Taylor Swift: "Lover"

Tonight's the night, you guys. Taylor Swift is appearing on "Saturday Night Live." It's time to talk--really talk--about "Lover":

*To depict herself as a rebel, Swift sings, to her boyfriend, "We can leave the Christmas lights up till...January...." A part of me wonders if this is deliberate self-parody. A slice of rebelliousness is not removing the lights on Dec. 26? Do any American families actually *fail* to leave the lights up till January? I think about this a lot.

*The song "Afterglow" bugs me. It bugs me because: TayTay is saying, "I know we had this big fight, but I apologize, and I want you to meet me halfway. Meet me in the afterglow." But "afterglow" is not a post-fight term. "Afterglow" is a post-sex term. There isn't a golden haze after a fight. This laziness really, really bothers me.

*"You're taking shots at me like it's Patron." Exactly *what* is Patron, in this line? What does "it" refer to? Taking a shot *at* something is different from taking a shot *of* something. So irritating!

*"The Archer" continues to grow on me. I like how the "THEY SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME" part suggests madness and paranoia via relentless repetition. When TayTay mentions (melodramatically) that all her heroes "die all alone," I wonder if she is thinking of the famously unapproachable Joni Mitchell.

*TayTay worked with Idris Elba on "Cats." TayTay is sometimes falsely smeared as a neo-Nazi. I have to wonder if TayTay's use of Elba's voice (and not, say, Judi Dench's voice)--at the start of "London Boy"--was the result of some deliberate political calculations involving race. Have you not wondered that?

Thank you for bearing with me.

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