Would've, Could've, Should've
Mash-ups & Live Pairings
- Would've, Could've, Should've / ivy (Eras Tour, Sydney)
- Would've, Could've, Should've / I Know Places (Eras Tour, Edinburgh)
Sister Songs
Notable lyric
“If I was some paint, did it splatter on a promising grown man?And if I was a child, did it matter if you got to wash your hands?I…”
Written and produced by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner. Released as a 3 AM bonus track on Midnights (2022). Angela & Uncle Jerry read the song as a confessional retrospective on an exploitative relationship, dense with biblical and religious imagery that frames the experience as a crisis of faith on multiple levels, religious, personal, and self-directed. Uncle Jerry draws a spectrum from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 (where love restores childhood faith) to this song (where a relationship destroys it), and connects the narrative to Fantine in Les Misérables and the French Canadian legend of Rose Latulipe.
“Ooh, you're a crisis of my faith”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify this as the crux of the song. Angela reads it as a literal crisis of Christian faith, that God would allow this to happen, while Uncle Jerry expands it to encompass a crisis of faith in herself, her ability to self-govern, her image of womanhood, and the cult of virginity. They discuss at length whether the relationship caused her to lose her religious innocence, her emotional purity, or her trust in God, concluding it operates on all these levels simultaneously. Angela connects it back to 'if you never touched me, I would have gone along with the righteous' as evidence that the crisis is specifically about being unable to maintain a righteous, holy life after the relationship.
“And now that I know, I wish you'd left me wondering”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the conditional if-then structure throughout the song as the engine of counterfactual thinking, what might have been if the relationship never happened. Uncle Jerry identifies how the conditional statements move from complete (if X then Y) to incomplete (if X...) forcing the listener to complete the then-clause. Angela notes the line 'I wish you'd left me wondering' captures the speaker preferring the what-ifs over the actual experience, and connects it to another Swift lyric ('I knew you'd haunt all of my what ifs'). Uncle Jerry adds that the what-if is preferable because she wouldn't have felt the pain or suffered the abuse.
“And if I was a child, did it matter If you got to wash your hands?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss at length the power imbalance of a 19-year-old with a 32-year-old (John Mayer). Uncle Jerry identifies the verse's rhetorical progression where metaphors give way to the literal statement 'if I was a child', she was a child, and the metaphors are stripped away to expose that reality. Angela discusses the 'promising grown man' line as invoking the cultural protection afforded to older men in cases of sexual misconduct. Uncle Jerry reads the Pilate hand-washing imagery as the older man evading accountability. They discuss the developmental disadvantage and how writing at 32 (the same age as her abuser) gave her new perspective on how wrong it was.
“And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts Memories feel like weapons”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss how memories function as active, damaging forces in the song rather than passive recollections. Angela describes visualizing the memories as ghosts floating in the ether that still hurt her. Uncle Jerry identifies 'memories feel like weapons' as a simile, 'daggers of the mind', and they discuss the recursive outro as representing the speaker's inability to stop reliving these memories, comparing it to a waking dream at 2:30 AM. They note the song was written at 32 looking back at 19, with the re-recording of Speak Now having reactivated these memories.
“Stained glass windows in my mind”
Stained glass windows operate on multiple levels: literal stained glass from church (childhood religion), literal stained glass in John Mayer's converted-church apartment in NYC, and the beautiful colours of the relationship that remain vivid in the speaker's memory.
“I damn sure never would've danced with the devil At nineteen”
Dancing with the devil represents the speaker taking a chance that imperiled her mortal soul, entering a relationship with an older man (John Mayer) that destroyed her innocence.
“I would've stayed on my knees”
Kneeling as prayer, the speaker would have continued in her childhood religious devotion and innocence had the relationship not occurred. Uncle Jerry also raises the possibility of sexual connotation.
“I would've stayed on my knees”
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the kneeling as a faith the narrator walked away from: staying on her knees would have meant continuing to pray and "living in the innocence of my childhood religion." The hosts also raise a second, more physical reading of the same line, so the one gesture holds both penitence and surrender.
“The tomb won't close”
The tomb that will not close reworks the resurrection: the stone meant to seal the dead is rolled aside and stays open, and the speaker's buried feelings refuse to stay down. Angela pictures an old family vault with its door standing open; Uncle Jerry hears the tomb of Christ that opens three days on.
“If you tasted poison, you could've Spit me out at the first chance”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify 'poison' as a metaphor, she should have been poison to him because she was much younger, and he should have rejected her. Uncle Jerry notes that the metaphor operates as part of the conditional statement structure in verse one.
The poison metaphor frames the speaker as something the older man should have recognised as harmful or inappropriate, reinforcing the power imbalance and his culpability.
“I damn sure never would've danced with the devil At nineteen”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'danced with the devil' as a metaphor meaning 'to take chances that is going to imperil your mortal soul.' He notes this is a phrase with deep cultural resonance, connecting it to Immortal Technique's song and the Legend of Rose Latulipe, while also noting that the speaker characterizes the older man as the devil with whom she danced at 19, during her age of innocence.
The devil metaphor frames the older man as a spiritual threat and the relationship as a soul-imperiling act, reinforcing the religious framework of the entire song. The dance metaphor adds an element of seduction and mutual participation.
“And if I was some paint, did it splatter On a promising grown man?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the paint/splatter image as a metaphor in the series of conditional statements. Uncle Jerry then notes that the next conditional ('if I was a child') is deliberately NOT metaphorical, she drops the metaphor to state literal reality, which makes the preceding metaphors more powerful by contrast.
The paint metaphor suggests the speaker's youth as something that marked or stained the older man, but the deliberate shift to literal statement ('if I was a child') underscores that the metaphorical framing was a courtesy the situation didn't deserve.
“God rest my soul”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify 'God rest my soul' as operating metaphorically, as if the speaker is dead. Uncle Jerry connects it to the Latin 'requiescat in pace' (RIP), noting the speaker treats herself as dead to her past innocence.
The death metaphor frames the loss of innocence as a kind of spiritual death, setting up the tomb and resurrection imagery that follows in the bridge.
“Stained glass windows in my mind”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify stained glass windows as a metaphor operating on both literal and figurative levels. Angela notes John Mayer lived in a converted church with actual stained glass windows, so the lyric references literal stained glass while also using it figuratively. During discussion, Angela arrives at a new reading: the rich colours of stained glass represent the vivid, colourful quality of the relationship as it was experienced, now preserved in memory.
The stained glass metaphor connects the church setting to the speaker's mind, suggesting that memories of the relationship are permanently installed like church windows, beautiful, colourful, but associated with a sacred space that has been violated.
“The tomb won't close”
Angela & Uncle Jerry both identify the tomb as a metaphor. Angela sees the tomb of Christ with the stone not fully covering the opening. Uncle Jerry agrees, noting the tomb of Christ doesn't close, three days later it rolls to the side. They conclude this is intentionally a metaphor for the tomb of Christ, and that by getting these feelings out, the speaker may be undergoing her own resurrection.
The tomb metaphor frames the speaker's inability to close off painful memories as a kind of open grave, the past cannot be buried. The Christ-tomb connection adds a resurrection dimension: the feelings keep rising.
“Memories feel like weapons”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'memories feel like weapons' as a simile, noting that she moves from metaphors in verse one to a simile here. He connects it to 'the daggers of the mind,' suggesting memories as instruments of ongoing harm.
The simile conveys how the speaker's memories continue to inflict pain long after the relationship ended, supporting the song's theme of past trauma as an active, present-tense force.
“The wound won't close”
Uncle Jerry groups the wound with the tomb and stained glass as metaphors in the bridge. He also connects it to the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ that never close, and to the Gospel of John as the Book of Signs, suggesting the speaker is waiting for a sign of her own resurrection or healing.
The wound metaphor parallels the tomb that won't close, reinforcing that the emotional damage remains open and unhealed. The stigmata connection adds a layer of sacred suffering.
“Ooh, you're a crisis of my faith”
Angela & Uncle Jerry both identify this line as carrying multiple possible meanings that the song deliberately leaves unresolved. Angela asks: is it a crisis of her Christian faith? Her faith in herself? Her faith in humanity? Her faith in literal religion? Uncle Jerry adds: a crisis of her self-control, her ability to self-govern, her image of womanhood, her virginity. Both hosts underline the line and find it 'bothering' because it implies crises in multiple areas simultaneously without resolving to one reading.
The structural ambiguity of 'crisis of my faith' allows the line to carry the full weight of the song's multiple registers, religious, personal, sexual, psychological, simultaneously. The refusal to specify which faith is in crisis IS the point.
“But, Lord, you made me feel important And then you tried to erase us”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'Lord' as potentially carrying multiple meanings: (1) an interjection ('Lordy'), (2) a noun of direct address characterising the man as her lord/master, and (3) characterising him as her substitute Jesus or religion. Uncle Jerry notes it reads as a noun of direct address ('comma, Lord, comma') and wonders if she is making him her Christ, her substitute religion.
The multiple valences of 'Lord' crystallize the song's central tension: the man occupied a role in her life that should have been filled by faith, becoming simultaneously her lover and her god, which makes the betrayal both personal and spiritual.
“On a promising grown man?”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'promising' as potentially carrying a double meaning: (1) the cliché of a 'promising young man' with a bright future, which she twists to 'promising grown man,' and (2) the act of making promises, he was making promises to her that turned out to be lies, leading to the ruination of her childhood. Uncle Jerry frames this as deliberate wordplay consistent with her pattern of using words with multiple meanings.
The double meaning of 'promising' encapsulates the deception at the heart of the song: the man who was 'promising' in the eyes of the world was also the one making false promises to a teenager.
“I would've stayed on my knees”
Uncle Jerry raises the possibility that 'staying on my knees' has sexual implications in addition to the religious meaning of kneeling in prayer. Angela says she had not considered that reading. Uncle Jerry frames it as speculative but worth noting given the song's subject matter.
If the double meaning is intentional, it compounds the sacred/profane tension of the song, the posture of devotion and the posture of sexual submission become the same image.
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the pervasive religious imagery throughout the song as a defining characteristic. Uncle Jerry's first impression notes that the speaker 'places the tale of that personal story in this rubric of a lot of religious imagery and references.' They identify prayer, kneeling, the devil, God's honest truth, heaven, righteousness, crisis of faith, God rest my soul, tomb, stained glass windows, wound, stigmata, banners, and the wash-your-hands Pilate image as part of a sustained religious visual and conceptual framework.
The religious imagery provides the entire interpretive framework for the song, the relationship is cast as a fall from grace, a dance with the devil, and the aftermath is framed through death and resurrection imagery. The imagery makes the personal story universal and archetypal.
“And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts”
Angela describes a vivid visual reading of this line: she sees the memories of the couple together in an apartment 'floating up here' in the ether, like literal ghosts. She interprets the ghost imagery as memories made visible and haunting, which still hurt the speaker even years later.
The ghost imagery makes abstract memories into something the speaker can see and fear, reinforcing the song's treatment of the past as an active, present-tense haunting.
“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first”
Angela identifies the childish register of 'it was mine first' as deliberate, she says 'it feels so childish' and that in the song the speaker 'is kind of screeching it, like a child would, like screeching at you like it was mine first.' Angela reads this as intentional: 'she's saying I was just a girl. I'm allowed to be childish. I'm allowed to be selfish in this moment and say, give it back, you ruined my childhood.'
The childish language in this line is itself an image of the stolen girlhood, the speaker reverts to the voice of the child she was, demanding back what was taken in the only language that child had.
“If you would've blinked, then I would've Looked away at the first glance”
Uncle Jerry explicitly identifies and names the if-then conditional statement structure as a rhetorical device that the speaker maintains consistently throughout the song. He calls them 'conditional statements' and notes they come from 'the world of rhetorical analysis.' He tracks how the device evolves: in verse one, full if-then conditionals; in the pre-choruses, she drops the 'then' clause, leaving the conditional incomplete and forcing the reader/listener to complete it; in verse two, the conditionals return. He also connects this to John 14:15 ('If you love me, keep my commands') and to Poe's critical principle of leaving 'a window for the reader to participate.'
The conditional statement structure is the backbone of the song's argument, every verse is built on counterfactuals that the speaker knows can never be realised. The incomplete conditionals in the pre-choruses are especially powerful because they force the listener to supply the painful conclusion.
“Would've, could've, should've If you'd never looked my way”
Uncle Jerry identifies that in the pre-chorus, the conditional statements shift from complete if-then form to incomplete, 'she changes the conditional statements from if then to just if.' The speaker forces the reader or interlocutor to finish the sentence. Uncle Jerry connects this to Poe's critical principle that 'the best writers always leave a window for the reader to participate.' The incomplete conditional leaves the painful consequence unstated but inescapable.
The incomplete conditional in the pre-chorus is where the song's rhetorical structure does its most powerful emotional work, the unsaid 'then' clause contains all the pain the speaker can't bring herself to articulate directly.
“I damn sure never would've danced with the devil At nineteen”
Uncle Jerry develops the 'danced with the devil' phrase beyond its surface meaning by connecting it to the Legend of Rose Latulipe, a French Canadian folk tale in which a young woman dances all night with a handsome stranger who turns out to be the devil and takes her soul. He explicitly says 'that's what happened here', the legend maps directly onto the song's narrative of a young woman seduced by a charming older figure who destroys her innocence. Uncle Jerry also connects it to Immortal Technique's rap song of the same title, noting the interplay of love and destruction in that work.
The allusion to Rose Latulipe deepens the devil-dance metaphor from cliché to folklore archetype: the young woman who dances with the devil and loses her soul is a recurring narrative pattern that the song consciously inhabits.
“But, Lord, you made me feel important And then you tried to erase us”
Uncle Jerry reads the comma-bracketed 'Lord' as a noun of direct address rather than an interjection, the older man is being elevated to Lord/Christ status, made into the speaker's substitute religion. The biblical-allusion register makes this a deliberate religious allusion, not just a rhetorical exclamation.
The deification reading is part of the song's broader pattern of religious vocabulary used for the antagonist (the devil dance, the tomb, the wounds, the requiem), making the partner a quasi-divine figure compounds the loss of religious innocence the song tracks.
“If you got to wash your hands?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry both identify the 'wash your hands' image as an allusion to Pontius Pilate washing his hands of responsibility for Christ's crucifixion (Gospel of John). Uncle Jerry develops the allusion as a technique: he discusses Pilate's role as a Roman official doing his job, the moral weight of abdication of responsibility, and connects 'doing your job' as an excuse to the broader pattern of abdication ('doing your job is also what made concentration camps work'). The allusion reframes the older man's abdication of responsibility through a biblical lens of moral cowardice.
The Pilate allusion frames the older man as someone who knew what he was doing was wrong but washed his hands of responsibility, elevating the personal betrayal to a moral and spiritual register.
“Years of tearing down our banners, you and I”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'banners' as a possible biblical allusion, connecting it to Isaiah ('a banner for the nations'), the Song of Solomon ('his banner over me is love'), and the broader biblical tradition of raising banners as acts of faith and worship (including the Ebenezer and the serpent on a staff). He develops this as a technique: the banners represent something raised up in faith and love that has been torn down over years, making the destruction of the relationship a desecration of something once sacred.
The banner allusion transforms the end of the relationship from a personal breakup into the tearing down of something that was once raised in faith, reinforcing the religious register of the entire song.
“And now that I know, I wish you'd left me wondering”
Community readers hear John Mayer's own song titles folded into the lyric the song aims at him. "I wish you'd left me wondering" turns on his "Your Body Is a Wonderland": the word that named his most famous come-on is bent into the wish that he had never approached her at all. Readers extend the pattern to other Mayer titles surfacing across the song ("Clarity" inside "if clarity's in death", and "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" behind the devil-dance and burning imagery), so that his catalogue becomes the material she writes back at him.
“If you got to wash your hands?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the line 'did it matter if you got to wash your hands' as a direct allusion to Pontius Pilate washing his hands of responsibility for Christ's crucifixion in the Gospel of John. Uncle Jerry discusses how Pilate asked Christ three times and notes John's emphasis on the number three. The washing of hands becomes a metaphor for the older man absolving himself of responsibility for taking advantage of a young girl.
“I would've stayed on my knees And I damn sure never would've danced with the devil”
Uncle Jerry connects the conditional if-then rhetorical structure of the first verse to John 14:15: 'If you love me, keep my command.' He reads the song's conditional statements as a variation on this biblical structure, if you had loved me, I would have kept the command. The song's speaker would have maintained her faith and innocence had the relationship not occurred.
“The tomb won't close”
Angela & Uncle Jerry both identify 'the tomb won't close' as an intentional reference to the tomb of Christ. Angela says she pictures the stone not fully covering the entrance. Uncle Jerry agrees it is intentionally a metaphor for the tomb of Christ, it doesn't close, three days later it rolls to the side, and connects this to the idea that the speaker is resurrecting these feelings, undergoing her own resurrection by getting them out.
“God rest my soul”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'God rest my soul' as connecting to the Latin phrase requiescat in pace (rest in peace), as if the speaker is dead, dead to her past, dead to her innocence. This opens the bridge's extended death and resurrection imagery.
“The wound won't close I keep on waiting for a sign”
Uncle Jerry connects the wound that won't close and the waiting for a sign to the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ that never close, and to the Gospel of John, which has been alternatively titled the Book of Signs because John constantly examines signs of the meaning of Christ and signs of the coming resurrection. The speaker is waiting for her own resurrection, waiting for the wound and tomb to finally close.
“Years of tearing down our banners, you and I”
Uncle Jerry wonders if the banners are a biblical allusion and cites the Song of Solomon ('His banner over me is love') and Isaiah ('a banner for the nations'). He notes that banners appear multiple times in the Bible as something raised up in faith and worship, an Ebenezer, something you look at in faith. Angela connects it to the idea that their relationship's banner is still up and she's still tearing it down, it should have been something inspiring but was not.
“I damn sure never would've danced with the devil At nineteen”
Uncle Jerry raises the French Canadian folk tale of Rose Latulipe as a direct parallel to the 'danced with the devil' imagery. In the story, Rose goes to a dance where an incredibly handsome unknown man appears. She falls instantly in love and dances all night, but the man turns out to be the devil and takes her soul away. Uncle Jerry says 'That's what happened here', the parallel is explicit: a young woman dances with a man who turns out to be the devil and is destroyed by it.
Angela cites Bacon's essay alongside the Pontius Pilate / John 18:38 discussion in EP03. The Bacon line reframes Pilate's question as performative, Pilate asks the question without waiting for an answer, dramatising the evasion-of-accountability register that the Pilate motif carries in WCSCSS.
Uncle Jerry brings in Sonnet 43 from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese as a thematic counterpoint to Would've, Could've, Should've. He reads the Browning poem as what the Taylor Swift song's relationship should have been, a love that restored childhood faith and carried beyond death. Instead, Would've, Could've, Should've represents the opposite end of the spectrum: a relationship that destroyed childhood faith rather than restoring it. The Browning poem's references to 'childhood's faith' and 'lost saints' and love carried 'after death' directly parallel the religious imagery in the song.
Uncle Jerry connects the song to the character of Fantine in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, who was taken advantage of to the ruination of her life. He sees the parallel in a young woman exploited by an older man with devastating consequences. He also notes the redemptive arc through Fantine's daughter Cosette being rescued, contrasting it with the unresolved pain in the song. Uncle Jerry recommends the full novel and shows a translation by Christine Donougher.
matches-before-fire
“But I took your matches before fire could catch me” — Dear John
Angela questions whether the triumphant claim of Dear John, that the speaker took his matches before fire could catch her, holds up against Would've, Could've, Should've's deeper admission that the damage went further than the nineteen-year-old speaker could acknowledge. The later song's 'I regret you all the time' and 'you took my girlhood' suggest the fire did catch her, and that the earlier song's sense of escape was a younger self's self-protective reading rather than the full truth. The pair together track how the same experience is processed at two different ages, with the triumphant reading giving way to something more painful and honest over a decade later.
religious-diction-continuity
“Praying the floor won't fall through again” — Dear John
Uncle Jerry identifies the religious diction in Dear John's 'praying the floor won't fall through again' as a precursor to the fuller religious crisis of Would've, Could've, Should've. The prayer language appears early in the catalogue as a passing word choice, but it plants a seed that grows into the later song's sustained engagement with faith, kneeling, and spiritual damage.
the-should-have-left-behind
“Would've, could've, should've If you'd never looked my way”
“I should've known” — Dear John
Community readers noticed what the later song does with the third of its three modals. Its verses run entirely on would and could, conditionals offered to the other person about what he might have done differently, and "should" is never applied as a claim: it appears only where the title is recited back. The earlier song puts should to work five times, twice against herself and three times turned outward. Read together, the later song declines to reopen the question of what she ought to have known, and answers instead in the register of what he might have chosen. The self-description escalates the same way: too young here becomes, later, a question about whether it mattered that she was a child.
self made of broken pieces
“Stained glass windows in my mind, I regret you all the time”
“And when I break, it's in a million pieces” — mirrorball
Community readers connect the stained-glass image to mirrorball: stained glass is many small fragments leaded into a single picture, beautiful precisely because it is pieced together from broken parts. mirrorball builds its central figure the same way: a surface of countless small mirrors that, when it breaks, breaks "in a million pieces". Both songs hold the self as something assembled from fracture, lovely and damaged at once.
love as war / torn banners
“Years of tearing down our banners, you and I”
“Tore your banners down, took the battle underground” — The Great War
Community readers read the banners as the standards armies march under, placing the line in the catalogue's love-as-war register rather than only its biblical one. The same Midnights album sets the image directly in a battlefield in The Great War (banners torn down, the fight driven underground), which supports reading the WCS banners as the insignia two combatants raise and then destroy in a long private war.
banners-and-tomb
“Years of tearing down our banners”
“Spineless in my tomb of silence Tore your banners down” — The Great War
Angela identifies that The Great War shares both the banners and tomb imagery with Would've, Could've, Should've on the same album. In The Great War, the speaker tears down banners and is trapped in a 'tomb of silence' as metaphors for guerrilla warfare within a romantic conflict. In Would've, Could've, Should've, the speaker also references 'years of tearing down our banners' and a tomb that 'won't close.' Both songs use these images to describe the dismantling of a love relationship, though the wars are fought against different adversaries. Angela notes she only made the connection during the episode discussion.
haunting / living with ghosts
“And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts, memories feel like weapons”
“I thought my house was haunted, I used to live with ghosts” — Opalite
Community readers place the ghosts of this song in the catalogue's wider haunting register, where memory takes the form of an apparition that will not leave. Opalite later names the same condition plainly (a house thought haunted, a life lived with ghosts) and frames it in the past tense, as something moved beyond. Set against Opalite's recovery, the WCS line marks the earlier stage where the ghosts are still feared and still armed.
childhood faith lost and regained
“Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first”
“'Cause I thought that I'd never find that beautiful, beautiful life that Shimmers that innocent light back Like when we were young” — Eldest Daughter
Community readers set the demand to have girlhood returned against Eldest Daughter, where the innocent light of youth is found again rather than mourned as lost. The pairing sharpens the hinge the hosts draw from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43, in which a mature love restores a childhood faith: WCS is the song where that faith is destroyed, Eldest Daughter the later song where something of it is recovered, so the catalogue carries both ends of the same arc.
Victorian English poet best known for Sonnets from the Portuguese, including the famous Sonnet 43 ('How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways').
French novelist, poet, and dramatist, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, known for his essays and for advancing the scientific method.
Uncle Jerry’s Verdict
94.6
- Lyrical Strength
- 95
- Narrative & Structure
- 93
- Production & Atmosphere
- 91
- Lore & Literary References
- 97
- Emotional Impact
- 97