the 1
Mash-ups & Live Pairings
- the 1 / Wonderland (Eras Tour, Milan)
Notable lyric
“I'm doing good, I'm on some new shitYou know the greatest films of all time were never madeRoaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool…”
Uncle Jerry calls the 1 'a poem about the emotional power of an unlived life' and identifies contrafactuality as its most important literary device. The song is structured as a what-if poem in which the speaker never confuses nostalgia with a desire for reunion, acknowledging the current life is good while still wondering about another. The title is deliberately ambiguous, referring to both the track number, the idea of 'the one' as a romantic partner, and the question of whether 'the one' is the speaker or the addressee.
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify contrafactuality as the most important literary device and thematic engine of the song. The speaker imagines an alternative timeline in which the relationship succeeded, wondering what one small change might have altered. Uncle Jerry calls the bridge 'the poster child for counterfactual thinking' and frames the entire song as a what-if poem. The mood is wistful rather than bitter: the speaker holds the lost future tenderly, acknowledging it would have been fun without claiming it would have been perfect.
The defining counterfactual song in Taylor's catalogue, the entire structure is built on 'if only'. The speaker explicitly imagines the alternate timeline where the relationship succeeded: 'If my wishes came true / it would've been you.' The mood is retrospective and wistful rather than bitter; the 'what might have been' is held tenderly rather than with resentment.
“It would've been fun If you would've been the one”
Coming back to the song in the album episode, Uncle Jerry reads its title against the folk-tale idea of one true love: the one whose foot fits the glass slipper, the one who wakes Sleeping Beauty. He offers it as a reason the song belongs on an album called folklore, and says he missed the link when the hosts covered the song.
Angela & Uncle Jerry note that the song is fundamentally about memory even though the word 'memory' never appears. Uncle Jerry calls this 'kind of funny' and observes that the speaker is inside a reverie, remembering the past and then extrapolating it forward into a counterfactual future. The repetition of the chorus mimics the psychological process of rumination, the speaker returning to the same claims and questions because she cannot resist revisiting the same memories. Angela adds that it feels like 'ruminating on these thoughts over and over, wash and rinse and repeat.'
“It would've been fun If you would've been the one”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the song as being about a lost relationship, but both emphasise the unusual tone. Uncle Jerry says he 'can't even say failed relationship, just lost. We don't know that it was failed. We don't know why it didn't work, but it's not there.' Angela notes that there are not many songs in the catalogue that reminisce about a lost love without it 'destroying my life.' The romantic loss provides the occasion for the song's what-if thinking, but the speaker has moved past grief into something closer to acceptance.
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry treat the song's refusal to resolve as deliberate, and as the reason it works on listeners. The bridge never says what the 'one thing' was that might have changed everything, and the title never settles whether 'the one' is the speaker or the person she lost. Uncle Jerry says the vagueness is 'exactly what draws fans in', because the unfilled gap is what lets a listener step into the poem; Angela agrees that it lets everyone plug in their own past relationship. Neither ambiguity is ever resolved, and the song is built so that it cannot be.
Uncle Jerry's closing statement names the song's core insight: 'some of the most persistent ghosts in our lives are not necessarily the people whom we've lost, but the lives we never got to live.' The ghost here is not a dead person but an unlived future, a phantom possibility that haunts the speaker's present.
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
The pool is a body of water that is 'dark and deep' according to Uncle Jerry, standing for the unknowable future. Tossing pennies into it is the act of wishing when you cannot see what lies ahead. The bounded water holds youth, hope, and the unknowability of what comes next.
“Rosé flowing with your chosen family”
The rosé stands for the adult life the speaker imagines she might have had: a home, a family, warmth and belonging. Uncle Jerry reads it as symbolic ('everything would have been rosy') and notes the wordplay with rose-coloured glasses. Angela adds that it could have been red wine (blood, vampires) or white wine (fish) but Taylor chose rosé, which carries warmth, ease, and the word 'rose' inside it.
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
Throwing a coin into water and wishing on it is the cheapest bet anyone makes. The speaker is remembering having done it, which puts the wish among the things she is looking back on rather than among the things she is still waiting on.
“For digging up the grave another time”
The grave is the dead relationship. Digging it up is the act of sifting through old memories and reimagining them with a different outcome. Uncle Jerry reads it as a metaphor for returning to something that should be buried and 'changing them because I didn't say that one thing.'
“I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit”
Uncle Jerry devotes significant time to the conversational, colloquial diction of the song, noting that 'I'm doing good' is grammatically informal (it should be 'I am well') and that this deliberate informality gives the speaker an authentic voice. He lists 'good, new shit, cool shit, baby, fun, sweet' as examples of the colloquial register, and contrasts it with a humorous rewrite in formal grammar ('I'm doing quite well, although I'm on to some new enterprises') to show how the tone would collapse. Angela agrees that it feels like being inside the speaker's head or having a text conversation with her.
The conversational diction is what makes the song believable. It places the listener inside the speaker's private thoughts rather than at a lecture, which is essential for a song about quiet, personal rumination over what might have been.
Number words run through the song as a small vocabulary: the twenties, pennies, none, painting by the numbers, making it count, and the one thing in the bridge. Read together they form a recurring register of counting and quantity rather than a run of separate puns. @msmargko offers the reading and suggests the numeral in the title may be chosen because of it. That is her suggestion and not a stated reason for the title.
Adds a song-wide pattern of diction to a song whose colloquial voice is already noted, showing that the ordinary words the speaker reaches for keep circling numbers and counting. The existing wordplay on numbers and count stays a separate, two-line pun.
“And it would've been sweet If it could've been me”
One reading of the title takes the switch between you and me as the song refusing to assign blame or ownership. This reading disagrees. Where the earlier lines say it would have been the other person, this passage says it could have been the speaker, and the change of wording lightens the accusation without dropping it. The shift from you to me is not neutral: it moves some responsibility back onto the addressee while looking like the speaker taking it on.
Sets a specific wording choice against the reading of the title as the song refusing to assign blame, arguing that the switch between you and me is where blame is quietly redistributed rather than withheld.
Uncle Jerry identifies a juxtaposition at work across the song: the speaker claims to be moving forward ('I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit, been saying yes instead of no') but the rest of the poem belies that claim, pulling her backwards into memory and what-if thinking. He says the speaker is claiming forward movement while the song itself moves backwards.
This tension between the claimed present and the gravitational pull of the past is the engine of the whole song. The speaker insists she is fine while the poem keeps returning to what might have been, and the juxtaposition between the two is where the emotional honesty sits.
Uncle Jerry identifies a juxtaposition of youth and adulthood running through the song. In the first and second choruses, the speaker imagines youthful romance (pennies in the pool, roaring twenties), and in the final chorus she shifts to adult life (rosé flowing with your chosen family). He says the speaker moves from 'childishness, pennies in the pool' to 'rosé and families,' from the possibility of youthful romance to mature social belonging.
The juxtaposition charts the arc of a whole life that never happened: from young love to settled adulthood. Setting the two against each other makes the loss feel larger because it is not just a romance that was missed but an entire lifetime.
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
Uncle Jerry identifies this as a deliberate use of strategic, intentional vagueness. The speaker never says what 'one thing' would have been different, and this ambiguity is the point. If she had supplied a specific one thing, she would have closed the window that invites the listener in. Uncle Jerry says this is 'exactly what draws fans in' because 'you feel like I am invited to participate in the world of this poem.' Angela agrees, noting that the vagueness lets every listener plug in their own experience of a past relationship.
The vagueness forces the poem into the realm of the universal. By refusing to name the specific impediment, the song becomes every listener's own what-if, which is central to how the song connects emotionally.
“If you would've been the one”
Uncle Jerry identifies the title 'the 1' as ambiguous: is 'the one' the speaker or the former lover? He says he was initially tricked into thinking the title referred to the other person ('if you would have been the one') before realising it could also mean 'if it could have been me,' making the title refer to the speaker herself, or to both of them. Angela agrees it took her three listens to realise Taylor was 'playing with the title.'
The ambiguity of the title mirrors the song's refusal to assign blame or ownership. Neither person is definitively 'the one' and neither is definitively not, which keeps the song in its characteristic state of unresolved possibility.
Uncle Jerry identifies extensive parallelism between the two verses. The structure of verse one and verse two mirrors each other line for line: 'I'm doing good / I have this dream you're doing cool shit'; 'I'm on some new shit / Having adventures on your own'; 'the greatest films of all time were never made / the greatest loves of all time are over now.' He says the two verses overlay each other with parallel lines that 'mesh and jive together' with some dissonance. He also notes the parallelism in repeated phrases across the song: 'it would have been you' / 'it could have been me,' and 'if you would have been the one' repeating as a central phrase.
The parallelism between the two verses creates the sense of two separate lives running alongside each other, the speaker's and the former lover's. The structural mirroring enacts the what-if: these are two versions of the same story, the one that happened and the one that did not.
“And if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow”
Uncle Jerry identifies the parallel grammar of this line: 'if you're not X, then you can't be Y.' He says the parallelism gives the line an aphoristic quality, as though it is a proverb or something Marjorie might have said to her.
The proverbial quality of the line lets the speaker step outside her own situation for a moment and offer a piece of general wisdom, before the song pulls her back into her particular memory.
“I, I, I persist and resist the temptation to ask you”
Uncle Jerry identifies the repetition of 'I, I, I' at the start of the bridge as hesitation and uncertainty. He compares it to Hamlet's 'Words, words, words' and notes that every actor (or singer) has to figure out how to deliver the same word three times. Angela says she was curious what Uncle Jerry would make of the three 'I's on the page, and the answer is that they carry the speaker's wavering, her inability to commit to the sentence she is about to say.
The stuttering repetition at the bridge captures the song's emotional pivot: the speaker is about to ask the what-if question directly, and the hesitation before doing so is itself the drama.
“I guess you never know, never know”
Angela & Uncle Jerry note that the speaker says 'I guess you never know' and then repeats 'never know' straight away, in case the listener missed it. They read the doubling as a repetitious echo that drifts off into the neverland of what might have been, and treat 'you never know' as one of the poem's central refrains: she cannot know what the other life would have held, so all she can do is guess at it twice.
The immediate repetition performs the song's argument in miniature. The speaker returns to the same unknowable claim a second time because there is nothing further to say about it, and the echo leaves the question open rather than resolving it.
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the line 'Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool' as a cultural allusion to the 1920s and a possible literary allusion to The Great Gatsby. Uncle Jerry notes that 'anytime someone says Roaring Twenties, I think that that always comes up in our head,' and Angela confirms Taylor makes references to The Great Gatsby often. The allusion works on two levels: the 1920s party culture Fitzgerald chronicled (the extravagant, wish-filled era before the crash) and Taylor's own twenties as a decade of youthful hoping. The pennies-in-the-pool image, which Uncle Jerry reads as wishes thrown into a dark, unknowable future, echoes Gatsby's green light across the water, the wish for something just out of reach.
saying yes, begged for then practised
“Been saying "yes" instead of "no"”
“It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes"” — Love Story
The earlier song begs for a yes, and the 1 has a speaker who now says yes as a general policy, after the fact. Love Story's line is a plea made in the middle of the story. The 1's line comes afterwards, as a change of habit that reads like a lesson arriving once the moment has passed. Community readers hear the newer song as the answer the older one wanted.
seeing-the-absent-everywhere
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though”
“I see your face in every crowd” — Holy Ground
Angela connects the 1's bus stop line, where the speaker thinks she sees the absent person and is mistaken, to Holy Ground's 'And I see your face in every crowd.' Both songs catch the same phenomenon, a lost person becoming omnipresent in ordinary life because the mind keeps supplying them. In the 1 the sighting is corrected immediately ('I didn't though'), which keeps the song's light tone; Holy Ground lets the omnipresence stand.
numbers and counting as wordplay
“We never painted by the numbers, baby But we were making it count”
“You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's countin'?” — So It Goes...
Both songs play on numbers and counting. In the 1, painting by the numbers and making it count turn number words into a claim about meaning: what mattered was counted in the sense of counting for something. So It Goes... has the speaker say the other person did a number on them and then ask who is counting, professing indifference to keeping score, and a whispered count follows, which undercuts the pose. The earlier song counts as keeping score while claiming not to, and the 1 counts as mattering.
Gatsby glamour before the fall
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
“Feelin' so Gatsby for that whole year” — This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Gatsby appears as a year of glamour before a fall in both songs. In the 1 the roaring twenties carry the allusion, and Uncle Jerry points out that the decade led into the Depression. In This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things the speaker feels so Gatsby for a whole year before things come apart. Readers match the two: a high, bright stretch that both songs know will end.
one line stretched into a whole poem
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
“I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs” — cardigan
Read as a pair, the 1 is cardigan's line about haunting every what-if, stretched into a whole poem. cardigan, the next track, predicts in a single line that the person will haunt all the speaker's what-ifs. The 1 then spends its full length on those what-ifs, with the bridge as the sharpest of them. Community readers see the two songs as one thought, said briefly and then at length.
bleeding as the price and as the wound
“And if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow”
“But now I'm bleedin' 'Cause I knew you” — cardigan
The 1 states bleeding as the price of growing, in a line that sounds like proverbial advice. cardigan's bleeding is particular rather than general: the speaker is bleeding because of who they knew, so the wound has a named cause. Readers set the general advice about pain and growth beside a particular wound caused by knowing someone.
the one lost and the album opened
“Chase two girls, lose the one” — cardigan
Surfaced as a seam binding track two to track one: the aphorism's closing words double as the title of the song that opens the album, so "lose the one" tips straight into the 1's subject, the one who got away. The wordplay is heard as deliberate sequencing, the proverb handing its last word back to the opener's title.
scanning public places for the one who left
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though”
“Chasin' shadows in the grocery line” — cardigan
The album opens on this habit and shadows it one track later: the 1's speaker thinks she sees him at the bus stop and admits she didn't, and cardigan's "chasin' shadows in the grocery line" is the same scanning of ordinary public places for a face that is not there, the lost figure glimpsed in queues and crowds.
the imagined life handed to someone else
“Rosé flowing with your chosen family”
“Her picture in your wallet” — champagne problems
The imagined adult life in the 1 is the future champagne problems hands to someone else. The 1 pictures wine and chosen family as the life the speaker might have had. champagne problems looks ahead to the other person's future, in which a new partner's picture sits in a wallet. Readers hear one song imagining the life and the other naming who gets it.
the unmade film and the film already seen
“You know the greatest films of all time were never made”
“I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending” — exile
An unmade film set against a film already seen. In the 1 the greatest films of all time were never made, and the speaker imagines the great romance that never got its screening. In exile the speaker has seen this film before and did not like the ending, so the story has been played through and disappoints. Readers pair the two as film images at opposite ends of a relationship: the one that was never shot and the one whose ending is already known.
chosen family, imagined then offered
“Rosé flowing with your chosen family”
“Family that I chose, now that I see your brother as my brother” — peace
The chosen family recurs almost word for word. In the 1 it is part of an imagined scene, rosé flowing with the addressee's chosen family, something pictured rather than had. In peace the speaker declares, in the first person, the family they chose. Readers hear the same phrase in two positions: an imagined scene about the addressee's people, and a first-person statement of chosen kinship.
trying to find the one (folklore opens, evermore closes)
“It would've been fun If you would've been the one”
“I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone Trying to find the one where I went wrong” — evermore
A community reader reads "trying to find the one" as a hinge: the line can break into "trying to find the one" and "where I went wrong", and "the one" pulls toward the song that opens folklore as this one closes evermore. The two-album set is bracketed by the same search - folklore wondering whether he would have been the one, evermore retracing the steps to find where the one went wrong.
dwelling on what is past
“In my defense, I have none, for digging up the grave another time”
“'Cause I haven't moved in years” — the lakes
Picked up by readers as part of the same pattern of dwelling. the lakes' refusal to move is answered in the 1 by the speaker who keeps digging up the grave another time, unable to leave the past where it lies.
rosé and the chosen family
“Rosé flowing with your chosen family”
“Your roommate's cheap-ass screw-top rosé, that's how” — Maroon
the 1 pours rosé among a chosen family in a life that might have been. Maroon returns to the same cheap screw-top rosé shared between roommates, the wine standing in both songs for an intimacy looked back on.
one small cause, a vast outcome
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
“Did some bird flap its wings over in Asia? Did some force take you because I didn't pray?” — Bigger Than the Whole Sky
Community readers hear the butterfly effect asked twice. The bridge of the 1 wonders, wistfully, whether one small change could have altered everything about a love that never happened. In Bigger Than the Whole Sky the same shape of question returns as a far-off wingbeat and a force that took someone away, but there it is asked in grief, searching for the one cause of a loss. The wonder is the same and the mood has turned from hypothetical to bereaved.
a mistaken sighting and a bus that never comes
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though”
“Like waiting for a bus that never shows You just start walkin' on” — Hits Different
Both songs reach for a bus when picturing an absence, but the two speakers do different things with it. In the 1 the bus stop is where a sighting turns out to be mistaken: the speaker thought they saw the person and did not. Hits Different uses waiting for a bus that never shows as a simile for disappointed expectation. One is a mistaken recognition and the other is a comparison to waiting, and neither speaker does what the other does.
seeing-the-absent-everywhere
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though”
“I see your profile and your smile on unsuspecting waiters” — Is It Over Now? (TV)
Both songs have a speaker who finds a trace of someone in the wrong place. In the 1 it is a mistaken sighting at a bus stop. In Is It Over Now? the speaker sees the other person's profile and smile on waiters who have no idea, so the absent person is laid over strangers doing an anonymous job. The 1 corrects the mistake at once, while the later song lets the image stand.
the grave dug up, then left buried
“For digging up the grave another time”
“Should've let it stay buried” — loml
The later song answers the earlier habit. In the 1 the speaker owns up to digging the grave up another time, going back over something already finished. loml says the thing should have been left buried, which reads as a verdict on that same digging. Readers hear the two grave images as one argument across two songs: the first records the return and the second regrets that anything was disturbed.
the internet as the way in
“You meet some woman on the internet and take her home”
“You'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars” — The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
Both songs use the internet as the way a new person arrives. In the 1 the speaker imagines someone meeting a woman online and taking her home. In The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived the addressee is described sliding into inboxes. Readers set the two beside each other as the same modern route into someone's life, told once as a passing imagining and once as a description of a habit. It fits the sliding-into-messages picture the hosts already offer for the 1's line.
imagining-the-new-partner
“You meet some woman on the internet and take her home”
“So if I sell my apartment And you have some kids with an internet starlet” — Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
Angela hears the 1's imagined new partner behind the Tortured Poets Department line about a partner and an internet starlet, reading both as the speaker picturing, half wryly, the person who takes her place. In the 1 the picture is offered lightly and moved past; the later song holds it closer. Angela notes the humour in the 1 is gentle rather than bitter.
the-persistent-wonder
“I, I, I persist and resist the temptation to ask you If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
“Will I always wonder?” — Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
A community reader sets this song's closing, unanswered question against the earlier song's own refusal to stop wondering what one changed thing might have meant. Both songs end on the same unresolved shape: a question about a different life that is never allowed to close.
seeing-the-absent-everywhere
“I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though”
“I tried searching faces on streets What are the chances you'd be” — I Look in People's Windows
Both speakers scan strangers for a person who is not there. In the 1 a glance at a bus stop briefly turns someone into the one who left, and the speaker owns the mistake straight away. In I Look in People's Windows the speaker searches faces in the street and weighs the chances of finding them, so the single mistaken glance has become a standing habit of looking.
the if-onlys named as a habit
“If one thing had been different Would everything be different today?”
“I'm addicted to the "if only"” — I Look in People's Windows
The bridge of the 1 asks whether everything would be different if one thing had been. I Look in People's Windows names the habit behind that question, with a speaker who is addicted to the if-onlys. Readers hear the later song saying outright what the bridge does in a single line of counterfactual wondering: the mind keeps returning to what might have been.
adventures alone, a return with feet on the ground
“I have this dream you're doing cool shit Having adventures on your own”
“With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned 'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned” — Peter
The 1 pictures the person off having adventures on their own. Peter hopes for a particular ending to a similar absence: that the person will come back with feet on the ground and say what they have learned. Community readers set the two together as halves of the same wait, one imagining the adventure and the other hoping for the return that would make sense of it.
moving forward by looking back
“I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit”
“Lookin' backwards might be the only way to move forward” — The Manuscript
The 1 opens on a claim of doing well and moving on, but the poem keeps pulling backwards into memory and what-ifs, which is the tension the song's juxtaposition reading describes. The Manuscript makes looking back the way forward: its speaker treats revisiting the past as how to move on. Set against the 1's opening claim, the later line reads as the other side of the same tension, where looking backwards is not a failure of moving on but the route to it. It chimes with Uncle Jerry's summing-up on the episode that moving forward has not erased the past.
the unlucky penny
“tossing pennies in the pool”
“Penny's unlucky, I took him back” — Wood
the 1 tosses pennies in the pool and wishes on the odds. Wood picks the superstition up again, calling the penny unlucky.
Author of The Great Gatsby. Associated with the Jazz Age, the American Dream, and doomed romanticism built on illusion.
Uncle Jerry’s Verdict
98
- Lyrical Strength
- 98
- Narrative & Structure
- 97
- Production & Atmosphere
- 98
- Lore & Literary References
- 98
- Emotional Impact
- 97