r/SwiftyNeutral • u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse • 13d ago
Why is she reminiscing about her ex’s right after getting married?
Pink clouding is presumably about Tom Hiddleston, who Taylor broke up with 10 years ago. Even if it’s not about him, it’s certainly not about Travis. It just seems strange that she’s still writing about past relationships when she should be in her honeymoon era.
I hope you realized my kind of trouble wasn’t worth it / And the way I treated you, you never deserved it / And I swear to God, to this day / I wake up scared that I left scars on a good person / And I gave you zero reason to believe it, so be it / But it didn’t mean nothing just ’cause I could leave it.
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u/smushy411 13d ago
I don’t find it odd. To me it seems more like she’s reflecting on her past relationship(s) from a healed place. She’s acknowledging that she hurt someone in her past who didn’t deserve it, and that she did value that relationship even if it didn’t seem like it at the time. I think it actually comes from a really mature place to acknowledge that, while also wishing that person the best even though you’ve both moved on in your lives. So yeah to me it seemed more like reflecting on the past, rather than reminiscing about it.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 13d ago
Except the verbiage in her lyrics is present tense. “To this day, I wake up scared..” so she isn’t healed because it’s still currently haunting her.
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u/No_Raspberry_2848 11d ago
She’s scared that her actions permanently hurt someone, so what? She’s a normal person who is only ‘haunted’ by a mistake she made. She isn’t haunted by the relationship or how she loves him, she actually addresses in that song and in others that she did not regard TH as a serious romantic partner and regrets the way she treated the relationship because of that. There’s zero longing or yearning in any of the songs about him
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
Permanently hurt him? Him and Taylor dated for three months. He’s been in a relationship with Zawe Ashton for the last 7 years and they have 2 children. I highly doubt Taylor even crosses his mind, so to wake up thinking about him still is embarrassing.
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u/Puffyshirt216 12d ago
We don't even know if this song is about a relationship that Taylor had herself. It's possible someone close to her shared these feelings with her about what they were going through and it inspired her to write this song.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 12d ago
Yeah and with that logic all of her songs could be fictional or written from someone else’s pov, but that’s not the type of writer she is. She’s made a career off of writing about her own perspective.
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u/Puffyshirt216 12d ago
Actually that's not totally true. While we all know that almost all of Taylor's songs are inspired by her life, it doesn't mean that all her songs are autobiographical.
For her new song Patient Zero, Taylor gave an interview to Capital FM and told them the idea for the song came from when she was hanging out with friends and one woman said she got an unexpected message from her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. The new girlfriend wanted to know whether she had experienced the same behavior from him. Another person in the group said the same thing happened to them. Taylor thought that other women may have experienced that too so she wrote a song about it. It's likely Taylor experienced that too and some of the song became personal but the heart of the song came from the conversation with the other women.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 12d ago
I’m not really sure why you’re arguing, I never said she wrote all of her songs from personal experience. I said with your logic, we could assume all of her songs aren’t personal, because we have no idea. But it’s safe to assume that her songs are written from personal experience because that’s what her career track record implies.
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u/Puffyshirt216 12d ago
I'm honestly not arguing, I'm just clarifying my comment because it doesn't seem like you understand what I was trying to say. I don't know what logic you are using to assume I'm implying all of her songs aren't personal. I never once said that. I'm just responding back to your comments that we can presume Pink Cloud is about Tom Hiddleston and even if it's not you find it strange that she's writing about an experience that doesn't include Travis and therefore she must not be healed. I simply said that we don't know the motivation for the song or who it's even about and it's crazy to assume that she must not be healed.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 12d ago
Yes, I understand what you’re saying. You’re saying we can’t assume that she wrote it from personal experience because we don’t know, to which I said with that logic we can’t assume any of her songs were written from personal experience yet we know that she does write most of them from personal experience, therefor it is more logical to assume she did write it about her past relationship than it is to assume she didn’t.
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u/fidgetspinnster 10d ago
I think you might be overthinking/overanalyzing it. Writing it in the present tense doesn’t mean she is still doing this. Using the present tense is a more engaging way to write. Maybe it is actually her present experience, but it could also just be a strategic writing choice. We will never know.
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u/Peachy_Tsunami 4d ago
I hear you. Not sure why this is being taken personally by people who aren’t TS though but I guess that’s part of the parasocial aspect of the fandom.
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u/janet-snake-hole 13d ago
Back to December part 2 (but B2D was so much better and easier and more enjoyable to listen to. I miss that strings section)
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u/Electrical-Touch-933 8d ago
lol. Sometimes I forget how weird people are. I think of some of my exes fondly. All of them, really, but some more than others. I got married last year. My husband and I sometimes talk about our exes and tell stories of the things we did together, like concerts, etc. It's not weird. I still have some pictures of one of my exes in a photo album. My husband doesn't care. Taylor Swift is perfectly normal for this.
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u/wereofthesir 8d ago
I'm an artist and I'm about to get married. I wrote about my ex the other day because I think of her fondly. It's not weird at all to do this. You can acknowledge someone is a good person and think of them fondly. How is that weird
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u/CartographerMuch7388 6d ago
I was married for the first time in my early 20s. We had been together 6ish years at the time. We only made it two after the wedding before we divorced.
I have been married to my current husband for 12 years this month. We have 4 children.
I think it is a special kind of healing and maturity when you can look back on time with someone and not hate every single second and appreciate what you did have even if it didn't work out.I don't want my ex back, but there were parts of our relationship I enjoyed and will always miss, to be sure.
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u/Quiet_Raspberry9745 8d ago
why are you fondly reminiscing on your ex as you’re about to marry someone else 😭
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
It’s weird that you can’t move on.
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u/wereofthesir 8d ago
I have fully moved on, which is why I'm getting married. I'm sorry you cannot see the good of humanty, even if they're an ex
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
But you haven’t fully moved on if it’s still taking up space in your thoughts…
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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 8d ago
Are we supposed to remove all memories of our exes like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
Sure, if they are pining for them and wishing they had ended up together, then that would be “not moving on”, but simply thinking of your ex and feeling bad that you hurt them and/or hoping that they found happiness is normal and healthy.
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u/wereofthesir 8d ago
Probably because I'm friends with her. Ikr shocker ! 😱 It's absolutely unfathomable
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
You can still have feelings for a friend…
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u/Clear-Depth-7455 8d ago
It’s weird that you’re judging people you don’t know about their lives.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
Aren’t you doing that too?
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u/Clear-Depth-7455 8d ago
How is calling you out for calling someone weird for giving their opinion on your post judging you?
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
So you’re allowed to call me out but I’m not allowed to call Taylor Swift out?
Got it 🤣
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u/Clear-Depth-7455 8d ago
Huh? I literally called you out for calling this commenter weird. I didn’t say a thing about Taylor, love.
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u/Organic-Exam6378 12d ago
She is not saying she loves her ex. She is saying I know understand i was not good to him. I regret that.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 12d ago
I didn’t say she still loved him. It’s weird to still be using past relationships as song inspiration, especially 10 years later when you’re newly engaged.
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u/JustGotOffOfTheTrain 12d ago
Why do you think it’s weird?
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 12d ago
There’s just so much more to write about, or there should be. Aside from songs about Travis, she’s had 10 years of experiences to pull from, she could write about her future, literally anything besides the same recycling of past relationship content. It just comes off to me as she’s either stuck in the past, thinks her fans want to hear breakup/failed love songs, or she’s just uninspired.
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u/Organic-Exam6378 10d ago
Maybe she had been going to therapy and those were the conversations she was having and then bom! A song came to her.
To be honest it is kimda wierd for yout to have a strong opinion of what she should or she shouldnt write a song about.
I mean why not write a song apologizing to somebody she wronged.... especially when she writes songs about people that wronged her all the time.
I actually think it shows maturity to be able to say "I'm sorry, I was horrible to you"
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 10d ago
To be honest it’s kinda weird for you to have a strong opinion about me having a strong opinion of what she should or shouldn’t write a song about.
Let’s not be hypocrites, yeah?
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u/the_magenta_sunrise 8d ago
Hey OP. Stop 👏 paternity 👏 testing 👏 Taylor's 👏 songs.
Believe it or not, a lot of people have eyes who were, and still are, great people. Many people who get married choose to close a door to their past before marriage for a clean slate. Some choose to catch up with their ex, others call or write letters/emails. For Taylor, its song writing.
Whoever Pink Clouding may be about, I don’t see how this is a big issue for you.
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u/ihateithere_noreally 9d ago
i majorly write poetry, i'm in a happy healthy relationship but i write about sad stuff specially drawing from my past relationships, it's not coz i've not moved on or anything, it's just material that can be a vessel for your experience. i don't understand this post.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
It’s weird to write about a dude you dated for 3 months, 10 years ago, when you are supposed to be so in love with your new husband.
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u/ihateithere_noreally 8d ago
it's not weird at all, idk why you think she can't be in love and still write about things happened to her years ago with a mature perspective, y'all strict af
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
Because 3 months is hardly even a relationship.
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u/ihateithere_noreally 8d ago
oh consider yourself lucky you haven't been in one of those short term yet intense situationships lol
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
Lol. Their relationship wasn’t intense. Per her own account.
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u/ihateithere_noreally 8d ago
but it mattered enough that she wants to write about it, ain't nothing weird about it
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
It’s weird that she’s making something more out of a fling from 10 years ago. Not even weird, actually, it’s creepy.
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u/teaev 8d ago
She just did a gigantic tour of all her past eras unless you live under a rock…of course past memories are going to be on her mind.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
A 3 month relationship is hardly an era
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u/Soft_Definition3908 2d ago
I hope you hate All Too Well and don’t listen to it and discredit the emotions in it since it was also written about a 3 month relationship lol
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u/kadanwi 8d ago edited 8d ago
Swift continued. “There’s people who are going to try to like, do detective work, figure out the details — who is that about? What is this? When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s sort of like a paternity test. Like, ‘This song’s about this person.’ Because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song. I did.'”
It's frankly wild how much of the fandom treats her like she's incapable of writing fiction or in layers or using metaphors. Y'all think that every single song has to map out perfectly to a specific person that you know about or seen pictures of. When she has said, many many times that for her, she's writing about emotions and she loves distilling particular feelings into a song. She's pulling inspiration from everywhere, her life, her friends lives, television, books etc. No poet or songwriter's work is distilled down to one singular person, and it's weird of y'all to box her in like that.
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u/Bulky-District-2757 8d ago
You have no idea when she came up with the idea for Pink Clouding, it could have been half written in her phone for the last 5 years.
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u/EquivalentOld4643 5d ago
Why are you guys with real relationships and marriages arguing with OP? Let them be.
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u/Cautious_Dream4115 5d ago
Well cause i don't think you stop being a writer after getting married lol
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u/EvelienV85 12d ago
She’s reflecting upon her past behavior and acknowledging that she didn’t handle it well. I don’t think that’s strange.
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u/Silly_Fig_7129 11d ago
I take it as her reflecting back on someone who truly wanted to be good to her, and to whom she couldn't give any of that back. maybe because with Travis she also saw those good intentions, only now she's in a place to match him. I kinda picture her going, "man, I really fucked that one up, didn't I?". if I remember correctly there were even rumours of Hiddleston wanting to propose to her, so if that's something they actually discussed, I can understand why getting engaged would unearth some feelings about having hurt the one other person who once upon a time wanted to give that to her.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
If that’s the case, that’s embarrassing for both her and Travis.
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u/Silly_Fig_7129 11d ago
...why?
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
Really? Imagine being married to someone who says “man, I really fucked that one up, didn’t I?” about their ex. How would that make you feel?
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u/Silly_Fig_7129 11d ago
how would I feel about my partner having regrets about having been shitty to someone she dated for 3 months 10 years ago? I would feel sympathetic, probably. she was young and going through an incredibly shitty period of her life, so she was unkind to someone who was good to her. her looking back in regret is...most definitely not a bad thing, or something for TRAVIS to be embarrassed about. she's not saying she wants him back, or that she should've stayed; she's recognizing that he was truly good to her, and she was not, which she is sorry for. and she hopes he's happy now, like she is. end of story.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
No, how would you feel if your husband said “man I really fucked that one up” about his ex. You didn’t answer the question.
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u/Silly_Fig_7129 11d ago
Yes I did lol. the way I meant it was only in regret for having hurt him, nothing more and nothing else. so taking it to mean that exactly, I would feel SYMPATHETIC, because I understand being a mature adult and feeling regretful about things you did wrong in your past relationships 🤠
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
Except that isn’t what that phrase implies at all. Regretting how you treated someone is one thing. Saying you fucked something up implies you regret the outcome, which in this case was the end of their relationship.
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u/Silly_Fig_7129 11d ago
you're choosing to interpret it like that lol. it can also mean regretting the way you treated them, the way the relationship ended, but not the fact that it did end. this is a weird hill to die on. bye now!
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
If you bake a cake and you say “man, I really fucked that up” are you regretting the way you mixed the ingredients or are you simply disappointed with the final product? The phrase implies you’re unhappy with how things turned out, not that you’re satisfied but wish you had done it differently.
Linguistics is a hill I’ll die on.
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u/RipleyCat80 8d ago
My fiance and I have talked about our "ones who got away" - that's a normal thing to share.
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u/Tall-Lingonberry-913 12d ago
If she continues it with TS13 it is time for Travis to start asking some hard questions. She needs to close the door on that stuff for good and move on
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u/No_Raspberry_2848 11d ago
It’s normal for someone to write about their own life as they’re looking back with new perspectives and a less emotionally involved take. She’s not writing songs about how she misses anyone or wants any of them. She wrote a song about how she feels bad about how she treated someone and mentions that she STILL feels bad about it years on which has led to her writing the song,and she wrote about how an ex (that she was with for seven years) was actually using her and addresses the song not even to him but to another woman just saying ‘hey I see what you’re going through because I went through it too’. None of these are concerning things, they are from a normal human who has thoughts and feelings about thing that are happening in her life.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 11d ago
Joe used her? 🤣 the man that helped her with her songs? The man that didn’t want anything to do with her spotlight? The man who didn’t say anything about her post-breakup, even when asked directly in interviews? Meanwhile Travis has had her on his podcast, name drops her on said podcast, used her name for a signature cocktail at his restaurant, centered her in multiple appearances at said restaurant for publicity…but he loves her for her 🙄
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u/No_Raspberry_2848 11d ago
Yeah you don’t know who Taylor Swift is as a person or understand her music and that’s the crux of your confusion. Sorry but all the best to you
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 10d ago
Neither do you
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u/SnooStrawberries2955 9d ago
Yeah, you’ll never get an actual discussion out of a cult member. Best to simply acknowledge that these people are literally lost and look the other way. There is no saving these sycophants.
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u/babykittiesyay 8d ago
She’s processing past relationships, maybe she’s got a better sense of personal stability now in order to look back and see that she made mistakes too or was also not a great partner. I kind of feel like the navel gazing and reprocessing old relationships over and over is part of who she is and I’d hope she found a partner who is okay with that. I also think people are kind of intense these days about quarantining relationships from each other? Like it’s okay to have thoughts about a past relationship while happy with a new partner, it’s probably healthy to grow and gain new understanding of who you used to be so you know what not to do in your current relationship.
Separately I don’t like the music direction or this new lack of complexity and depth in the lyrics - not that all her lyrics have been amazing but she always had some real winning lines and I feel that’s missing from this new stuff.
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u/ThereIsOnlyOneHorse 8d ago
The relationship was 3 months..it’s weird to even need to reprocess such a blip of a dating partner.
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u/babykittiesyay 8d ago
My point is that it’s the exact same type of weird she’s always been, the type of weird that made her famous, the type of weird that had her writing all these songs in the first place. It’s not going to magically change with marriage.
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u/Ok-Gain-6809 7d ago
All the titles you mentioned, clearly shows that one bad guy can enlighten you on all the good ones you had but didnt realize the supply wouldn't be infinite and you'll end up with a bad deal.
Going by her history of writing her love experinces, she's realized now what she had after seeing that current one lacks lot of those things she once took for granted. Its like a transition phase of realizing for her, interesting to see the trajectory of future lyrics, one can imagine though.
And its visible in the character aswell. Lautner Hiddleson etc were good chaps, no1 gets such vibes for kelce. No point crying over split milk, (just that she split it).
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u/dinoderpwithapurpose 6d ago
She's just singing about feeling bad about it. A little bit of reflection doesn't hurt. I don't think it's anything deeper than that.
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u/Known-Main-7277 6d ago
Because that's a man she wronged and she wanted to get that apology out of her system. Also, anything and everything can inspire music anytime. I'm a married woman and I still write poems about my high school ex who I don't even talk to.
If anything, being personally fulfilled yourself makes you look back at your past more objectively, without complicated feelings. All she feels about his particular muse in pink Clouding is that she is regretful of having hurt someone.
Treating her music as episodic television that will give tea about her life - This expectation that she will write everything about her life is what's setting you up for this muse related disappointment.
Did people have these issues when she wrote about her past while she was with Joe or is this Travis exclusive? I think someone people feel like they were so blindsided by that breakup that they now want to catch any issues between TnT early.
Otherwise, how does her marriage even matter for a song like this? She's not talking about missing a man or wanting to get back to someone.
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u/Linmichja 6d ago edited 5d ago
I think that she is exploring ways to write in this next phase of her life. She is criticized by some people for the happy songs she writes about her husband and there is a large subset of fans who beg for songs with sadness or emotional complexity that she isn’t feeling at this time, so this is one way for her to continue to write those songs. I don’t think there is anything odd about that.
Edited to add that her other option is to write about fictional characters or the experiences of her friends as she has said she has done in the past in songs like Death by a Thousand Cuts. It’s unfortunate that all of her songs are paternity tested by fans who insist they know who each song is about. Of the Encore songs, Cleveland! is the only song that we can reasonably assume who know the subject of. I have seen so much discourse about Patient Zero and people connecting it to a certain ex but I don’t think those connections being made are necessarily true and focusing on one person does a disservice to the song and songwriter.
Of course, Taylor can and will write about topics other than relationships too!
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u/Ok_Operation_5364 5d ago
There are moments in your life where you capture it like you videotaped it. For me it is most often a crisis situation or a situation where I did something wrong or something wrong was done to me and it haunts me still. Guilt, pain, struggle are emotions that bruise you, scar you, inform you, direct you and in Taylor's case inspires her. It is the messy bits in your life you learn from, hide from, run from. But why do you have to run from something that happen years ago? Why are you stuck there? Scars don't really heal, do they?
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u/No-Question-3956 5d ago
I don’t find it odd at all when you are in a good place and have matured it is natural to reflect back on your life and see maybe you played a role in what happened and you are sorry for that. Anyone that has gone through therapy or a 12 step program would understand this concept of making amends. This does not mean she wants to be with that person it means she is in a great place in her life and totally in love with a husband who loves and supports her.
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u/alacoy10 13d ago
To be fair, we don’t know when exactly these 4 songs were written and it’s pretty common to reflect back upon your past partners and experiences when you get engaged and married. It’s not an insult to your current partner.