Traffic light
The traffic light, the red light, the streetlight: the roadside signals that tell a driver when to stop and when to go. In Taylor's writing they turn up at the moments when a relationship's direction is uncertain. The red light gets almost run because the driver is looking at her instead of the road, the speaker walks fast through the lights on busy streets and busy lives, a stop at a streetlight is where missing someone finally catches up, and the traffic lights are asked outright if it will be all right.
A signal exists to make the decision for you, and that is the charge the image carries. The speaker hands the question of stop, slow down or go to something outside the relationship, because nobody inside it seems able to answer. The colours map naturally onto where a relationship stands, and the light's answer is never reassuring; the most it offers is "I don't know". When the light forces a stop, the pause does its own work too: held still for a moment, the speaker feels exactly what the busy street had been letting her outrun.
Appears in 6 songs
“I ask the traffic lights if it'll be all right / They say, "I don't know”
The traffic light is an image of ambiguity and desperation, the speaker is so desperate for answers about her situation that she asks inanimate objects. The red/yellow/green of the traffic light maps onto the possible states of the relationship: stop, proceed with caution, go. The answer 'I don't know' refuses to resolve the ambiguity.
“You almost ran the red 'cause you were lookin' over at me”
The red light as a possible allusion to the album title Red, and red as both the colour of love and the colour of blood. Uncle Jerry reads the near-miss as a sign of infatuation but questions whether it's love, connecting to the partner's refusal to name the relationship.
“I'm walking fast through the traffic lights, busy streets and busy lives”
“Drunk under a streetlight”
“Stopped at a streetlight You know I miss you”
The streetlight appears in the outro as a moment of pause in the scene, stopped at a streetlight while kissing in the car. Angela & Uncle Jerry do not deeply analyze this image but it sits within the outro's tableau of reconciliation imagery.
“I'm walking fast through the traffic lights, busy streets and busy lives”