Life of a mirrorball: Bright lights and shiny people

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On the heels of a new era for our favorite, shiny, showgirl, I want to analyze a motif Taylor has often used in her music: bright lights and shiny people.

Early in her career 

Taylor has always loved stars, guiding lights in the darkest nights. Even as she faced difficulties in her adolescence, she believed in the goodness and integrity of people. She would refer to people as shiny, pillars of kindness during hard times. Shiny people are people who bring joy into your life. She even recognizes that there is light in people, despite the hurt they’ve caused her. Her relationship to lights is innocent and kind, a reflection of her youthful optimism.

  • Debut | Invisible: She can't see the way your eyes, light up when you smile

  • Debut | Mary's Song: I looked at you like the stars that shine

  • Fearless | Hey Stephen:  I've seen it all, so I thought that I'd never seen nobody shine the way you do

  • Fearless | Jump Then Fall: And every time you shine, I'll shine for you

  • Fearless | You're Not Sorry: You used to shine so bright, but I watched all of it fade

  • Speak Now | Dear John: I'm shining like fireworks, over your sad empty town

  • Speak Now | Innocent: Your string of lights is still bright to me

  • Speak Now | Ours: People throw rocks at things that shine

Clashing with flashing lights

As her fame increased, these bright lights also became weapons. Lights grew to represent the intrusion of celebrity culture, the exposure of her most private life. She dares her critics to set her on fire because of all the wrongs they believe she has done. Even with these evolutions, light still represents the warmth of other people and what she values.

  • Red | The Lucky One: Another name goes up in lights, you wonder if you'll make it out alive

  • Red | Nothing New: And someone else lights up the room? …The kind of radiance you only have at 17

  • Red | Bet You Think About Me: You grew up in a silver-spoon gated community, Glamorous, shiny, bright Beverly Hills

  • 1989 | Welcome to New York: The lights and noise are blinding

  • 1989 | I Know Places: Lights flash and we'll run for the fences

  • 1989 | This Love: Lantern, burning, flickered in the night for only you

  • reputation | Don't Blame Me: They're burning all the witches even if you aren't one, so light me up, light me up (Light me up, light me up)

  • Lover | Daylight: Everyone looked worse in the light

In folklore, she refers to herself as a mirrorball (disco ball) known for its fractured light reflecting back on an ever attentive audience. She recognizes losing friends to the false shine of celebrity in dorothea, but is drawn to the inner warmth and glow of a lover in ivy. Even evermore has moments of light flickering in the seas of melancholy.

  • folklore | mirrorball: I'm a mirrorball…Shimmering beautiful

  • evermore | dorothea: The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo and if you're ever tired of being known for who you know

  • evermore | dorothea: You got shiny friends since you left town…

  • evermore | evermore: and when I was shipwrecked, I thought of you, in the cracks of light I dreamed of you

The Midnights album contains several songs where Taylor directly acknowledges the complexity of being a bright, shiny, person. In Anti-Hero, she sings about confronting the brightest sun and her inability to look at herself in the mirror. In Dear Reader, she implores people to finding another guiding light, a shining beacon in a sea of darkness. It’s too much for her, someone who is lonely and alone. Despite that, she can’t help being the most dazzling person in the room.

  • Midnights | Anti-Hero: I'll stare directly in the sun, but never in the mirror

  • Midnights | Dear Reader: You should find another guiding light…But I shine so bright

  • Midngihts | Bejeweled: Best believe I'm still bejeweled…I can still make the whole place shimmer

  • Midnights | Karma: Ask me why so many fade but I'm still here

The Tortured Poets Department brings forth another round of lights. They’re still intrusive representations of fame and celebrity. They still represent the warmth of other people, even when she is in the depths of her own heartbreak. Perhaps most telling, she is still the brightest, shiniest mirrorball on stage, even as some assert her own girlish glow is fading.

  • TTPD | loml: I felt aglow like this, never before and never since

  • TTPD | I Can Do It With a Broken Heart: Lights, camera, bitch, smile even when you wanna die

  • TTPD | I Can Do It With a Broken Heart: There in her glittering prime, The lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night

  • TTPD | Fresh out the Slammer: Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches

  • TTPD | Clara Bow: No one in my small town thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan

  • TTPD | Clara Bow: Only when your girlish glow flickers just so, do they let you know

What does this mean for our favorite showgirl?

Maybe nothing? Maybe something? Thematically, Taylor has gathered all these meanings of light in her life as a show girl. In the new album cover, she’s dressed in a dazzling, bejeweled dress. Each jewel twinkles, like each shard of a mirrorball. She is aglow and illuminated in each of these album covers. In the New Heights podcast, she shared that this album is effervescent and joyful. She's embraced her light, in its fractured and furious mess.

She’s here to tell us a diamond is going to shine, and she is going to be the brightest one out there. Vibrant, vivacious, luminous, and in love.