In the Eye of the Beholder: Queer Readings of the Eras Tour Surprise Songs
Taylor really meant it when she said: “Happy Pride Month, Lyon!”
July has officially begun, which means that corporations have taken the rainbows out of their profile pictures, shop windows, and conversations; here on no, but listen, however, we talk about LGBTQ media all year round. Pride Month may be over, but Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is not, which means that it’s almost always at the forefront of my mind. Last week, I wrote a queer analysis of the mashup of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” and “Dorothea” that Swift performed earlier in June, which got me thinking about the potential for queer readings of other surprise songs from her concerts during Pride Month. As an analytical experiment and for posterity—and simply for fun—I’ve compiled a list of the surprise songs and mashups from the Eras Tour in June and attempted to parse out their queer implications. Unsurprisingly, these were more obvious in some cases than others, but for the sake of consistency, I viewed each performance through a queer lens to illustrate how art and literature can take on different meanings and become universally relatable. To add to this exercise, I gave each song or mashup a queerness score out of the six colors of the rainbow.
June 2nd (Lyon)
“The Prophecy” / “long story short” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙
the main theme of “The Prophecy,” wishing that the way things are and the fate that you’ve been dealt would change so that you can finally find happiness, certainly resonates with some of the internal struggle of the queer experience
“I got cursed like Eve got bitten / Oh, was it punishment?”: Biblical reference to original sin with Eve and the apple; the speaker punished herself and is suffering the consequences, which could allude to queer religious trauma
“Gathered with a coven ‘round a sorceress’ table”: witchcraft, in all its potential power and danger, has a significant queer history1
“I sealed my fate / No sign of soulmates / I’m just a paperweight in shades of greige”: the speaker has done something—perhaps suppressed her identity—to condemn herself to loneliness, where she feels useless and devoid of all the colors of the rainbow; as a “paperweight,” she’s unable to do the actual writing and express herself on the page
“I fell from the pedestal / Right down the rabbit hole”: a reference to Alice in Wonderland, which celebrates those who feel misunderstood, and 1989’s “Wonderland,” a song about the whirlwind of secret love
“Long story short, I survived”: the mashup leaves the audience on a more hopeful note
“Fifteen” / “You’re on Your Own, Kid” | ❤️🧡
this mashup is about learning as you grow up and debunking the myth of heteronormative romance being the defining characteristic of a woman’s success, which especially rings true for Swift’s career
“In your life you’ll do things greater than / Dating the boy on the football team”: an ironic line at the moment, considering who Swift is currently dating, which serves as a not-so-subtle reminder of what is most important
“Back then, I swore I was gonna marry him someday / But I realized some bigger dreams of mine”: many of Swift’s lyrics about marriage to men subvert patriarchal ideals2
“I hosted parties and starved my body / Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss”: sacrificing one’s well-being for the male gaze is never a good idea; she invalidates the notion that this “perfect kiss” and savior figure exist
June 3rd (Lyon)
“Glitch” / “Everything Has Changed” | ❤️🧡💛💚
these are both songs about the sudden shift of falling in love overnight and experiencing something you never have before, which is a bit of a queer concept
“We were supposed to be just friends”: falling in love with your friends is a sapphic canon event, and has been referenced in other songs as well
a “glitch” is defined as a temporary malfunction: from a heteronormative perspective, queerness could be considered a malfunction—“it’s just a phase”
“A slight interruption, a brief malfunction / I’d go back to wanting dudes who give nothing” (Swift swapped “slight” and ”brief” from the original lyrics; a glitch within “Glitch,” if you will): perhaps the queerest lyric here, we get the word “malfunction,” and the speaker considers the relationship an “interruption” between “dudes who give nothing”
“Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙
to me, this song is an anthem of queer post-situationship longing, acting as the third part in the narrative begun in “Cornelia Street” and continued in “Maroon”
“Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness / Named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”: the speaker alludes to her muse’s bisexuality in the first lines (and title) of the song
“I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools / Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules”: she’s experimenting with her identity and self-expression in relation to a lost love
“Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon / Like it never happened?”: an explicit reference to “Maroon” (coming soon on this list), which cements the fact that whatever this relationship was, it was kept secret, and they’ve tried in vain to forget about it
June 7th (Edinburgh)
“Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” / “I Know Places” | ❤️🧡💛
this is an interesting combination, since the first song is about the speaker regretting a relationship that stole her youth and the second is a love song about keeping a relationship secret—perhaps everything is clearer in hindsight?
the religious references in “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” such as “all I used to do was pray” and “you’re a crisis of my faith,” can be applied to the potential discord between queerness and religion
“If I never blushed then they would’ve never whispered about this”: the speaker blames herself, in part, for the rumors about her, since they’re actually true
“I know places we can hide”: in my opinion, this is the gay thesis of the song, as the two people seek a private sanctuary for their love where no one will be able to find them
“They take their shots, but we’re bulletproof”: at this point, the speaker feels that love makes them strong enough to withstand public scrutiny (even if she changes her mind in retrospect)
“‘tis the damn season” / “Daylight” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙
“‘tis the damn season” is the other half of “dorothea,” which means that I interpret it as Dorothea returning home and rekindling what she had with the girl from high school
“And wonder about the only soul / Who can tell which smiles I’m fakin’”: the muse is the only person Dorothea can share her true self and her vulnerabilities with, as opposed to the public persona she presents as a celebrity
“I’ve been sleepin’ so long in a twenty-year dark night / And now I see daylight”: discovering or accepting one’s queer identity can be like seeing the light; darkness is both the opposite of light and the absence of color; and being asleep for twenty years symbolizes the delayed adolescence that many queer people experience
“I once believed love would be black and white / But it’s golden”: here we get a more explicit reference to the color dichotomy and how the speaker’s fundamental understanding of love shifted because of this experience
June 8th (Edinburgh)
“The Bolter” / “Getaway Car” | ❤️🧡💛💚
this is a great mashup of two songs about the pattern of running away from relationships with men as a coping mechanism, but what for? when viewed through a sapphic lens, this could speak to the experience of compulsory heterosexuality
“I can confirm she made / A curious child, ever reviled / By everyone except her own father”: the third-person protagonist was bullied as a child and only accepted by her father for her “curious” ways, which could mean both queer, in its literal definition, and/or eager to learn
“Then he’ll call her a whore / Wish he wouldn’t be sore / But as she was leaving / It felt like breathing”: the breakup pattern is described in a lighthearted tone, she has such little regard for the men’s feelings; rather, these relationships are suffocating her, so she needs to leave them
“He was a cad, wanted her bad / Just like any good trophy hunter / And she liked the way it tastes / Taming a bear, making him care / Watching him jump then pulling him under”: neither one truly cares about the other—she enjoys toying with men and they view her as just a commodity, a prize to be chased after
“When it’s all roses, portrait poses / Central Park Lake in tiny rowboats / What a charming Saturday”: the public perception of this relationship is seemingly perfect, but it’s all meaningless and fake; Swift uses the image of “roses” to refer to something deceptively beautiful, with hidden thorns
“There’s escape in escaping”: the literal act of escaping this series of superficial relationships serves as an escape from the protagonist’s own issues
in “Getaway Car,” the speaker uses one man to leave another, but the pattern continues: “Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys / That was the last time you ever saw me”
“All Of The Girls You Loved Before” / “Crazier” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙
“All of the girls you loved before / Made you the one I’ve fallen for”: just looking at the grammatical structure of this sentence, “one” is a noun substitute for “girl”
“I was tryin’ to fly but I couldn’t find wings / But you came along and you changed everything”: this old song from Hannah Montana: The Movie is surprisingly gay, but maybe that’s because of the parallel between coming out as queer and coming out as a secret popstar
“Baby, you showed me what livin’ is for / I don’t wanna hide anymore”: finding joy and comfort in queer love can encourage people to come out and stop feeling like they have to hide their identity
June 9th (Edinburgh)
“It’s Nice to Have a Friend” / “dorothea” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
I wrote a whole essay analyzing this mashup and its queer implications last week, so there was a lot to say with this one, especially with regard to queer flagging
most importantly, the speaker is a friend of Dorothea (“It’s nice to have Dorothea”)
“Haunted” / “exile” | ❤️🧡💛💚
“Haunted” is a great example of the “he” versus gender-neutral “you” song
“He will try to take away my pain / And he just might make me smile / But the whole time, I’m wishing he was you instead”: the man that the speaker refers to doesn’t live up to the primary muse of the song, whose gender is never specified
at the “exile” bridge, Swift sang the Bon Iver part instead of her own, taking on the traditionally male role in the song: “So step right out, there is no amount / Of crying I can do for you”
“You never gave a warning sign” while the audience responds with “I gave so many signs”: beyond the end of a relationship, this can be interpreted as a reference to queer flagging and signaling through hidden messages
she delivers a modified ending that encapsulates both voices from the duet: “never gave a warning sign, but I gave so many signs”
June 13th (Liverpool): 100th Eras Tour Show
“I Can See You” / “Mine” | ❤️🧡💛💚
like “I gave so many signs,” the phrase “I can see you” alludes to queer flagging in general, something only those in the know can see
“I spend my time tryin’ not to feel it”: another secret love song where the speaker is trying to suppress her feelings out of fear of the repercussions of the relationship being outed
“They keep watchful eyes on us / So it’s best if we move fast and keep quiet”: very similar to “I Know Places,” where the world can’t find out the truth
the transition to “Mine” turns to a happy reflection on the beginning stages of this relationship; “I can see it now” is a real memory rather than a fantasy
“Cornelia Street” / “Maroon” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
not only do these songs both have strong queer undertones, they are also narratively linked, even outside the context of this mashup
both songs indicate that the two people were roommates at this time and place, following the arc of “closest friend[s]” to lovers to strangers
“That’s the kind of heartbreak time could never mend / I’d never walk Cornelia Street again”: referring to this as a specific “kind of heartbreak” differentiates it from that of previous relationships like in “The Bolter” / “Getaway Car”
“The mark they saw on my collarbone / The rust that grew between telephones / The lips I used to call home / So scarlet, it was maroon”: these are some of the most explicitly sapphic lyrics in “Maroon,” as fear of the relationship being exposed to the public led to its downfall, and lips are usually only “scarlet” when covered in bright red lipstick
June 14th (Liverpool)
“This Is What You Came For” / “gold rush” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
this mashup really isn’t that deep, it’s just two songs about being in awe of a beautiful woman
“Lightning strikes every time she moves / And everybody's watching her / But I don’t like a gold rush, gold rush / I don’t like anticipatin’ my face in a red flush / I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch”: this combination allocates a female muse to “gold rush,” highlighting the speaker’s attraction to this woman who everyone, perhaps regardless of gender, would abandon everything to be with
“What must it be like to grow up that beautiful? / With your hair falling into place like dominoes”: these are more traditionally feminine descriptors, and also indicate the speaker’s conflation of love and envy, which is a common queer experience
“The Great War” / “You’re Losing Me” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
“The Great War” presents an extended metaphor that can be interpreted in multiple ways, including as a contemplation of the internal and external struggles of coming to terms with a queer identity, while “You’re Losing me” reckons with this pending loss
“My knuckles were bruised like violets / Sucker punching walls, cursed you as I sleep-talked / Spineless in my tomb of silence”: the speaker is the source of her own physical pain; purple is associated with the LGBTQ community; and the speaker feels weak for condemning herself to eternal silence
“Maybe it was her”: we don’t get more information about this third party, but the “you” figure could be an externalization of the self
“I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone / You said I have to trust more freely”: again, the speaker’s inability to trust others isolates her from the world in a manner that is killing her
“Somewhere in the haze, got a sense I’d been betrayed / Your finger on my hairpin triggers”: two instances of queer language are woven into the lyrics here, with “haze” being a reference to “Lavender Haze” and lavender marriages, and “hairpin” an alteration of “trigger pin” that calls back to the “hairpin drop” in “right where you left me” and alludes to queer flagging
“And all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier / Fighting in only your army, frontlines, don’t you ignore me”: this bridge fits into the war metaphor; the speaker is trying in vain to be brave and face the externalized issues of her internal conflict
“A pathological people pleaser / Who only wanted you to see her”: there is a distinction between who the speaker really is and what she presents to the world in order to remain liked
Swift changed the lyrics at the end from “we” to “I vowed not to cry anymore / If I survived the Great War”: this transforms the struggle that the song describes into something clearly personal and ongoing
June 15th (Liverpool)
“Carolina” / “no body, no crime” | ❤️🧡💛
one thing about Swift is that she loves to sing about killing a man: this is what she called “the murder mashup,” so it’s not super queer, but there’s a notable lyric here and there
“Lost I was born, lonesome I came / Lonesome I’ll always stay”: a sad line that resonates with those whose inherent characteristics make them social outcasts
“No, they never did see me here / And she’s in my dreams”: without context, this sounds like dreaming about a woman you’re secretly in love with
the speaker of “no body, no crime” risks prosecution to avenge her best friend by killing the husband that killed her
“Carolina knows why for years they’ve said / That I was guilty as sin and sleep in a liar’s bed”: if you don’t know this is about murder accusations, this sounds like religiously motivated homophobia, and the phrase “guilty as sin” was later used to describe infidelity and sexual impurity
the mashup ends with “Este’s a friend of mine, Carolina knows,” which could suggest another euphemistic use of “friend”
“The Manuscript” / “Red” | ❤️🧡
like in “The Bolter,” Swift tells “The Manuscript” like a story, in third person, as the protagonist lets go of past relationships with men—including the one in “Red,” which she realizes is not actually love in “Daylight”
“Then the actors were hitting their marks / And the slow dance was alight with the sparks / And the tears fell in synchronicity with the score”: these lines mimic the polished production of the Eras Tour itself, which immortalizes Swift’s career—these memories have lost personal significance as time has passed
“the story isn’t mine anymore”: rather, it has turned into a performative art piece for audiences to consume, blurring the line between fiction and reality
June 18th (Cardiff)
“I Forgot That You Existed” / “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” | ❤️
this charmingly scathing mashup celebrated Scooter Braun’s birthday and retirement, so it’s not too relevant here
“Lived in the shade you were throwing / ‘Til all of my sunshine was gone”: this lyric is part of the “sunshine”/“shade” recurring metaphor, the significance of which I addressed in my essay on “You Need to Calm Down”
“I Hate It Here” / “the lakes” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
these are both songs about yearning for an idealistic escape from life—I’ve already written an entire essay on the queer symbolism and references in “I Hate It Here,” so I won’t repeat that here
Swift made a point to sing the second chorus of “I Hate It Here,” which has different lyrics, back to back with the first
“I don’t belong and, my beloved, neither do you”: the lovers are social outcasts and yearn for an isolated existence reminiscent of the Romantics
“my calamitous love”: in homophobic societies, queerness can be simultaneously beautiful and disastrous for individuals and their communities
June 21st (London)
“Hits Different” / “Death by a Thousand Cuts” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
a mashup of two great breakup songs, but “Hits Different” definitely brings the queer factor here
“It hits different ‘cause it’s you”: as opposed to the meaningless “Kens,” this heartbreak is unique in its impact on the speaker; and the phrase “hits different” is believed to have originated with the LGBTQ community
“Bet I could still melt your world / Argumentative, antithetical dream girl / My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Tryna find a part of me that you didn’t touch”: the speaker is directly addressing her “dream girl,” who she is unable to move on from and feels she is still entirely bound to
“Is it you? / Or have they come to take me away?”: queerness has historically been used as justification for institutionalization; this imagery recurs in the “Fortnight” music video
“The Black Dog” / “Come Back, Be Here” / “Maroon” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙
“My longings stay unspoken”: the speaker represses her true feelings in a manner that connects to lyrics in “Guilty as Sin?”
“You said I needed a brave man / Then proceeded to play him”: the song’s muse is only acting like “a brave man,” which leaves their gender undisclosed
“remember how my rain-soaked body / Was shakin’”: this is a direct link to “How You Get the Girl” (“Stand there like a ghost / Shaking from the rain”), demonstrating that the speaker is the “you” figure who is trying to win the girl back
“hire a priest to come and exorcise my demons / Even if I die screaming”: an exorcism should expel just the demons, but the speaker expects this to result in her own death, indicating that she worries she herself is demonic
Swift sang just that one sapphic bit of “Maroon” again—she clearly loves to use it to wrap up any and every mashup
June 22nd (London)
“thanK you aIMee” / “Mean” | ❤️
these are both songs about strength in the face of adversity, which is a queer theme (but also that of any marginalized group)
“And then she wrote headlines / In the local paper, laughing at each baby step I’d take”: a bully mocking the speaker for making whatever little progress she was able to
“And so I changed your name and any real defining clues”: the references to Kim Kardashian in this song are red herrings, and there are other meanings hidden within the lyrics
“Someday I’ll be singing this song at Wembley”: this was just a cute moment
“Castles Crumbling” | ❤️
although it’s about fame on the surface, this song’s theme of the fear of losing all the people in one’s life is much more universal for societal outcasts: “I will just let you down / You don’t wanna know me now”
June 23rd (London)
“us.” | ❤️🧡💛💚
a collaboration from Gracie Abrams’ new album: another song about a secret relationship
“I know your ghost / I see her through the smoke / She’ll play her show”: the speaker refers to the “ghost” of her muse with she/her pronouns; Swift sang this first verse herself in its entirety before bringing Abrams onstage to start the song from the beginning
“Babylon lovers hangin’ lifetimes on a vine”: “cowboy like me” reference!
“Out of the Woods” / “Is It Over Now?” / “Clean” | ❤️🧡💛
“The rest of the world was black and white / But we were in screaming color”: the color spectrum in this love contrasts society’s lack of color and light
the latter two songs in this mashup detail the dissolution and aftermath of the relationship
June 28th (Dublin)
“State of Grace” / “You’re on Your Own, Kid” | ❤️🧡
the phrase “state of grace” means being free from sin, which is a motif that recurs throughout Swift’s discography
“I never saw you coming / And I’ll never be the same”: this concept, now in a positive context, echoes that of “Hits Different,” as the muse affects the speaker in an entirely new way
“I’ve loved in shades of wrong”: once again, color is incorporated into the discussion of what is real, right, or wrong when it comes to love and past relationships
“But this love is brave and wild”: queer love is often credited with bravery, and it being “wild” lines up with the subversion of heteronormativity
“Sweet Nothing” / “hoax” | ❤️🧡💛
“All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing”: this a deceptive lyric that begs the question of whether wanting nothing from a partner is positive or negative
“My eclipsed sun / This has broken me down”: if the sun represents queer love and happiness in other songs, here it is being suppressed, to the speaker’s detriment
“My winless fight”: this is reminiscent of “The Great War”—the speaker keeps fighting for herself but never wins
“Your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in”: the speaker is aware that this relationship isn’t legitimate, but she keeps it up anyway
“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars / From when they pulled me apart”: the speaker has never fully healed from the pain caused by external forces in her life
June 29th (Dublin)
“The Albatross” / “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” | ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
“The Albatross” is a complex work of poetry, so I’m sure I’ve missed some things here, but “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” is a quintessential secret love song
“A rose by any other name is a scandal”: when the disguise of the rose is taken away and the thorns underneath are revealed for what they are, suddenly something thought to be beautiful becomes perceived as a “scandal”—hypocrisy in public discourse
“‘One bad seed kills the garden’ / ‘One less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen’ / Locked me up in towers”: one criticism of homosexuality is that it is antithetical to procreation, but the view that one infertile “bad seed” would kill everything around it too stems from a place of bigotry; and by locking the speaker away from the world, these “wise men” believe that they are saving people from a “‘temptress’” who they would otherwise feel they were forced to kill out of their own fear
“Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger”: people who know you well know how to hurt you much better than those who don’t
“I loved you in secret”: the very first lyric of this song establishes the situation
“my love had been frozen / Deep blue, but you painted me golden”: the positive image of love as “golden” returns, this time in contrast to a blue that is stuck “frozen”
“you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis / People started talkin’, puttin’ us through our paces”: Swift often refers to love in the private sphere as a holy space, in this case an “oasis” in a world full of gossip and prying eyes
“Swayin’ as the room burned down / I’d hold you as the water rushes in”: this relationship being outed to the world is likened to catastrophic events like fire and flooding—these are extremely high stakes that bear similarity to a person’s queer identity being outed
the final chorus of “The Albatross” reveals that when people learn the truth, the thing that they thought was a bad omen turns out to be good instead
“when that sky rains fire on you… I’ve been there too”: this lyric links back to the bridge of “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” and presents a Biblical symbol of divine punishment for one’s sins
“Wise men once read fake news / And they believed it”: people are willing to believe things that aren’t true if they want to and they’re presented in the right manner
“The devil that you know / Looks now more like an angel”: in the final chorus, the speaker reveals herself and the fact that, despite what others have said, she is good
“This Love” / “Ours” | ❤️🧡💛💚
“In silent screams and wildest dreams”: the speaker has previously been stuck resorting to fantasy, unable to express her pain
“Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves / They’ll judge it like they know about me and you”: homophobes feel entitled to their opinions by baseless hatred, even when voicing them anonymously about people they’ve never met
“People throw rocks at things that shine”: love represents light, as opposed to the darkness of hatred; and on a more sinister note, this is a reference to stoning
“The stakes are high, the water’s rough / But this love is ours”: despite the external hardships these lovers face, their relationship brings them comfort
“it’s not theirs to speculate if it’s wrong”: strangers shouldn’t have the right to judge the relationship in question
“This love is glowing in the dark”: love is again a source of light amidst external negativity, with “glowing” evoking a golden image
June 30th (Dublin)
“Clara Bow” / “The Lucky One” | ❤️🧡💛
Clara Bow is rumored to have been bisexual and was known for experimenting with gender and sexuality stereotypes in a time when this was unheard of for celebrities
“You’d be picked like a rose”: the duality of a person’s public image and private life
“your lover in the foyer doesn’t even know you / And your secrets end up splashed on the news front page”: these lyrics address the PR or superficial relationships that are widespread in celebrity culture in relation to the struggle of keeping secrets from the public
“It’s hell on earth to be heavenly”: religious imagery indicating that nothing is as it seems
“You’re on Your Own, Kid” | ❤️🧡
see above (this was the third performance of this song in June)
This little listicle turned into an absolute beast of a project, so if you read through the whole thing, thank you so much! In conclusion, the following Pride Month surprise songs on the Eras Tour were the queerest: “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” / “dorothea,” “Cornelia Street” / “Maroon,” “This Is What You Came For” / “gold rush,” “The Great War” / “You’re Losing Me,” “I Hate It Here” / “the lakes,” “Hits Different” / “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” and “The Albatross” / “Dancing With Our Hands Tied.” Let me know your own thoughts and reflections on these songs in the comments, and I hope you had a wonderful Pride Month!
Look no further than my discussion of witchcraft and lesbianism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I didn’t realize she sang yoyok three times in the same month omg
“this mashup really isn’t that deep, it’s just two songs about being in awe of a beautiful woman” LOL