The Best Day
Mash-ups & Live Pairings
- Never Grow Up / The Best Day (Eras Tour, Vancouver)
Hidden message
God bless Andrea Swift
Encoded in the album’s liner notes.
“Don't know if Snow White's house is near or far away”
Snow White's house folds a child's world into a fairytale, the white of the name tying it to innocence and safety. The reference keeps the memory soft and storybook, seen through a young girl's eyes.
“Past the pumpkin patch and the tractor rides, look now, the sky is gold”
The gold sky lights a childhood autumn day, the warm colour holding a memory of feeling safe and looked after.
“God smiles on my little brother”
A benediction in miniature, the smile borrowed for divine approval over the family.
“And we drive and drive until we found a town far enough away”
The long aimless drive with her mother as the image of safety; the driving without a destination is the point, the car the place she is looked after.
pirates-and-childhood
“It's the age of princesses and pirate ships and the seven dwarfs”
“And we can be pirates Then you won't have to cry” — seven
A community reader relays the observation, credited to Rob Sheffield, that pirates appear in only one other song in the catalogue, and reads the earlier song's secure childhood as the thing being borrowed. The connection is stronger than the reading claims: the line it points to carries pirates and seven in the same breath. Set against it, the rescue offered in seven is not invented from nothing but assembled from the furniture of a happy childhood and handed to a child who does not have one - which is the difference between the two songs stated in a single shared noun.