Jewels
Jewellery and precious adornment as recurring image - given, worn, lost, or retained as a marker of value, commitment, or possession. Across Taylor's writing jewels carry charge in multiple registers: as gifts that outlast the relationship that prompted them, as armour or self-fashioning, and as evidence of what the speaker has built or given.
Jewels stand in for what is worn in public as evidence of something private - a relationship, a promise, an identity. The image's force often comes from who keeps the jewels and who is left without them: their continued wearing by an antagonist after the relationship ends signals that the speaker's gift is now serving a story she is no longer part of.
Appears in 17 songs
“But now, the sky is opalite”
The manufactured gemstone as symbol of the speaker's active creation of her own happiness and lasting love, beauty that must be made rather than found, embedding human agency and creativity
“We gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring”
“You wear the same jewels that I gave you / As you bury me”
The jewels are the speaker's creative work, the masters she gave to the label, which the antagonist continues to wear (profit from) even as he buries her.
“You wear the same jewels that I gave you / As you bury me”
The jewels as the diamond, platinum and gold sales certifications the speaker earned for the antagonist, industry-awarded markers of value she made for the label and which the label continues to wear while burying her originals.
“You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine”
The crown element in the triple list invokes the royal-destiny register: in the play, Ophelia would have worn a crown as Hamlet's queen, but the marriage never comes to fruition because she dies. The crown becomes the queenship she never reaches. In the song's present-tense, the partner 'wraps around' the speaker like a crown, the destiny-marker arriving where it was withheld from Ophelia.
“The crown is stained, but you're the real queen”
The crown represents the status and position of fame — stained by the costs and compromises required to wear it. The stain evokes blood (given the 'flesh and blood' line that follows), suggesting the crown's acquisition has required sacrifice or violence.
“The rubies that I gave up”
The rubies represent something precious that the speaker sacrificed for the relationship, red precious stones given up in exchange for cheap substitutes (vinyl, cheap wine, carnations, rust).
“Your mom's ring in your pocket”
The mother's ring represents both personal devotion and inherited familial expectation, the weight of generations pressing toward a marriage that won't happen.
“Your opal eyes are all I wish to see”
Opal eyes represent fragmented, fiery beauty, the lover's gaze is iridescent and precious but also fractured. Uncle Jerry connects opal to the earlier 'incandescent glow' image, noting both share a quality of imperfect, fractured light. He explains the mineralogy of opal (hydrated silicon stacks giving it a fragmented glow) and its symbolism as 'a symbol of hope and purity and truth' that also 'imbues the ability to prophesy.'
“He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring, and said”
The ring as the traditional symbol of marriage proposal, the culmination of the fairy-tale narrative. The ring represents the male figure's commitment and the resolution of the forbidden love story into sanctioned union.
“Best believe I'm still bejeweled, when I walk in the room I can still make the whole place shimmer”
“Diamonds in my eyes, I polish up real, I polish up real nice”
“What's a girl gonna do, a diamond's gotta shine”
“Pulled up to you in the Jag', turned your rags into gold”
Gold represents the transformation from poverty to wealth, the mentor's power to elevate the mentee from nothing to riches, a twist on the rags-to-riches cliché.
“Untouchable like a distant diamond sky”
“Another name goes up in lights like diamonds in the sky”
“A never-needy, ever-lovely jewel whose shine reflects on you”
The speaker reduced to an ornament, a jewel whose value lies only in how it reflects on the partner. Uncle Jerry reads this as the partner's reductive view of the speaker: 'A jewel is an ornament. Is that all she is to him? Just an ornament.'
“That ain't my merlot on his mouth, that ain't my jewelry on our joint account”
“And losing on card game bets with Dalí”
The Dalí-designed starfish brooch with detachable butterflies represents the intersection of extravagant wealth and artistic patronage that both Rebekah and Taylor embody, 'charming if a little gauche' made material.
“Another name goes up in lights like diamonds in the sky”
“Untouchable like a distant diamond sky”