Taylor Swift’s Crucifixion and Rebirth: Analyzing Religious References in Swift’s Tortured Poetry
She died on the altar waiting for the proof.
Photo by Beth Garrabrant
Cookies frosted, speaker blaring and jaws dropped, my roommate and I were mesmerized listening to The Tortured Poets Department April 2024, the night of its release. Months later I claim to have fully processed the album, but I still find myself “oohing” and “ahhing,” jaw dropped just as it was when I listened to the album for the first time.
While many lyrics, concepts, and aspects of each song on TTPD leave my mouth agape, a specific idea sprinkled within around half of the songs on the album (The Anthology edition) particularly transfixes me.
Religion.
Through metaphors, analogies, and poetic lyricism in TTPD, Swift explores the notion of losing the religion she once knew and criticizing those that use it against her. She equates the highs and lows, one relationship to another, and everything that lingers in between, to heaven and hell. Based on direct quotes from Swift in her documentary “Miss Americana,” we can assume the religion in question is Christianity.
Swift’s lyrics merit no offense to Christianity as she delicately tells the story of her own personal feelings and experiences, which is what art is all about. Rather than speculating about what Swift believes in, her art is meant to be analyzed and hypnotized by.
Swift is no novice when it comes to finding similarities between romance and reincarnation and sex and salvation. For example, “False God” from the Lover era illustrates Swift’s version of a love that became her Bible, her church, her own religion. But, Swift’s scripture within TTPD takes that love, and the loss of it, to the next level.
To begin, track 6 “But Daddy I Love Him,” carries a significant amount of religious references and hidden meanings. “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best…Clutching their pearls, sighing ‘What a mess,’” wittingly targets church-going, gossiping women. Later in the song she plays with this idea: “Soon enough the elders had convened…Down at the city hall…‘Stay away from her.’” The main message behind the song is Swift making her own choices about who she loves despite what the majority may believe, including her father. Swift goes on to directly reference God and praying with an assumedly sarcastic tone: “God save the most judgmental creeps…Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I'll never see…You ain't gotta pray for me.” Swift takes the cynicism and criticism surrounding her relationships she’s always been told to swallow and spits it back out.
Swift is a master at providing the listener with mental photographs. Her imagery paints. The lyricism within “But Daddy I Love Him” is no different. One lyric in particular encompasses this: “Now I'm running with my dress unbuttoned.” This lyric changes later in the song to, “Now I'm dancing in my dress in the sun.” Keeping in mind the speculation that this song is about two different relationships, the first lyric represents a defiant relationship, buttons undone and breaking the “rules” that tend to be placed on women within a religious dialogue. The alternate lyric represents a relationship centered in sunshine-like joy, not based on defiance. Swift tells a story of losing her religion in one relationship and believing in it in another.
Similar to “But Daddy I Love Him,” track 11 “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” and track 27 “Cassandra” echo the same theme of reprimanding those who shout from the rooftops their qualms and concerns with Swift, or think nothing of her altogether. Lyrics of “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” such as, “They shake their heads saying, ‘God, help her’...When I tell them he's my man…But your good Lord doesn't need to lift a finger…Come close, I'll show you heaven…If you'll be an angel, all mine,” reverberate the irritation and refusal she emits towards opinions of those who swear they know what’s best for her. Through her poetry, Swift shows concern for her self-made heaven, not the one we all hope to get to.
In “Cassandra” lyrics like, “The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line…They all said nothing…Blood's thick but nothing like a payroll…Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul,” similarly condemn an outside group like in “But Daddy I Love Him” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” but quite oppositely, for their lack of concern rather than the overwhelming, unnecessary abundance of it. Again, the religious syntax Swift uses draws specific attention to the angst she feels when someone uses Christianity in an attempt to claim the title of a sanctimonious saint when in reality, they couldn’t be closer to a sinner.
Track 9 “Guilty as Sin?” is the only track inherently referencing religion through the title. The message behind the song is Swift fantasizing about leaving a current relationship and fulfilling a hidden infatuation with another man. One of the last verses is as follows: “What if I roll the stone away? They're gonna crucify me anyway…What if the way you hold me…Is actually what's holy? If long suffering propriety…Is what they want from me…They don't know how you've haunted me…So stunningly…I choose you and me...Religiously.” After this verse, the song halts. Some may be listening to the song and think, “I think it’s over.”
So did Swift.
The pause before the song continues, louder and prouder some may say, represents Swift thinking her fantasy was over, or she had at least suppressed it enough. As the song continues after, the intense production and voice Swift uses unique to the rest of the song represents the resurrection, the “stone rolling away,” Swift was just singing about. Notably, the three-second pause could indicate a nod to the alleged three days Jesus spent in his tomb, rising on the third day. The obsession, the love, the guilt came back from what she thought was the dead.
Cursed like Eve got bitten.
Photo by Beth Garrabrant
Track 12 “loml,” track 16 “Clara Bow,” and track 19 “The Albatross” persist with religious references, particularly about the Holy Ghost, heaven, hell, devils, and angels. Lyrics in “loml” such as, “Holy Ghost, you told me I'm…The love of your life…When your impressionist paintings of heaven…Turned out to be fakes…Well, you took me to hell, too,” sum up why we may be getting religious references within TTPD in the first place. Swift’s life was perfect, heavenly, but she was living in the heaven of another. So, when their heaven became more hellish, Swift went down with them. In turn, her view of love, loss, heaven, hell, and Christianity shifted. In “Clara Bow,” lyrics like, “‘You're the new god we're worshiping…Promise to be... dazzling’...It's hell on earth to be heavenly,” show us a glimpse into Swift’s hell as a heavenly superstar. Again, Swift poetically articulates her confusion: what’s the difference between the heaven and hell she lives in, versus the one she’s been told to believe in? “The Albatross” delves into different facets of heaven and hell — devils and angels — through lyrics such as, “Devils that you know…Raise worse hell than a stranger…The devil that you know…Looks now more like an angel.” Swift’s art shows us she’s had too many physical instances with devils and angels, she has no room to believe in the ones we can’t see.
Track 24 “thanK you aIMee” further examines Swift’s loss of faith. With lyrics like, “Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman…But she used to say she wished that you were dead,” listeners can understand that amidst the lies and scandal Swift succumbed to, her mom took on the pain and anger as if it was her own. Swift watched her mother’s words and actions shape-shift, further distancing her from the religion she grew up believing in.
Three songs specifically dance around the concept of gods and goddesses, worshiping them and becoming them. Track 5 “So Long, London” embellishes the idea of waiting. Waiting for proof of love being alive. Waiting for the spirit of a relationship to come to. Waiting for your lover to worship you, rather than watch you fade away. The lyrics that emulate this are as follows: “The spirit was gone, we would never come to…I died on the altar waiting for the proof…You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days.” In track 28, “Peter,” Swift sings a similar message, “The goddess of timing…Once found us beguiling...She said she was trying…Peter was she lying?” Again, Swift narrates the sensation of losing hope and losing faith in something beyond the physical world. Oppositely, in track 20 “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” Swift sings, “I changed into goddesses, villains and fools…Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules.” After being deemed sacrificial, Swift metamorphosed. Watching a lover have something in faith other than her, she became something to believe in — a goddess.
Lastly, and possibly most painfully, Swift’s songs “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” (track 14) and “The Prophecy” (track 26) elaborate further on Swift’s distance with religion due to being awfully too close to it. Too close it became punishment. In “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” Swift sings, “Gazing at me starry-eyed…In your Jehovah's Witness suit…Who the f*** was that guy?...I would've died for your sins…Instead, I just died inside.” Swift fell in love with who she thought was an innocent, only to find out he was closer to deserving prison time. Her heart got so close to being intertwined with his, hers would’ve stopped beating if his did. His sins were hers to confess.
In “The Prophecy,” Swift sings, “I got cursed like Eve got bitten…Oh, was it punishment?” As we’ve moved through the album, “The Prophecy” is one of the last tracks, perceptively summing up the album and the love, loss, desperation, angst, closure, or lack thereof, that Swift sings about. Looking at the trials her tortured poetry recounts, we can safely assume Swift has had her fair share of heartbreak. “The Prophecy” pleads for the opposite, a lasting love. Her lack of a love that lasts feels like a punishment, a snakebite-like consequence, as if God’s being defiant towards her.
The goddess, the villain, the fool.
Photo by Beth Garrabrant
Taylor Swift knows how to take her listeners on a trip. In The Tortured Poets Department, she takes us through her personal heaven and hell, introduces us to the angels and devils she’s come face-to-face with, and leaves us wondering…
Did she find her religion, or create her own?
