Song
The Outside
Taylor Swift · 2006 · Track 6
Sole author
Written byTaylor Swift
Produced byNathan Chapman
Also known as: TO
Road
Incidental
Cars & Travel
“I tried to take the road less traveled by”
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Frost's road, revisited
“I tried to take the road less traveled by / But nothing seems to work the first few times, am I right?”
“And the road not taken looks real good now” — tis the damn season
Community readers trace Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" across the catalogue: the debut's "I tried to take the road less traveled by" takes the popular, upbeat reading of the poem, while 'tis the damn season returns to the same source years later in a register far closer to Frost's actual ambivalence. The pairing shows an early, surface-level allusion maturing into a more faithful one as the writer revisits the literature she once borrowed.
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