You Were My Closest Friend: Sapphic Storytelling in “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” and “dorothea”

An Eras Tour mashup from the perspective of a friend of Dorothea.

On June 9th, during the final Edinburgh show of the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift performed an unprecedented and undeniably queer mashup for the guitar portion of the acoustic set. By combining “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” from Lover with “dorothea” from evermore, she imbued the two songs with new meanings and queer flagging. In a time when Swift has been acknowledging her deliberate choices in putting together songs for her mashups on tour, there is clearly thematic significance in this combination. This is reflected even in the two titles: the speaker has a “friend” named “Dorothea,” which is extremely similar to “friend of Dorothy,” a queer code.

None of It Was Accidental

The songs’ lyrical compatibility is also evidenced by the fact that, musically, they’re quite different: “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” is in B♭ major at 70 BPM, whereas “dorothea” is in E major at 120 BPM. Despite these keys being six accidentals apart (the furthest they can possibly be), Swift performed the mashup in E major, transposing the former song. Moreover, she sang the first verse of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” followed by the entirety of “dorothea.” She could have sung only “dorothea” and had enough material to fill that spot in the set without worrying about key and tempo differences, but she instead chose to introduce another set of meanings, dwelling on the multifaceted use of the word “friend.”

The first verse of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” sets up a story following the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope: “School bell rings, walk me home / Sidewalk chalk covered in snow / Lost my gloves, you give me one / ‘Wanna hang out?’ / Yeah, sounds like fun.” Swift establishes the characters’ youth with the school setting and simple dialogue. However, she alludes to the passage of time with the fact that the childlike “[s]idewalk chalk” has been “covered in snow” as the seasons change and the characters age. Having lost her gloves, the speaker is ill-equipped for the cold weather—the unfamiliar experiences of growing up. Luckily, she finds someone to help and keep her company along the way: “It’s nice to have a friend.”

Unrequited and Unattainable

Although the mashup then transitions into “dorothea,” the subsequent verses of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” describe the development of a romantic relationship and a wedding, all the while referring to the speaker’s love interest as her “friend.” Similarly, “dorothea” reflects on a past relationship that is implicitly rather than explicitly romantic: “Hey, Dorothea, do you ever stop and think about me? / When we were younger, down in the park / Honey, making a lark of the misery.” The speaker looks back at the relationship the two characters had when they were “younger” and wonders if Dorothea thinks about her in the same way she’s doing throughout the song. There was a purity to their relationship that allowed them to find silver linings in their mundane hardships, like the “gloves” in the other verse. The descending and ascending melody line, as well as the distinct rhyme between “park” and “lark” add a lighthearted singsong element, emphasizing their youth.

The speaker then reveals that Dorothea left their hometown (Tupelo, evidently) to pursue a life in the limelight: “You got shiny friends since you left town / A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now / And I got nothing but well wishes for ya.” With fame, Dorothea abandoned the speaker for “shiny friends,” and she only gets glimpses of Dorothea’s extravagant life through TV, news, or social media. Despite this, the speaker still cares about her; she literally “wishes” her “well,” but also makes wishes down a wishing well for Dorothea.¹ The speaker notes that their town “is the same as it ever was,” but Dorothea doesn’t “like it that way,” punctuating this contrast with the absence of rhyme. While the speaker idealizes her more rural life, Dorothea’s dislike thereof took her far away, causing the dissolution of their relationship.

Shining or Burning Up?

As someone who’s still in adoration of—if not in love with—Dorothea, the speaker vows not to give up on the hope that she might return home one day: “It’s never too late to come back to my side / The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo / And if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know / You know that you’ll always know me.” The speaker associates herself with their hometown, referring to it as “my side,” with the dual connotations of taking sides in an argument and physically being by someone’s side. She asserts that Dorothea’s “eyes shined brighter in Tupelo,” which carries a few meanings: “stars” are literally brighter in a small town with less light pollution than a big urban setting; figuratively, when she’s not around other celebrities and “stars,” she stands out as the big fish in a small pond; and, finally, the speaker just thinks that Dorothea looked happier at home.² She tells her that if her life of fame, defined by “who you know,” becomes unfulfilling, she can always return home. Even if the speaker doesn’t feel like she knows who Dorothea has become, she and their hometown are unchanging and remain the same as when they were younger.

The speaker is experiencing complex contradictory emotions about the fact that Dorothea grew up to be different than when they were once close. Since her career took off, she’s become “a queen selling dreams, selling makeup and magazines” with a platform to reach the masses. Like many celebrities, she’s become a figure for others to look up to, an example of a success story endorsing the notion that people’s “dreams” can be attained if they share her taste in “makeup and magazines.” The speaker seems to criticize this superficial aspect of her career but then coyly suggests that she’s Dorothea’s biggest fan, after all: “From you, I’d buy anything.” Notably, Swift sings the first of these lyrics an octave higher than the second, creating a melodic contrast between Dorothea’s extravagant life and the down-to-earth speaker’s vulnerability.

Historians Will Say They Were Great Friends

In the second verse, Swift provides another glimpse into the characters’ relationship as teenagers: “When it was calmer, skipping the prom / Just to piss off your mom and her pageant schemes.” The events referenced in these lyrics make it clear that the speaker and Dorothea were high school friends, which lines up with the story at the beginning of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend.” The speaker reminisces on a time that was “calmer,” when she and Dorothea didn’t seem to care about keeping up appearances; they resented Dorothea’s mother and the “pageant scheme” of the school prom. This contrasts the glamorous life that Dorothea currently symbolizes, at least publicly—the speaker wonders if she is “still the same soul [she] met under the bleachers.” This lyric suggests that the relationship between the speaker and Dorothea was romantic: meeting up under the bleachers would have allowed them a secret hiding place away from the prying eyes of other people at school, which could also align with a narrative of closeted queer teenagers. The speaker wants to know if the person she thought she was getting to know intimately was the real Dorothea—if, underneath the glamor and fame, her “soul” is still intact. Evidently, however, she isn’t actually following through and reaching out to Dorothea: “I guess I’ll never know… And you’ll go on with the show.” Since the speaker hasn’t contacted her, nothing will change, and the literal “show” Dorothea performs in, as well as her life, will continue as they are.

At the end of the song, Swift brought back “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” singing: “It’s nice to have Dorothea.” This final new lyric from the combination of the two songs is the most pivotal for the mashup’s larger queer implications, beyond the story of the two characters. By replacing the word “friend” with “Dorothea,” Swift makes an explicit connection between the two stories, creating a new narrative where both songs are about the same friend turned love interest. This change also syntactically equates “Dorothea” with the speaker’s “friend”; thus, the speaker is a friend of Dorothea.³ The expression “friend of Dorothy” was inspired by Judy Garland’s role in The Wizard of Oz and became a code for gay men to safely disclose their sexuality to others. Like other forms of queer flagging, it is also a method of inquiring whether other people are queer; a modern sapphic version of this is “do you listen to girl in red?”⁴

By referring to the speaker as a friend of Dorothea, Swift participates in this culture of queer flagging while also making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that women in romantic relationships with each other are often mistaken for friends. Within the narrative of the mashup, the relationship between the speaker and Dorothea could have blurred the line between platonic and romantic, with most people perceiving them as just friends. We can only hope that the combination of these two songs leaves the door open for Dorothea to come back to the speaker in the unsung verses of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” so that they can live happily ever after. Ultimately, art is meant to be analyzed and interpreted freely. In the name of Pride Month, I’m choosing this sapphic love story with a happy ending for Dorothea over the song’s original unresolved pining. When all is said and done, Swift leaves us with one simple but meaningful statement: “It’s nice to have Dorothea.”

1. This is probably figurative and representative of the fact that the speaker is keeping these hopes to herself, but I suppose there could be a literal wishing well in their town!

2. This last sentiment might be wishful thinking on the speaker's part, but that's the bias of first-person narration for you.

3. It's also notable that, because of the melody, it sounds for a moment like Swift is singing "Dorothy." She holds the note on the penultimate syllable of "Dorothea" for four beats before finishing the name.

4. If you didn’t know, girl in red was also one of the openers on the first leg of the Eras Tour in 2023.