Does Taylor now hate the UK? oh nooo

As the Eras tour approaches Britain, we assess the diplomatic situation

Welcome to Swiftian Theory, a newsletter all about Taylor Swift. Writing today: Satu.

The citizens of Britain, and of Swiftian Theory, are in an absolute tizz this week as The Blonde herself is back. Taylor was spotted in London watching Cara Delevingne in Cabaret at the weekend. It is the first time she’s been amongst us since we received the main, chilling message of The Tortured Poets Department: “I now hate the UK”.

Taylor’s relationship with Britain has been a mixed bag for a long time. It’s certainly inspired her, starting in the Red era: in ‘Come Back... Be Here’ she says “I guess you’re in London today”. Why isn’t he here, where Taylor is? ‘Message in a Bottle’ follows this up with “how is it in London?” Taylor doesn’t actually care how it is in London. It’s raining, obviously. ‘Message in a Bottle’ was probably written in Sweden as we’ve now learned from the Stockholm show that it was the first song she ever wrote with Max Martin. Whether she’s in Nashville or Gothenberg, the point is, London is just plain NOT where Taylor is in these songs.

The ultimate mixed-bag Taylor song for me is ‘London Boy’’. It has a dark allure because she describes lots of things I recognise as a Brit, but it also makes me turn inside out with nope as I try to imagine Joe Alwyn saying “babes don’t threaten me with a good time”. Fandoms who can’t handle cringe wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where she raised us, so that’s fine. For starters, I love songs in the genre “milquetoast white reggae” so I am compelled to love this song. It has also created the enduring mystery of “where Taylor Swift could have gone for a night out in Brixton in 2018”. But its most interesting aspect is how it unpacks what Taylor’s taste in “British guys” is/was. Her London Boy was actually born in Tunbridge Wells, a town version of a Little Waitrose. He watches rugby with his school friends from City of London boys (fellow alums include Daniel Radcliffe, who would be a very funny and unexpected TS boyfriend). Rugby is one of the few bad sports in existence, along with American football. They are both grinding wastes of time watched by people who might have never been on a bus. Not even going to Taylor’s show this weekend (SCREAM) at a rugby stadium can change my mind. All in all, it has the opposite effect to ‘Come Back… Be Here’ and all the other songs that mythologised Harry Styles, a Cheshire lad. ‘Style’, ‘I Wish You Would’ etc made me want to be wounded by this epic bad boy with the James Dean, daydream look in his eye. Taylor is an angel for sitting through rugby matches and “stories from uni”. It’s a swipe left with prejudice from me.

The most important location mentioned in ‘London Boy’ is “the Heath”. This is a huge park in North London that I used to walk around imagining what I would say to Taylor if I bumped into her. This photo of her going for a muddy walk in responsible mask sustained my life in January 2021:

I got so used to Taylor living in London that I kind of forgot it wasn’t the norm. Just like folklore, it was part of the pandemic for me and her and everything from before was wiped, especially her Lover era wardrobe. She was now wearing big wool coats to stomp around a heath. She was in a pod with Zoe Kravitz who was also living here: “[Taylor] was a very important part of being in London, just having a friend that I could see and that would make me home-cooked meals and dinner on my birthday.” One of the locations of the Itty Bitty Pretty Kitty Committee recording studio, the makeshift home setup where she recorded everlore, was in London. Taylor was a London Girl now. Unlike most American celebrities, she even made some trips outside of London/Soho Farmhouse. In ‘Invisible String’ and ‘The Lakes’ she heads to the Lake District where all the poets go to cry. Basically, she’s a woman of the North Sea now, an honorary Brit, a staple in UK culture forever and ever.

[sound of clock ticking ominously]

I think ‘So Long, London’ should open The Tortured Poets Department. Taylor, if you’re going to break my heart, please do it quickly. It has the heart-racing stressbass of ‘The Archer’, the choral voices of ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend’ and the medical event imagery of ‘You’re Losing Me’. She sings, “I stopped CPR, you left me in that house by the Heath”. I love every image of a breakup in this song: seeing hopeful “fairy lights through the mist”, but then unpicking the thousands of tiny threads from their magic fabric with “stitches undone”. Then there’s the details in ‘The Black Dog’, where she watches on Find My Phone as a person we’ll assume is Joe walks into some bar that might or might not be in Vauxhall, South London.

Yes, I went

It’s so intimate to share your location with someone. It also has a double meaning here as they were so together for the five years they were a couple and their house and home they shared feature so much in Joe-era love songs. There was no “how is it in Wicklow?” ‘The Black Dog’ is my Track 5 to the extent I considered buying some unoffical TBD merch from the pub. She just doesn’t understand how you don’t miss her? In The Black Dog? When someone plays The Starting Line and you jump up? But she's too young to know this song? That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming, okay?

The second half of ‘The Black Dog’ does seem to be about someone else, someone more malicious than sad: “Were you making fun of me with some esoteric joke?” Now the thing about Taylor-brand British boys up until May 2023 is that they were of the classic Hollywood variety. The UK exports mild-mannered UK Kens to America by the hundreds. Tom Hiddleston is a perfect example (he definitely watches rugby). Harry is renowned for his lovely manners. And then there’s Matty Healy. It’s fair to say he did some permanent damage to Taylor, and he is admittedly English. But the songs that really seem to be about him aren’t that closely connected to London – they’re in New York’s Chelsea Hotel in ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ or in a kind of Western movie in ‘But Daddy I Love Him’. In the songs at least, she’s not pinning Matty on us. He’s been washed clean of ties to the UK. Taylor’s music always launders her exes into a new, mythological version of themselves. It’s a bit like the process of arriving in New York’s JFK airport: a process that utterly breaks you down psychologically and when you emerge it’s hard to recognise yourself. Harry isn’t really a bad boy. Joe and Matty aren’t epic emotional heavyweights. It’s all coming from Taylor and her alchemical talent and her massive capacity for love. 

Taylor loved Britain once. I need to know now, can she love us again? In ‘The Black Dog’ she sang “I want to sell my house and set fire to all my clothes/And hire a priest to come and exorcise my demons/Even if I die screaming/And I hope you hear it.” If I possibly can, I will scream so loud this weekend that I exorcise her demons for her. And Taylor, I hope you hear it.

UK Eras tour secret song predictions:

‘Hoax’ and ‘Robin’ for Edinburgh. My fellow Swiftian Theorist Natasha says we should assume we’re getting these songs to avoid disappointment.

My real guess: ‘Closure’ and ‘Mary’s Song’ for Edinburgh because I assume I’m the only person on earth who wants to hear these so I think she should play them when I’m there.

‘The Lakes’ for Liverpool because, close enough? ‘Style’ because close enough?

‘The Tortured Poets Department’ for Cardiff. Dylan Thomas was Welsh. Do not go gentle into that good night, Welsh Swifties!

Obviously we’re expecting ‘So Long, London’ and ‘London Boy’ in London but with eight London dates in June and August it’s all to play for.

Tell us what you are hoping for!

Xx Swiftian Theory