Heaven
Taylor reaches for heaven, grace and angels whenever she wants to point at something that's meant to be perfect, then show that it isn't. The promised paradise keeps turning out to be fake or impossible. In loml the "impressionist paintings of heaven" turn out to be forgeries, the whole relationship sold as a vision that was never real. In Would've, Could've, Should've she admits "the pain was heaven", mistaking real suffering for bliss because she was too young to tell them apart. Blank Space drops "heaven, sin" into a list of sales-pitch words, heaven offered cheaply. In my tears ricochet, grace is the dignified exit she couldn't manage; in The Albatross, the person everyone called a devil turns out to be the angel. The thread is heaven as the good thing promised and then withdrawn. It's the opposite number to Hell, which carries the suffering; heaven holds the ideal that the suffering gets measured against.
Heaven usually shows up so it can be taken away. When Taylor invokes it she is most often about to reveal that the paradise was counterfeit, the pleasure was really pain, or the grace was something she fell short of. Set next to hell, the two turn an ordinary relationship into something closer to salvation and damnation, which is how heartbreak often feels from the inside even when the events themselves are small.
Appears in 14 songs
“This is a state of grace”
Grace is used in its theological sense, the state of living under divine favour and forgiveness. The speaker applies this transcendent religious concept to the experience of love, elevating the emotion above the mundane.
“You're the new god we're worshipping”
Celebrity becomes a secular religion: the famous woman is elevated to godhood, which is simultaneously an honour and a dehumanization. The worship strips her of humanity by demanding perfection.
“When your impressionist paintings of heaven turned out to be fakes”
Heaven represents the idealised vision of the relationship that proved false, 'impressionist paintings of heaven' are blurred personal impressions of something that might have been transcendent but was ultimately counterfeit.
“And the God's honest truth is that the pain was heaven”
Heaven is used paradoxically, the pain of the abusive relationship felt like heaven to the 19-year-old speaker, conflating suffering with divine pleasure and acknowledging that at the time she enjoyed the attention.
“The devil that you know Looks now more like an angel”
The angel simile marks the song's transformation, the speaker who was cast as a devil/albatross/temptress is now revealed as angelic, a heavenly rescuer rather than a hellish destroyer. Uncle Jerry identifies 'like an angel' as a simile, noting the shift from metaphor to simile in the final chorus.
“Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven”
Past heartbreaks are recast as the hard road to a heaven of present happiness, the pay-off at the end of the suffering.
“The price I paid for seven years in heaven”
The good years of the marriage are counted as seven years in heaven, paradise now reckoned as something paid for in the loss that followed.
“I didn't have it in myself to go with grace”
Heaven/grace is invoked as the standard of dignified exit the speaker cannot meet, structurally positioned against the hell imagery to create a heaven/hell binary governing the song.
“No rules in breakable heaven”
Summer love is pictured as a heaven with no rules, blissful but fragile and ready to break.
“I know heaven's a thing, I go there when you touch me”
Heaven becomes a place the lover's touch can reach, bliss located in the body rather than the sky.
“Long drive, could end in burning flames or paradise”
The drive's two possible ends are named as paradise or its opposite, heaven held out as the reward if the gamble goes right.
“I thought heaven can't help me now”
Even heaven is given up as no use, the speaker sure the love is doomed however much she wants it.
“Magic, madness, heaven, sin”
Heaven paired with sin as part of a tumble of selling words, the carnival barker's promise of both divine pleasure and transgression, delivered without depth or commitment to either register.
“Come on, come on, little taste of heaven”
Heaven shrinks to a little taste, the brush of bliss the speaker reaches for in a longed-for closeness.