abraham Lincoln. In the 1960s, lesbians were referred to as the ‘Lavender Menace’ by the head of an American women’s organisation when she refused to let them join. They reclaimed this when they staged a zap (form of political protest) at the Second Congress to Unite Women, whilst wearing t-shirts printed with ‘Lavender Menace’.

Other uses of the word lavender in an LGBTQ+ context include ‘lavender linguistics’, which is the study of language used specifically by the queer community, a ‘lavender marriage’ (see also: my blog about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo) which is a marriage that appears to be heterosexual but one, or both, of them are gay. There are also multiple charities, activist groups and magazines/artists, that have incorporated the colour somewhere into their brand.

Lavender, the flower, has a long history of medicinal use, dating back to Ancient Egypt. It also symbolises healing in a more metaphorical way as well. Claiming ‘virtue’ as one of it’s meanings, lavender encourages the shedding of past mistakes, failings, and negative emotions so that we can focus on the positives. Therefore, it can be assumed that the song title ‘Lavender Haze’ has a double meaning; it can be the feeling of just starting to fall in love, but equally it can be the metaphorical sense of shedding the past and all the negativity that comes with it, leading to a ‘haze’ of personal change and growth.

Also, I think Lavender Haze is a strain of weed? But I feel like I can probably discount that as an interpretation.

Roses

Nice and easy one, right? Everyone knows what roses mean. Wrong! The symbolism of roses depends not only on the colour, but also the species. Honestly, I could write a blog just about the meanings of various different roses. And the context of the lyric will also change the interpretation of this as well, I think.

Roses are mentioned in the second song on the album, ‘Maroon’. The line goes “Carnations you had thought were roses, that’s us.”, I’ll come to carnations after we’ve talked about roses.

Roses, to most people, symbolise romance. And that’s true, mostly. Red roses symbolise true love, lavender roses symbolise enchantment, yellow roses are for friendship. You get the idea. The issue here is that Taylor doesn’t specify the colour of the roses, which is pretty integral to figuring out the meaning. Or, we could simply use the general meaning of roses, and the rest of the song lyrics to figure out the meaning. If we look at carnations first, that might make the decision for me.

Carnations

Carnations share similar meanings to most roses and, once again, the colour usually matters. In general, carnations stand for fascination and female love, but different colours mean different things.

So if we take a look at the whole lyric, and assign some colours to the flowers, what do we get?

The burgundy mentioned in the song is related to the colour of red wine, so let’s discount that as a potential colour. What we’re left with is scarlet and maroon. Scarlet is a bright red, so I’m going to assign that to the carnations, because they’ve got less overall colour variation. Red carnations symbolism admiration. And maroon is just a very dark red, and dark red roses can symbolise either mourning, which I don’t think fits here, or romantic love.

So “carnations you had thought were roses, that’s us” becomes ‘admiration you thought was love, that’s us’ which is sort of depressing. It infers that that the speaker doesn’t actually love who they’re talking to in the way that’s been assumed. Or that, perhaps, whatever love was there has simply faded into admiration instead of romantic love. It’s also worth noting that ‘Maroon’ is the second track on the album, the same as Red is on the album of the same name. And, as maroon is a deeper shade of red, perhaps the love she talks about in Red has simply matured into what is talked about in ‘Maroon’.

A fun fact about carnations is that they were used by Oscar Wilde in the 19th century as a secret code to identify other gay men. Which opens up another interpretation of this lyric. It also changes the meaning of the roses. Let’s consider, for a moment, that whoever the speaker is talking to is a woman, and bear in mind that carnations also symbolise female love.

“Carnations you had thought were roses, that’s us” becomes something like ‘[romantic] love you had thought was friendship, that’s us’, suggesting a scenario that the speaker is in love with whoever they’re talking to, but the recipient only sees their relationship as a friendship, they don’t realise that the speaker is quite so in love with them.

(Crimson) Clover

Crimson clover, specifically, doesn’t have a meaning that I could find, but red clover does. The lyric about crimson clover can be found in the chorus of ‘The Great War’, the first of seven bonus tracks on Midnights, “All that bloodshed, crimson clover/uh-huh, sweet dream was over” which, to be fair, doesn’t really mean a lot by itself but it would make a far too long post if I was to analyse the whole song.

Red clover symbolises industry. Which we can interpret in one of two ways: industry as in a literal industry (the music industry, probably) or as in hard work (i.e. she’s very industrious). Either interpretation works, and changes the meaning of the song in slightly different ways.

If we take the first meaning, the song becomes about the drama and legal issues surrounding the masters and ownerships of Taylor’s first six albums, and how whoever she’s talking to has stuck with her throughout this.

However, if we look at the second interpretation, of Taylor herself being very industrious and hard working, the song changes meaning. She’s spent almost the last two decades of her life working almost non-stop and the song implies that she’s finally taking a bit of a break to spend time with the people she loves and, honestly, she deserves it.

Violets

Violets don’t have that many meanings, but the ones they do have are interesting. This flower also features in ‘The Great War’, in the first line: “My knuckles were bruised like violets” which, is an obvious image, bruises are general purple.

But, violets symbolise faithfulness and modesty. Now, this requires a bit of background knowledge of some of Taylor’s previous lyrics. In the song ‘Afterglow’, featured on Lover, one of the lyrics is “Fighting with a true love is boxing with no gloves” and the song itself is about the speaker blaming their partner for something that they haven’t done and almost ruining the relationship due to their own trauma. Which is a theme that we see in ‘The Great War’, as well.

So, it can be assumed that the song is suggesting the speaker has maybe accused their partner of cheating, due to past experiences, which then turns out to be a false accusation. Hence, their knuckles are bruised with flowers that symbolise faithfulness.

Daisies

Now, like lavender, daisies are not actually mentioned in the context of a flower but as a name, in lyrics from ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’, the fifth track on the album. The line “I see the great escape, so long Daisy Mae” opens the second verse. Public opinion is that Daisy Mae is the name of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s fourth child, after James, Inez, and Betty (their first three children) feature on folklore.

Anyway, daisies have multiple meanings, but I’m only going to talk about two, because they fit best with the song. The first meaning is ‘new beginnings’. ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’ can be interpreted as a sort of new beginning, which is why I think this symbolism works so well. The song represents Taylor’s rise to fame and her struggle with it and all the things it’s taken away from her. Taylor has a tradition of having track 5 be the saddest song on the album and, in my opinion, this is one of the saddest songs she’s ever written.

However, the song takes a hopeful turn towards the end with the lyric “you can face this”, showing that just because you happen to be doing something alone, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

The second thing daisies symbolise is the concept of ‘I can keep a secret’, which is a continuous theme throughout all of Taylor’s songs, my favourite being in ‘Cruel Summer’ with the lyric “I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you”. A lot of Taylor’s lyrics involve secret love and secret keeping and all round covertness and I thought that this was an interesting take for the lyrics of ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid’.

Poppies

We’re back at it again with ‘The Great War’. Honestly, this is what clued me in to the fact that there might be a deeper meaning to some of these lyrics, because there’s too many flowers in one song for it to be a coincidence.

It’s not a secret that poppies don’t generally symbolise positive things, especially considering that the title of this song is ‘The Great War’. Poppies symbolise ‘peace in death’, beauty and success, and luxury. Very antithetical things, but we’ll see which works best within the song.

The lyric goes “Say a solemn prayer, place a poppy in my hair”, which would imply that it’s more of a lowkey symbol Taylor is going for, rather than beauty and extravagance. However, I think it has a double meaning. This line comes right at the turning point of the song. The speaker is going from fighting against their partner and almost losing them, to coming to a sort of agreement to put the past behind them and focus on what comes next. This is, in a sense, peace in death, as they’re putting the past to rest in a peaceful manner and choosing to move past it. The double meaning comes into play in that they have survived ‘the great war’ successfully and, the act of putting a flower in someone’s hair is a sign of their beauty.

Morning Glory

Once again, ‘The Great War’. The line about morning glories follows directly after the poppy lyric, and reads “There’s no morning glory, it was war, it wasn’t fair”. Again, there is a double meaning at play here. Media often refers to the ‘glory of war’ which, if you know literally anything about war, is a stupid saying in and of itself. So this suggests that the speaker knows that just because they’ve made it out of the war victorious, it doesn’t mean there’s any glory in it, as there often isn’t after fighting with a partner.

Morning glories symbolise unrequited love, the mortality of life, and love that is in vain. Again, very fitting for a song that allegorises war. Now, the speaker says that there isn’t any morning glory, suggesting that they previously thought there was. This implies that speaker believed their love was either unrequited, or that even thought the two of them loved each other, it wouldn’t make a difference in the end. But, as the speaker points out, none of this is actually true.

If you’ve noticed that I’ve only listed eight flowers here, instead of nine, I’ll give you a little Easter Egg: the answer is on Taylor’s recent Graham Norton appearance :)

Parallels

Taylor parallels lyrics all the time, and I could spend all day talking about every single parallel that exists across her albums. But, I’ve picked three parallels that I think are interesting.

Cornelia Street/Maroon

‘Cornelia Street’: “Barefoot in the kitchen/sacred new beginnings”

‘Maroon’: “The one I was dancing with/in New York/no shoes”

‘Cornelia Street’, from Lover, is one of my favourite Taylor Swift songs, so I picked up on this parallel straight away. In terms of following a narrative, ‘Cornelia Street’ seems to be the beginning of the story, and Maroon is the ending. Written in present tense, ‘Cornelia Street’ depicts the meeting of two people and the beginning of the relationship, before touching on how it would feel if they ever broke up, but the overall tone of the lyrics is generally positive.

‘Maroon’ seems to depict the fading of the same relationship. And it’s definitely the same relationship, the parallel lyrics are too specific for it not to be. The lyrics don’t necessarily read like a break up, not like some other Taylor lyrics do, anyway. It reads more like the two people simply fell out of love, or that speaker has had a sudden realisation that they no longer love their partner and is reminiscing.

The Archer/Anti-Hero

‘The Archer’: “Then I hate my reflection, for years and years.”

‘Anti-Hero’: “I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.”

‘The Archer’, track 5 on Lover, is a song in which the speaker questions who could possibly love them/want to stay with them when they self-sabotage all the time, before coming to the conclusion that their partner is someone who would, and did, stay through all of it.

Similarly, in ‘Anti-Hero’, we see the speaker wonder if it ever gets tiring staying with them, as they think they’re the problem.

And in both songs we see the common theme of not being able to stand looking at yourself in the mirror because of your perceived problems. However, in ‘Anti-Hero’, there’s no positive conclusion; the speaker still believes they’re the problem by the end of the song.

Ivy/The Great War

‘Ivy’: “So yeah, it’s a fire/It’s a goddamn blaze in the dark/And you started it/So yeah, it’s a war/It’s the goddamn fight of my life/And you started it”

‘The Great War’: “But diesel is desire, you were playing with fire”

‘Ivy’, from the album evermore, is primarily a song in which the speaker has an affair with whoever they’re talking to. However, the fire and war imagery automatically links it to ‘The Great War’.

What’s interesting, though, is that if these songs are linked in the way I’m making them out to be, then we’re seeing some growth in the speaker.

In ‘Ivy’, we see the speaker blaming the other person for the war they’ve started, but in ‘The Great War’ the speaker realises that they are the one at fault, suggesting that with time to reflect, the speaker has grown to understand that the other person is not entirely to blame.

Aside from the fact that “but diesel is desire, you were playing with fire” is such a cool lyric, it also carries the exact same meaning as the ‘Ivy’ lyric. The speaker is insinuating that the other person started the affair and fanned the flames, if you will, of the feelings between the two of them, where the speaker was content to leave things be.

And that’s been my analysis of Midnights! Hope you all found this interesting enough to read until the end!