Taylor’s our No1 Doc and roll star
Swifties Claire & Ashley’s 11,000 word analysis of new album
AN Irish Taylor Swift superfan made a Google Doc to analyse every single word of her new album – and says it gave her an exact relationship timeline for the singer.
Claire O’malley, 29, has been a Swiftie since the age of 11, when Taylor released Tim Mcgraw from her selftitled debut.
So when The Tortured Poets Department was released on April 19, she got up at 5am with her friend Ashley Washburn.
The two listened to every single song before deciding they wanted to analyse the lyrics in forensic detail.
They said they did it to track the exact timeline of Taylor’s relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.
Claire, a programme officer from Dublin, said: “I am fairly confident in the general relationship timeline between Taylor and Matty from my analysis.
“The break-up happened over the course of the Eras Tour so we used her ‘surprise’ songs, in conjunction with what Taylor’s team communicated to the public, to work out her and Matty’s exact relationship status.
“We started to notice all these Easter eggs in the lyrics and so we went on an Easter Egg hunt within the words.”
RELATIONSHIP
Claire and Ashley spent four days analysing every lyric, mapping out a timeline of Taylor’s relationship with Matty and how it corresponded to the Eras Tour, which happened at the time of the relationship.
By entering all 11,000-plus words of the album line by line into a Google Doc before “electronically” analysing them, leaving comments in the margins, Claire and Ashley created a 78-page document.
The document contains over 400 comments and a further 11,000-plus words of analysis, including a detailed timeline of Taylor and Matty’s relationship.
It revealed how the official announcement of their break-up directly related to the songs Taylor chose to sing in her surprise set songs in her Eras Tour.
Claire added: “The surprise songs are Taylor’s way of choosing two different songs to the original set list.
“It’s always something different that only that specific crowd gets to experience.”
Using the “surprise songs” from each of Taylor’s performances on the tour, the two were able to “decode” the break-up.
Claire said: “On March 31, there was the official ending of Joe [Alwyn]
Towards end of the relationship songs are filled with tension SUPERFAN CLAIRE YESTERDAY
and Taylor so they probably ended weeks prior, but the ‘surprise’ song that she chose reflects how she was feeling at that time.
“On April 14th, she was in Tampa, Florida. Florida is mentioned twice in her new album, which could mean something.
“The surprise songs then were Speak Now, which ties to wedding imagery of speak now or forever hold your peace, and Treacherous, which is about falling in love and not being sure.
“Other April surprise songs to indicate she was on the rise with Matty would be Today was a Fairytale, Wonderland and Begin Again.”
Claire added: “These are more uplifting songs.
“Today was a Fairytale is about spending the perfect day with the person you’re romantically interested in.
“Wonderland is a play on
Alice in Wonderland and falling into a fantastical world you find when you connect with another person.”
Claire and Ashley were also able to pinpoint the period of time that Matty and Taylor were going through a break up. Claire said: “Towards the end of May, Taylor plays songs along the lines of Am I in the right place? or Is this right relationship? The song choices have a tension to them that are maybe saying this isn’t the best relationship that she could be in at the moment.
“Ashley and I would both like to think that these surprise songs change their tune throughout the Eras Tour.
“When she is starting her relationship with Matty, the songs are optimistic whereas towards the end of the relationship the songs become filled with tension.”