Traffic light
The traffic light and the red light: 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, and the traffic lights are asked outright if it will be all right and told only "I don't know".
A signal exists to make the decision for you. 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 things stand, 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 3 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.
“I'm walking fast through the traffic lights, busy streets and busy lives”
The traffic lights function as decision points in the speaker's relationship with love: when to stop, when to go, when to be cautious. Uncle Jerry reads them as metaphorical intersections for the life of love itself.
“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.