Hands
The hand as a recurring image in Taylor's writing of intimate connection, declarative touch, and the body's unwilled betrayal of what the speaker is trying not to show. Across the catalogue the hand operates as the body's most articulate non-verbal site: the part that says or signals what the voice cannot, and that registers nerves, anxiety, or grief in a tremor the speaker cannot suppress. The image's force often lies in the verb attached to it (squeezing, holding, taking, caressing, shaking, releasing) and in who is acting on whose hand. Catalogue registers include: clasping and held hands (the sustained connection rendered through hand-in-hand - Cornelia Street, Ronan, epiphany, Timeless, champagne problems' 'hold your hand while dancing'); the squeeze (the three-squeeze 'I love you' at New Year's Day's centre, the song's seed register); taking or grabbing (the verb of invitation that opens journeys, dances, or flights - Fearless, willow, Blank Space, I Know Places); hands on the body or in the hair (the marked moment of contact - Wildest Dreams, I Think He Knows, Gorgeous); shaking hands (the body betraying composure with nerves or formal-occasion fear - Speak Now, Long Live, Dress, Fearless); and releasing or dropping (the action whose meaning is the loss - champagne problems' dropped hand, This Love's hand-let-go). Sits alongside Possessive body in the catalogue's body-as-self register, with the hand the catalogue's most expressive single body part. Idiomatic-hand registers (upper hand, hands of fate, slipping through hands) belong to figurative-language device work (Metaphor / Twisted cliché) rather than to this motif; cards-in-hand belongs to Cards; handcuffs belong with the Confinement register.
Hands carry the doubled charge of connection and exposure: the body's most fluent non-verbal speech, and the body's most candid betrayal of what the speaker is trying not to show. In the catalogue the hand is consistently the site where connection is enacted (the held, taken, or squeezed hand makes a relationship physically real in a moment) and where the body refuses to lie (the shaking hand, the dropped hand, the hand that has to be let go). The image's force often lies in the verb attached and in who acts on whose hand: who reaches first, who holds longer, who is the one to let go. Across the catalogue the hand most often marks the moments when speech is impossible or insufficient: the gesture that says what the voice cannot, or the tremor that gives away what the words have suppressed.
Appears in 45 songs
“My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand Taking mine, but it's been promised to another”
The hand-taking figures the impossible union, figuratively stretching out to hold the other's hand across the boundary between life and death, or across the prohibition of marriage to another. Uncle Jerry reads the widow as 'figuratively stretching out her hand to hold the others in hers, but it's been promised to another.'
“You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi”
The three hand squeezes are the song's central instance of the hand-as-declaration register, non-verbal signalling that bypasses public expression. The gesture structurally mirrors the refrain's threefold repetition with its pivoting fourth line, binding the song's memory and love themes together through the hand image.
“But you're just so cool, run your hands through your hair”
“You take my hand and drag me head first, fearless”
“My hands shake, I'm not usually this way”
“Hand on the throttle, thought I caught lightning in a bottle, oh, but it's gone again”
“Slow is the quicksand, poison blood from the wound of the pricked hand, oh, still I dream of him”
“Because I dropped your hand while dancing”
“And hold your hand while dancing”
“I think he knows his hands around a cold glass make me want to know that body like it's mine”
“Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh, we could follow the sparks, I'll drive”
“I could've spent forever with your hands in my pockets”
“But we were dancing, dancing with our hands tied”
“You stand with your hand on my waistline”
“Just grab my hand and don't ever drop it”
“Because I love your handshake meeting me father”
“I love how you walk with your hands in your pocket”
“Fingers crossed until you put your hand on mine”
“Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibe”
“We'll take you by the hand and soon you'll learn the art of never getting caught”
“His hand so calloused from his pistol softly traces hearts on my face”
“Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”
“Holding hands on the way to a dance and the date on the back said 1958”
“Now I'm sliding down the wall with my head in my hands”
“Love to think you'll never forget handprints in wet cement”
“And the touch of a hand lit the fuse of a chain reaction of countermove”
“My hand was the one you reached for all throughout the Great War”
“Sobbing with your head in your hands, ain't that the way shit always ends”
“With your hands in your pockets and your "don't you wish you had me" grin”
“You took me by the hand and you picked me up at six”
“I can still feel you hold my hand, little man”
“Watched as you signed your name Marjorie”
The act of signing one's name as a deeply personal gesture, the handwriting itself as a physical trace of the person, a scrap of them that the speaker wishes she had preserved.
“Hand under my sweatshirt, baby, kiss it better”
“I'm begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, that's my man”
“Hold your hand through plastic now”
“Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand”
“Something gave you the nerve to touch my hand”
“With every guitar string scar on my hand”
“You hold my hand on the street, walk me back to that apartment”
“Long night with your hands up in my hair”
“You should think about the consequence of you touching my hand in a darkened room”
“My hands are shaking from holding back from you”
“And I can't let you go, your handprints on my soul”
“But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hands”
“His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room”
“Grab your passport and my hand”
The grabbed hand as an invitation to join the ride, the speaker's imperative 'grab' conveying urgency and flippancy rather than tenderness.
“These hands had to let it go free and this love came back to me”
“Please take my hand and please take me dancing”
“I'll do anything you say if you say it with your hands”
“I stand up with shaky hands, all eyes on me”
“The time we stood with our shaking hands”
“Your hands are tough but they are where mine belong”
“He's got a one-hand feel on the steering wheel, the other on my heart”