Rearview mirror
The rearview mirror is the image of looking back while still moving forward, the small framed view of what the speaker has left, shrinking as the journey goes on. It holds departure and retrospect together: a town gets smaller in the mirror as she drives out of the relationship's setting mid-song, and the same mirror frames hindsight, the angle at which a past self looks better, or simply clearer, from a distance. It is narrower than the car as a whole (where the question is who holds the wheel), narrower than the road (the path itself), and distinct from the getaway car (the vehicle of doomed escape): the rearview is specifically the framed, partial view of the receding past while motion continues.
The force of the rearview is in the angle it imposes. The speaker cannot fully turn around without leaving the road, so what is behind her arrives small, framed, and at a distance. The image lets a song hold both moving on and looking back without having to choose between them. Where the windscreen looks ahead and the road runs beneath, the rearview is the mirror of consequence and afterthought, the place where what has been left becomes visible only as it shrinks. The two readings are continuous: literal departure and reflective hindsight both turn on the speaker knowing she is the one moving, and that the past will look smaller, and more shapely, as the distance grows.
Appears in 2 songs
“That was a small town there in my rearview mirror disappearing now”
The rearview frames the speaker's exit from the relationship's setting, the small town receding while she drives away mid-narrative. The image lets the song hold the act of leaving as already retrospective: even as she is still moving away, the town is shrinking, and the past is becoming a thing she watches shape itself into the past. The rearview here is the angle at which the speaker's decision becomes visible to her at the same moment she is enacting it.
“And the white horse is gettin' in my rear-view mirror”
The white horse, the fairy-tale rescue she had been waiting for, recedes in the mirror as she drives away; the prince-charming ideal is now behind her, getting smaller, as she leaves the relationship's setting.
“Actually, I always felt I must look better in the rear view”
The rearview becomes the angle of hindsight: the speaker reframes her past self as better-looking-from-here. The image carries the song's overall stance that the previous chapter is more shapely with retrospect; the rearview is the figure for that retrospect, the partial framed view in which what has receded appears more flattering than it did head-on. The line is conversational ("Actually, I always felt"), which lets the figure land as casual self-observation rather than declared metaphor.