Song Analysis RWYLM 1

Song Analysis RWYLM 1

I will work through this song piece by piece because MY LORD I have so much to unpack here. I got this information from some TikToks and my own research into the song.

Lyrics working through today:

Friends break up, friends get married Strangers get born, strangers get buried

So, as many people know, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift's "friendship" occurred from the infamous cookie tweets, which were posted around January 2012, and continued until their last time seen together in public, at Taylor's Reputation tour in 2018 (excluding some of the kinda awkward birthday posts the next couple of years from Karlie). There was also the double wedding debacle, where Taylor attended neither wedding. Anyway, that's enough background.

The very first line of RWYLM is "Friends break up, friends get married." This first line helps point us right in Karlie's direction, seeing as the girls fronted as just best friends, and after the pretty clear breakup, Karlie got married to her now husband Joshua Kushner. Joshua's family is heavily Republican, although Joshua and Karlie have been seen at Women's rights marches, as well as Karlie speaking out against her in-law's beliefs.

The following line is, "Strangers get born, strangers get buried." I have seen people say this is about Karlie's first son, but as Karlie would have been around a month pregnant when folklore was released, I assume she did not know about Karlie's pregnancy with Levi. It could be possible, however, that she knew of Karlie's dream to have children and was drawing from that. As the song states, Taylor is completely stuck in the past with no knowledge about anything that has occurred since. This means that their mind is stuck in the past (sometime in 2012, "Still 23 stuck inside her fantasy"), and Karlie would likely have a family by 2020. I don't know how to correlate the strangers getting buried lyric, but it is possible that this Taylor, who is stuck in her past, imagines the numerous people she could have met who have passed away since she got trapped in time.

If you really read all of that, please let me know if I should keep diving into this song and others!

-V