Taylor Swift's bread and butter is leaving sneaky little clues in her song lyrics and music videos, so it's hard to know what to make of something she's seemingly parading right in front of our faces. I'm talking, of course, about the engagement rumours that have kicked off ever since the singer teased a few lines from her most recent single, "Lover," in her Vogue profile.
“My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue,” she sings. “All’s well that ends well to end up with you.”
When "Lover" dropped that next week, we heard the vows in full:
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"Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? / With every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover / My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue / All's well that ends well to end up with you / Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover."
You can't blame fans for thinking that this song, which is undeniably about longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn, could be a reveal that not only are Alwyn and Swift getting married, but they may already have. There was even speculation (albeit, by myself) that the lyric video for "Lover" contained secret footage of said wedding. So far, Swift has been silent. But now, the full Lover album has landed, and Swift has peppered it with more lyrics about proposals, weddings, and marriage that we might as well all have front row seats to the ceremony.
Aside from "Lover," the most overt marriage imagery appears in the haunting "It's Nice To Have A Friend," when Swift sings, "Church bells ring, carry me home / rice on the ground looks like snow." The lyric references the tradition of tossing rice as a just-married couple leaves their ceremony at a church.
But these clues aren't exclusively shrouded in metaphor. Swift straight-up states her intentions in "Paper Heart" when she sings, "I like shiny things but I'd marry you with paper rings / that's right darling you're the one I want."
Swift and Alywn remaining notoriously private about their relationship means we have no other source to rely on when it comes to the state of their union, so Lover is our first look into how their years together have been. Regardless of whether or not they've sealed the deal with a wedding, the lyrics on Lover do make on thing clear: Taylor Swift is in L-O-V-E. No need for secrets or clues when it comes to that.