Smile
The smile is the honest face, the one a person can't help, as opposed to the one she puts on. It's the flip side of the Mask: where the mask hides what someone feels, the smile lets it show. Most often it belongs to the person the speaker loves, and it's the thing that explains the attraction, a smile big enough to light up a whole town in You Belong With Me, one that lifts an ordinary day into a fairytale in Today Was a Fairytale, the smile that sets off the whole song in Sparks Fly. Once the love is gone, that same smile becomes something she grieves, coming back like a ghost in This Love or surfacing on strangers' faces in Is It Over Now? And sometimes the warmth goes wrong: the smile that slips into a smirk in happiness, the teasing Cheshire cat grin in Wonderland, or the moment in mad woman where you can't tell whether the smile is a smile or a curse.
At heart the smile is the face that tells the truth. What matters most is usually what it does to the speaker: a smile that pulls her in, keeps her hooked, or melts her on the spot, as in You All Over Me and Superman. Remembered, it turns into a keepsake of a love she's lost, the small detail she can't let go of in Back to December and 'tis the damn season. It has a darker side too, the real smile that turns sharp, or gets twisted by other people into a smirk, a snarl, or the glossy smiles of people enjoying her downfall, giving away threat as plainly as it once gave away warmth. It's the natural opposite of the Mask, the face that shows what the mask hides, and a few songs manage both at once, like the sequined smile in cardigan, equal parts real pull and put-on glamour.
Appears in 36 songs
“wearing that same smile”
The smile functions as proof that the person has not fundamentally changed despite the passage of time, it is the marker of enduring identity that confirms the moment of recognition.
“Does she smile, or does she mouth, “Fuck you forever”?”
The line hangs on whether the face offers a smile or a curse, the true expression weaponised into refusal.
“Tell me, when did your winning smile begin to look like a smirk?”
The winning smile sours into a smirk, the same expression curdling as the marriage turns.
“Your smile, my ghost, I fell to my knees”
The beloved's smile returns as a ghost, the remembered face that brings the speaker to her knees and runs through the song's haunting.
“the only soul who can tell which smiles I'm fakin'”
The faked smiles name the mask, and Uncle Jerry hears the word smile returning from the earlier line, the two set as a deliberate pair. Only the old lover can read which are real.
“Now I'm missing your smile, hear me out”
Away from home, the remembered smile becomes the ache she keeps returning to.
“Your smile (Mm, mm) Miles wide”
The wide smile is fixed in memory as the warmth she failed to act on in time.
“Watched me daily disappearing for just one glimpse of his smile”
A single glimpse of his smile is enough to draw her back, the warmth she keeps returning toward.
“I was in my tower weaving nightmares, twisting all my smiles into snarls”
Her smiles are twisted into snarls, the true face deformed into the monstrous shape others assign her.
“I had to smile when it caught my eye”
An involuntary smile marks the moment the old keepsake catches her, feeling surfacing ahead of thought.
“I see your profile and your smile on unsuspecting waiters”
His smile is projected onto strangers' faces, the remembered warmth refusing to stay buried.
“My smile is like I won a contest and to hide that would be so dishonest”
Her own smile is defended as honest, too large to mask, a joy she refuses to hide.
“You would break your back to make me break a smile”
The lover's labour is measured by the effort it takes to win one genuine smile.
“Yeah, all you did was smile 'cause I'm a mastermind”
His effortless smile is set against her elaborate scheming, warmth that needed no strategy.
“But I did, so I smiled, and I melted like a child”
Her own smile gives her away, dissolving composure into childlike surrender.
“But don't you, don't you smile at me and ask me how I've been”
She pleads against the disarming smile, knowing his easy warmth will undo her resolve.
“Sequin smile, black lipstick Sensual politics”
The sequined smile glints as performed allure, a sophisticated surface offered to be seen.
“Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh”
The smile is named lyrical, set among the sensory details that make him irresistible.
“He likes my American smile like a child when our eyes meet”
Her own smile becomes a charm in the exchange, met with childlike delight.
“Didn't you calm my fears with a Cheshire cat smile?”
Borrowed from Carroll, the Cheshire grin lends the lover a smile that lingers as enticement and warning at once.
“all I've seen since eighteen hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile”
The smile joins the inventory of first-glimpse details, love recorded as a list of what the face shows.
“Should've burst through the door with that “baby, I'm right here” smiles”
The rescue she imagined is pictured as a smile, the warmth that never arrived at the door.
“You've got a smile that takes me to another planet”
His smile is granted transporting power, lifting an ordinary day into fairytale register.
“'Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile”
The smile is the spark's source, ignition for the whole song's charged attraction.
“I miss your tanned skin, your sweet smiles”
Among the remembered details of the lost love, the sweet smiles return as what regret keeps.
“he just might make me smile”
A new figure's power to raise a smile is weighed against the haunting of the old love.
“Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles”
The onlookers' glossed smiles curdle the image, warmth turned to the polished menace of critics.
“And you smile and say, “How are you?”
His casual smile and easy greeting are enough to hold her devotion suspended.
“Every time you smile, I smile”
The smile passes back and forth between the lovers and becomes the measure of comfort restored.
“You smile that beautiful smile and all the girls in the front row scream your name”
The performer's smile triggers collective adoration, desire aimed at a figure on a distant stage.
“And you've got a smile that could light up this whole town”
His smile is given civic scale, bright enough to carry a whole town, the clearest token of why she wants him.
“God smiles on my little brother”
A benediction in miniature, the smile borrowed for divine approval over the family.
“Every smile you fake is so condescending”
The faked smile names the mask directly. Where the mask hides the face, the smile is the performance stretched across it, and here it reads as condescension, the pretence the speaker sees straight through.
“He smiles, it's like the radio”
The boy's smile is set beside the warmth of a song on the radio, an early instance of the beloved's smile as the thing that pulls the speaker in.
“The smiles, the flowers, everything is gone”
The smiles are counted among the vanished tokens of the relationship, the warmth now tallied as loss.
“And our mamas smiled and rolled their eyes”
A shared parental smile marks the indulgent approval watching over the two children's early closeness.
“the way your eyes light up when you smile”
The speaker reads the lit-up smile as the visible sign of feeling, one directed at someone other than her.