Breaking Down Taylor Swift’s Lyric Parallels in ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Song ‘So Long, London’
Taylor Swift might be ready to say goodbye to England in “So Long, London,” but she’s not leaving behind her past discography.
“So Long, London,” heavily speculated to be about Swift’s breakup with Joe Alwyn, is the fifth track on her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, which dropped on Friday, April 19. In the lyrics, Swift, 34, featured poetic parallels to several of her past songs.
“I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath,” she sings, presumably referring to London’s Hampstead Heath park. “I stoppеd CPR, after all, it's no use / The spirit was gonе, we would never come to.”
Swift, who previously lived in London with the 33-year-old actor and detailed it on “London Boy,” mentioned similar themes in 2022’s “You’re Losing Me.”
A Complete Guide to Taylor Swift’s Literary References: From Debut to ‘Tortured Poets Department’
“Remember lookin' at this room, we loved it 'cause of the light / Now, I just sit in the dark and wonder if it's time,” Swift previously included on the Midnights bonus track. “I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore / For you cause you’re losing me.”
In another “So Long, London,” verse, Swift sings, "And I'm just getting color back into my face / I'm just mad as hell 'cause I loved this place for.” The line, again, calls back to “You’re Losing Me,” when Swift said her “face was gray” when her love “wouldn’t admit that [they] were sick.”
Additionally, Swift’s “So Long, London” chorus features a reference to another Midnights song, “Glitch,” when she sings, “Stitches undone.”
In the 2022 track, the Grammy winner had said, “Five seconds later, I’m fastening myself with a stitch,” seemingly to mean she was holding herself together as the relationship was falling apart.
The parallels don’t stop at Midnights. Swift also referenced Lover, her 2019 album heavily inspired by her London life with Alwyn. As she sang “fairy lights through the mist,” it seems reminiscent of “We could leave the Christmas lights up ’til January” on “Lover.” (Once thought to be one of her most romantic songs, she surprised Us earlier this month when “Lover” popped up on her denial-inspired Apple Music playlist about relationship delusions.)
In the new track, she also mentions pulling her then-partner in closer as “he was driftin’ away.” She used that same phrase in her 2009 duet with Boys Like Girls, “Two Is Better Than One.” Swift also uses the term “love affair” in “So Long, London,” which makes Us think of “Did the love affair maim you too?” from “All Too Well.”
While Swift has not confirmed her TTPD muses — ex Matty Healy and current boyfriend Travis Kelce also seemingly inspired tracks — she has noted that she has moved on from the lyrical drama.
“This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up,” Swift wrote in a Friday Instagram note. “There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed.”
The Tortured Poets Department is out now.
