Hometown
Appears in 4 songs
“When I picture our hometown”
The most striking use of the motif — Taylor and Kim are not from the same hometown so the word cannot be literal. Miss_Lippy flags this explicitly in the thread. The shared hometown is the world of fame and public scrutiny they both inhabit: a psychological and professional territory rather than a geographical one. Hometown here means the defining context that shaped them both.
“My town was a wasteland”
The harshest version of the motif — the hometown as a place of desolation already left behind. The wasteland framing positions the hometown as the antithesis of the speaker's destination: a place of emptiness rather than roots. Connects to the song's broader contrast between the life she chose (the rain, the chaos, the art) and the life she left.
“I didn't choose this town I dream of getting out”
The hometown as a place of constraint and limited horizons — something to escape from rather than return to. The speaker frames the town as an unchosen starting condition rather than a source of identity or belonging. Sets up the rest of the song's arc: the solitary journey away from where you were placed toward where you choose to be.
“The road not taken looks real good now and it always leads to you in my hometown”
The hometown is the road not taken — a return to a past relationship framed as coming home. The speaker drives back to a place that represents an unlived alternative life. Miss_Lippy's reading is precisely illustrated here: hometown is not a literal location but a specific time period and emotional territory — the version of her life she did not choose.