The thing that is striking me the most about this album is just how messy and human it is. She’s not holding anything back or trying to appear one way or another. She’s just letting it all out regardless of what anyone might say. She found that trying to be polished and keep all the ugly, imperfect, human stuff in to be stifling and just said fuck it I need to do this for me. This album was an exorcism for her.
what's so clever about Clara Bow is that when she references her own name at the end, she's not talking about the present but the future, quoting the inevitable way people are going to one day talk about her, imagining it will only be in regards to the woma(e)n who surpass her. because there will be someone who surpasses her, eventually. that's the cycle of fame, isn't it? we're simultaneously captivated by the alluring trick of the past while looking for the next big thing. we compare current stars to the lights that shined before them, "you look like taylor swift." but we're also constantly waiting for someone new and greater to take the crown and captivate us anew, "you've got edge she never did." And half the song is about acknowledging that being revered is hell on earth for the people who are in it, because you're always trapped between what came before and what will come after. you're only safe insofar as you remain shiny. But the real beauty of the song is that it never succumbs to this dichotomy, but embraces it. It's Taylor acknowledging she wouldn't be who she is were it not for the women who came before her, who shared the same dreams, and recognizing her place in the chain of the women who will come after. The future's bright, dazzling.
Begging swifties to understand that Taylor didn’t write reputation and Lover with the knowledge of how the relationship was going to end and that trying to “excavate” those albums for evidence to prove a specific theory as to why it ended is not how they should be viewed. Taylor wrote those songs feeling a very specific way because that’s what she was experiencing and she is now reflecting on them with hindsight and relates to them differently than when she first created them. These conflicting emotions can exist; how she views it now doesn’t diminish how she felt about it when she first released it.