The Grief Collection
A series of Taylor Swift Lyric Analysis Essays
I’ve prepared some short posts for over the summer/Christmas break, exploring connected themes in Taylor Swift song lyrics. This is a fun little project for me, and I hope will be entertaining for you!
Grief Collection
Follow the link to a lyric video for each song. I’d recommend listening to each before reading if you’re not familiar with them already. Alternatively, have a read and see if it sparks your interest to check out some of the songs!
Majorie -
Bigger Than the Whole Sky -
Soon You’ll Get Better -
Searching For Grace has been no stranger to thoughts about grief over the last few years. It’s not surprising that song lyrics have played a part in helping me process complex feelings about loss. What might be surprising is how helpful Taylor Swift lyrics have been in helping me understand and categorise different types of loss, and griefs of different kinds. The beautiful thing about these lyrics is that while they may apply clearly to certain situations, there is also a kind of universal truth about grief in them – any loss is a loss, and loss hurts.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I've got a lot to pine about
I've got a lot to live without
I'm never gonna meet
What could've been, would've been
What should've been you
I’ve written previously about the grief of miscarriage, and of losing someone before you even get to know them. Bigger than the Whole Sky perfectly captures that specific grief of losing a possibility – a possible child or possible relationship, a possible job or possible opportunity. It’s a unique grief where you know you are living without something, but to a certain extent you never get a chance to learn just what you are missing out on.
In Majorie Taylor also writes beautifully about an almost opposite kind of grief – the grief of losing someone before you can relate to them as an adult and hear about their life from their own perspective.
I should've asked you questions
I should've asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should've kept every grocery store receipt
'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me
This a grief I expect a lot of us experience with grandparents or other older relatives, who pass before we really have a chance to be curious about their lives and ask those questions. We end up with stories and scraps passed on from those who knew them, or clues from birthday cards and old emails. There is a grief in growing up and craving insight and wisdom – or even just perspective – from someone who is no longer here to give it.
Another kind of grief that Taylor sings about is the pre-emptive grief of watching a loved one – in this case, Taylor’s mother – get sick. When someone you know gets sick, very sick, it’s like a veil has been drawn back that can never fully be closed again. Because the experience shows you that even if they recover now, one day they won’t. Loss is a built-in consequence of love. In Soon You’ll Get Better, Taylor explores how everyone feels when facing the mortality of their parents, loved ones and themselves. No matter what age you are when this realisation occurs, we feel like Taylor does – like a scared child.
And I hate to make this all about me
But who am I supposed to talk to?
What am I supposed to do
If there's no you?
This won't go back to normal, if it ever was
It's been years of hoping, and I keep saying it because
'Cause I have to
These songs in particular explore the grief of lost possibilities, the grief of needing someone who is no longer here, and the pre-emptive grief of knowing those you love are mortal. What do all these kinds of griefs have in common? What does all grief have in common?
Every grief shares the experience of being unique. I promise that isn’t actually as nonsense as it sounds. Let me explain.
No grief is the same. No one loses the same person, in the same way, as anyone else. Whether it the loss of a baby, a grandparent, a parent or friend, no one experiences that loss the exact same way, because every relationship is different, with a specific log of memories that is now only carried by one person instead of two.
But at the same time, this is how everyone else experiences grief as well. Everyone who is grieving feels isolated because only they know the unique perspective and memories of that person that has been lost. Others has lost the same person, but no one has lost the same relationship and history.
There is comfort in sharing our grief, whether it is the same of the same loss, or similar circumstances of loss, like a miscarriage, because it makes us feel less alone. No one can enter our grief entirely, but others can say: I have experienced grief too. I know how it feels to lose something only you can ever recall. Your grief is individual and unknown to others, but you are not entirely alone.
Taylor has captured three different kinds of grief in these song lyrics, but she has also captured a bigger truth about grief just by singing about it – we want to feel less alone in our sorrow. And in feeling less alone in our sorrow, in sharing who and what we have lost, the dead don’t seem so lost after all.
If I didn't know better
I'd think you were still around
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, you're alive in my head
Though we can’t bring back what has been lost, we can use the act of grief to ensure they are not entirely lost or forgotten. The memories we have, the lessons learnt from those now gone, the perspective on life changed by illness and death, are all precious things. By using those experiences to help us grow and continue in love for each other, the grief honours what and who we no longer have, as well as the memories we still do have.
This is the last essay in my series analysing Taylor Swift lyrics (for now). If you’ve enjoyed this series, let me know. If you have thoughts about any Taylor Swift lyrics, I’d love to hear them.