On July 23, 2020, at 11:59 p.m., I sat on the floor of my empty bedroom, all packed up for vacation, patiently awaiting the release of Taylor Swift’s surprise new album, “folklore.”
When the clock struck midnight, I repeatedly refreshed my Apple Music with no luck, so I turned to the simultaneously released lyric videos on YouTube. I clicked the first song that came up — “hoax” — and immersed myself in the beautiful world of “folklore.”
“My only one, my smoking gun, my eclipsed sun, this has broken me down.”
I listened to the soft piano, watching the deep blue waves crash into the rocky cliff while the lyrics flooded my earbuds and washed over me in ways I had never felt before.
“Stood on the cliffside screaming ‘Give me a reason.’ Your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in.”
It wasn’t the first song on the album, actually it was the last, but I couldn’t even bring myself to care about the order. The delicate yet heart-shattering poetry had me captivated, and I’ve been entranced by it ever since. Every metaphor cuts like a knife, but I still just want to keep listening to it over and over again.
The relationship she sings about is one that hurts so much to be in but feels too hard to let go. This love is faithless, not godly or pure or true, but even knowing all of this, she still believes in it because they are trapped in a cycle.
“Don’t want no other shade of blue but you, no other sadness in the world would do.”
She isn’t happy in this relationship, but she still chooses this sadness over going somewhere new because it is familiar. Who she is with this person might not be who she wants to be, but it’s who she has become comfortable being.
“My best laid plan, your sleight of hand, my barren land, I am ash from your fire.”
This second verse is particularly gut-wrenching to me. She laid everything out and every time she thought she knew what she was doing, they swept the rug out from under her. As their relationship seems to reach its final moments, she feels like a shell of who she once was. They burned through every ounce of her and left her in a pile of ashes, not knowing how to put herself back together.
“You knew the password, so I let you in the door. You knew you won, so what’s the point of keeping score?”
Coming around to the bridge, Swift asks a number of questions and speaks to this person directly and boldly. They knew her deeply enough to understand how to get through to her, so she let them in and they took advantage of that. She realized she shouldn’t have done that, but they still flaunted this “victory” and abused their power.
“You knew it still hurt underneath my scars, from when they pulled me apart, but what you did was just as dark.”
They knew where she was hurting from everything else she had faced and still chose to hurt her more. The pain of the relationship was enough to match the pain she felt from other relationships and the public.
“My only one, my kingdom come undone, my broken drum, you have beaten my heart.”
This line comes back to the idea that this love is not godly but instead faithless. “My kingdom come” is in reference to the Christian Lord’s Prayer, but Swift adds “undone” at the end to again show how this has collapsed her faith and made her lose her trust in everything she once knew (while also stabbing me in the heart a thousand times). Her broken drum symbolizes how the way she acts and the fabric of her being, or the beat of her drum, have been broken by this relationship. The drumsticks once used to carry her through life have been taken and used to beat her down instead.
I will truly never understand why this song is so underappreciated. Perhaps when “the lakes” was added as a bonus track at the end of the album, “hoax” became more overlooked. But if people would give it a chance, I know they would love the simple and delicate production, beautiful metaphors and poetry almost as much as I do (but I will always be the number one fan). Sit in an empty room and devote three minutes and 40 seconds to listening to this poetic masterpiece, and your life will be changed forever.
