Taylor Swift is known around the world over as one of the greatest pop stars of all time, and is especially noted for her songwriting. Like all forms of poetry, songwriting is full of literary devices and figurative language. As a pop star with a particular focus on songwriting, Taylor’s music makes use of these devices perhaps more than most. 

If you’ve ever wondered why a Taylor song is particularly affecting, this is the list for you! 

As an artist with more than 250 songs in her oeuvre, it’s nearly impossible to put together an entirely comprehensive list, but we’ve collected a number of good examples across her albums that showcase her masterful use of figurative language.

To begin, Figurative language is a broad term for a number of specific literary devices that use language in a way that deviates from literal meaning. It is often used to add vividness and emotional depth to a work, especially in mediums like poetry and songwriting, where intense emotions must be distilled succinctly for readers/listeners. 

Stay tuned for our follow-up article, where we’ll discuss literary devices like irony, allusion, imagery, and extended metaphor in Taylor Swift’s discography!

Metaphor in Taylor Swift Songs

Let’s begin with perhaps the most famous technique of figurative language, metaphor. A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things using the words “is” or “are.” Let’s look at some of the more prominent examples of metaphor in Taylor songs: 

“Red” from Red: 

Losing him was blue, like I’d never known

Missing him was dark gray, all alone

Forgetting him was like trying to know

Somebody you never met

But loving him was red

Loving him was red

In the chorus of “Red,” Taylor compares moments in a relationship to a series of colors. These colors immediately help the audience understand her emotional state at each stage in their relationship, ending on the simple metaphor that gives the song, and the album, its title: Loving him was red.

Interestingly, Taylor seems to reassess this description of love in our next example.

“Daylight” from Lover:

I once believed love would be (black and white)

But it’s golden (golden)

And I can still see it all (in my head)

Back and forth from New York 

I once believed love would be (burning red)

But it’s golden

Here, Taylor is comparing love to a different color: gold. Through this small change, the audience can easily track how Taylor’s understanding of love has evolved. No longer is love red, passionate, intense, and fiery, but rather golden, more subdued, but beautiful, calm, and content. 

Metaphor is a technique that Taylor has been using since the earliest days of her career, so before we move on, let’s look at how it’s used in a song off her debut album.

“Our Song” from Taylor Swift

Our song is the slamming screen door

Sneakin’ out late, tapping on your window

When we’re on the phone, and you talk real slow

‘Cause it’s late, and your mama don’t know

Our song is the way you laugh

The first date, “Man, I didn’t kiss her, and I should have”

And when I got home, ‘fore I said, “Amen”

Asking God if he could play it again

The chorus of “Our Song,” written when Taylor was deep in her country era, makes heavy use of metaphor. In the song, the narrator laments how she and her partner don’t have a “song” that defines their relationship. Her partner responds that they do, and lists a number of sounds. 

 Of course, these sounds don’t make a literal song, but rather serve to highlight some of the auditory moments of their relationship. By assembling these different sounds, Taylor has painted an effective picture of the relationship between two young people. 

A non-exhaustive list of other examples of metaphor in Taylor Swift songs:

  • “All Too Well” – I’m a soldier who’s returning half her weight
  • “Blank Space” – ‘Cause, darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream (this lyric also contains a simile!)
  • “I Know Places” – They are the hunters, we are the foxes
  • “Don’t Blame Me” – Lord, save me, my drug is my baby, I’ll be usin’ for the rest of my life
  • “Cruel Summer” – summer’s a knife
  • “Willow” – Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind
  • “Closure” – I know I’m just a wrinkle in your new life
  • “But Daddy, I Love Him” – He was chaos, he was revelry
  • “Clara Bow” – Beauty is a beast the roars, down on all fours

Simile in Taylor Swift Songs

“Queen of bridges”–Taylor Swift should really be considered queen of our next bit of figurative language, the simile. Often considered a sister technique to metaphor, a simile is a comparison, but it uses the words “like” or “as,” instead of “is” or “are.”  Swift’s discography is rife with simile. Let’s look at a few examples.

“Cardigan” from Folklore

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan

Under someone’s bed

You put me on and said I was your favorite

In the simile that gives this song its name, the narrator compares herself to an old cardigan, in order to explain how she feels about not only herself, but how she felt at the beginning of her relationship. This simile effectively evokes her feelings of being overlooked and generally disregarded by the world, and subsequently, her joy at being noticed by her partner.

“Last Kiss” from Speak Now

So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep

And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe

Often considered one of the saddest songs Taylor has ever written (Taylor herself has said that she thinks it’s her saddest), “Last Kiss” is a heart-rending look at the end of a relationship and moving on. In the bridge, the narrator makes two particularly poignant similes–these are interesting because they’re not as abstract as similes often are, but instead compare life after the end of the relationship to life within it–what she’s watching and what she’s feeling. In that sense, these lines are doing double duty, showing us about the joy of the relationship and the grief of it ending.

A non-exhaustive list of other examples of simile in Taylor Swift songs:

  • “Sparks Fly” – The way you move is like a full-on rainstorm and I’m a house of cards (This one has a metaphor in it as well!)
  • “Dear John” – I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town
  • “All Too well” – You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath
  • “August” – August sipped away like a bottle of wine
  • “Willow” – I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night, rough on the surface, but you cut through like a knife
  • “Gold Rush” – Eyes like sinking ships on waters, so inviting, I almost jump in
  • “Cowboy like Me” – Now you hang from my lips like the Gardens of Babylon
  • “Long Story Short” – And he’s passing by, rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky
  • “Carolina” – Blue as the life she fled
  • “The Great War” – My knuckles were bruised like violets
  • “I Can Fix Him” – The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train through a small town
  • “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” – Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses?

Personification in Taylor Swift Songs

As the name implies, personification is a technique of figurative language where human qualities are granted to non-human entities. This is also sometimes called the pathetic fallacy, though that term has largely fallen out of favor. This technique is a little more scarce in Taylor songs, but it’s certainly there. Let’s consider a few examples

“Gold Rush” from evermore

And the coastal town we wandered ’round had nеver seen a love as pure as it

Here, the “coastal town” is granted the human ability to see–towns, after all, don’t have eyes, and thus can’t “see” anything. The narrator of the song uses this bit of figurative language to emphasize the outward appearance of this love, and provide a testament to its intensity. 

“Enchanted” from Speak Now

Your eyes whispered ‘have we met?’

This piece of personification is interesting, rather than granting human qualities to a non-human entity, it grants different human qualities to a piece of human anatomy. Eyes, of course, can’t say anything. In this line, then, the eyes are figuratively asking a question. We take it to mean that although no literal words were exchanged, the narrator and the “you” are communicating solely through their eyes. 

A non-exhaustive list of other examples of personification in Taylor Swift songs:

  • “All Too Well” – You never called it what it was ’til we were dead and gone and buried
    • The “it” and “we” here are a stand-ins for relationship, which takes on the human qualities of dying and being buried. 
  • “Death by a Thousand Cuts” – I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be all right, they say, “I don’t know”
    • Traffic lights can’t speak.
  • “Carolina” – Oh, Carolina knows why for years they’ve said that I was guilty as sin and sleep in a liar’s bed
    • Carolina, used here to refer not to a person but rather to the states of North/South Carolina, is a place, and thus incapable of “knowing” anything.
  • “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” – If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh
    • Like the example from “Enchanted,” a “glint” in an eye is unable to literally trace anything. 

Hyperbole in Taylor Swift Songs

The next technique of figurative language that we’ll consider is hyperbole which is, essentially, an exaggeration. Hyperbole is often used to show the emotional depth of something by exaggerating its literal proportions.

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” from The Tortured Poets Department 

And I don’t miss what we had, but could someone give

A message to the smallest man who ever lived?

Perhaps the most famous bit of hyperbole in Taylor’s discography is from her most recent album. This song joins the ranks of “Dear John” and “All Too Well,” as one of Taylor’s infamous break-up ballads, wherein she paints a not-completely flattering portrait of an ex-boyfriend. The man discussed in this song (widely rumored to be The 1975’s frontman, Matty Healy) is blisteringly referred to as “the smallest man who ever lived.” 

This diss is clearly the work of hyperbole (Healy, though often dwarfed by his extremely tall bandmates, stands a deeply respectable 5’11”)–and is meant to demean not only the subject’s literal height, but his emotional intelligence as well. 

“Tolerate It” from evermore

I made you my temple, my mural, my sky

In this lyrical line, Taylor uses hyperbole to emphasize how important the narrator made her partner, a consideration that was not reciprocated. The “you” has not literally become any of the things listed, but they serve to illustrate the magnified quality of his significance. 

A non-exhaustive list of other examples of hyperbole in Taylor Swift songs:

  • “Gorgeous” – ‘Cause you’re so gorgeous it actually hurts
  • “Death by a Thousand Cuts” – Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts
  • “Seven” – Love you to the moon and to Saturn
  • “It’s Time To Go” – Fifteen years, fifteen million tears
  • “Fortnight” – And for a fortnight there, we were forever

Oxymoron in Taylor Swift Songs

The final piece of figurative language that we’ll analyze is oxymoron. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that is paradoxical or contains terms that are contradictory. Traditionally, oxymorons are two words, like “jumbo shrimp” or “deafening silence.” By pairing two contradictory terms together, the author creates a sense of irony, or alternatively, a moment of emotional complexity and honesty. 

“Hits Different” from Midnights

Bet I could still melt your world

Argumentative, antithetical dream girl

Here, the phrase “antithetical dream girl” functions as an oxymoron. “Dream girl” is a phrase that has come to represent an idealized partner who can fulfill someone’s every desire. By pairing this with the term “antithetical,” which means directly opposed to or mutually incompatible, the narrator of this song has crafted an ironic, impossible image of a perfect girl who is deeply incompatible with the “you.” 

Thus, what is traditionally implied by “dream girl” is undermined in favor of something more emotionally honest. She is no longer idealized, but rather represents a different kind of “dream girl,” one who is not simply a two-dimensional stock image, but has her own identity. 

“How Did it End?” from The Tortured Poets Department 

Come one, come all

It’s happenin’ again

The empathetic hunger descends

We’ll tell no one

Except all of our friends

But I still don’t know

How did it end?

This song is about the questions a person faces after the demise of a long-term relationship. These questions–exemplified by the song’s title, “how did it end?”–are not meant to be hurtful, though that’s often their effect nonetheless. 

Taylor captures this paradox through the oxymoron “empathetic hunger,” used to describe the curiosity of others. There’s a sympathetic quality to it, but it also a ravenous quality as well. This evokes the complex image of people who are at once sympathetic to the narrator’s plights, but also desperately want to know the gossip in order to satiate their own curiosity. 

A non-exhaustive list of other examples of oxymoron in Taylor songs:

  • “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” – rivulets descend my plastic smile
    • The word “plastic” which suggests artificiality undermines the traditional warmth associated with “smile” 
  • “Ivy” – I wish to know the fatal flaw that makes you long to be magnificently cursed
    • The negative word “cursed” is described with the positive adjective “magnificently” which implies a complex

Taylor also makes use of some more idiomatic oxymorons, that is, ones that she didn’t necessarily invent, but serve as idioms, or standard figures of speech.

  • “I Hate it Here” – Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me, and in my fantasies I rise above it
    • Dreams are typically seen as bizarre and nonsensical, whereas “lucid” implies rationality. This is an actual, medical term that describes a state in which someone is dreaming, but still rational and aware. Taylor is using it more figuratively here, though. 
  • “Cruel summer” – It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got and it’s a cruel summer
    • This is an idiom that plays with the traditional good associations with the word “summer,” and gives them an edge that implies emotional hurt through the adjective “cruel.” 
  • “Champagne Problems” – Your hometown skeptics called it champagne problems
    • By pairing “champagne,” a luxury, celebratory drink with the word “problems,” this idiom suggests a kind problem that is not very serious, one that reveals the privilege of the person experiencing it. Analogous to “first-world problems.” 

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