The Prophecy
- The Prophecy / long story short (Eras Tour, Lyon)
- The Prophecy / This Love (Eras Tour, Indianapolis)
“Hand on the throttleThought I caught lightning in a bottleOh, but it's gone again…”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify this as a culmination of Taylor's career-long preoccupation with fate, stars, and the universe's role in romantic destiny. Uncle Jerry traces the song's antique ambiance through its diction ('throttle,' 'ink pen,' tarot imagery) and connects it to biblical, fairy tale, and literary traditions. The bridge is singled out as potentially a standalone poem. The inclusio structure (outro mirroring verse one with the addition of 'please') is formally identified. Angela notes that Cassandra follows this song on the album, creating a thematic pairing around prophecy and domestic distress. Listeners connected "but even statues crumble if they're made to wait" to the bust of Diana of Ephesus that Taylor displayed at the Tortured Poets pop-up exhibition before the album's release, an ancient cult image of the goddess of childbirth, fertility and the moon. The resonance fans drew out is that the statue, left waiting and uncollected, crumbled with time, a literal version of the line, and that Diana's associations land pointedly on a song written after two relationships with London partners ended. A separate community reading hears a Mary Poppins parallel in the song's wish-list logic: in the film the children write out every trait they want in a nanny, the list is torn up and thrown away, and the pieces reassemble in the air as Mary arrives carrying every wished-for quality. Taylor framed the album's prologue in similar terms, that every song before was just a prayer, a wish list, which casts the begging of The Prophecy as the wish that was eventually answered rather than the curse it feared. Angela connects The Prophecy's wish for company to Stay Stay Stay, the grand curse-and-fate song and the small domestic one both finally asking for someone who will simply stay.
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify fate versus agency as a central theme, the speaker's helplessness before a prophecy she cannot change, her inability to fix or escape her romantic situation. Uncle Jerry frames this through the Eve allusion: is this punishment or gift? The speaker is powerless to alter what has been written, yet she begs for change. Angela notes that it feels like meeting the right person should be impossible, that 'it is written' and perhaps no person was written for the speaker at all. The repeated 'please' and 'I've been on my knees' register the speaker's complete inability to change her circumstances.
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the song as another in a series of lost relationships, Uncle Jerry notes on first reading that 'it' is a general reference pronoun with no antecedent, and since it's 'again,' he concludes it's probably another lost relationship. Angela frames the song as Taylor writing about what she's been hoping for her whole life and not getting it. The recurring romantic loss drives the speaker to beg the prophetic forces for change.
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the cost of success as a theme, Uncle Jerry names it explicitly and Angela says it hits the hardest for her. The speaker has achieved everything professionally but lacks the one thing that matters: companionship. Uncle Jerry raises the question of whether success in one area necessarily means lack of success in another, noting the expression 'you can't have it all.' Angela connects this to other Taylor songs (Peace, Anti-Hero, Elizabeth Taylor) where fame's cost to personal relationships is examined. Uncle Jerry frames the poet's voice as beginning to weigh which kind of success was more important, 'the notoriety and the money' or 'just somebody to pad around with.'
“Change the prophecy”
The prophecy itself, the pre-ordained destiny that has determined the speaker's romantic fate, is the song's central conceit. The speaker begs unnamed prophetic forces to change or redo what has been written about her life.
“And it was written”
The phrase 'it was written' places the speaker's romantic fate within the prophetic-fate register, the predetermined script that the song's central conceit asks to revise. Both the biblical formula ('it is written' / quoting Old Testament prophecy) and the idiom 'written in the stars' converge on the same image: a destiny already inscribed and beyond the speaker's authorship.
“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”
The moon here operates as both the tarot card (The Moon, a symbol of error, danger, and lurking unseen threats) and the celestial body the speaker howls at in desperation. The wolf howling at the moon marks the speaker's loss of composure and her alignment with wild, uncontrolled grief.
“Gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table”
The speaker has joined a coven of witches around a sorceress's table, she is seeking prophetic guidance from occult sources, marking her desperation to find answers about her romantic fate through any means available.
“I've been on my knees”
The kneeling is deliberately ambiguous, the speaker is simultaneously on her knees in prayer (addressing the sky, begging higher powers), on her knees because she's been knocked down by life (emotional collapse), and on her knees in supplication (begging for change). The song holds all three registers at once.
“But I looked to the sky and said "Please”
The speaker looks skyward and utters a single plaintive prayer, 'please', directing her appeal to God, the stars, or whatever prophetic force might be listening. The prayer is stripped to its most basic form, a single word of supplication.
“I got cursed like Eve got bitten Oh, was it punishment?”
Uncle Jerry extensively develops the Eve allusion as a technique, discussing how it poses the question of whether Eve's ejection from the Garden of Eden was punishment or a gift of free will. He connects it to Augustine of Hippo's concept of original sin versus the 11th-century Jewish theological reading that God wanted humanity to have free will. He then maps this theological question directly onto the speaker's romantic situation: 'Am I being punished because I keep losing relationships? Or is this because there's a better relationship out there and I'm supposed to seek it as a matter of my free will?'
The Eve allusion frames the entire song's central tension between fate and agency, is the speaker's romantic failure punishment or the necessary cost of free will?
“And it was written”
Uncle Jerry identifies this as allusion to biblical literature, 'Both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament say it is written and then they quote some passage or other.' He also connects it to the expression 'written in the stars,' which he calls 'sort of Shakespearean.' He develops the technique by showing how 'it was written' is 'frequently used by Jesus and Paul, and they're always referring to the Old Testament, which is where we find the story of Eve, which is the next line', demonstrating that the allusion coordinates rhythmically and structurally with the Eve reference that follows.
The biblical allusion frames the song's events as prophetic or foreordained, directly supporting the 'prophecy' concept and the tension between fate and free will.
“Mine play out like fools in a fable”
Uncle Jerry develops the allusion to literary and folk fools: he names Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer ('a character who's kind of a fool, his wife cheats on him'), Chaucer's Miller's Tale, and the tarot card The Fool. He discusses how 'none of them ever come to any good. Being the fool has your wife cheat on you... losing all your money, losing all your livestock, all the stories of fools always play out poorly for the fool.' He connects this to the tarot card imagery of the fool walking off a cliff.
The allusion to literary fools reinforces the speaker's sense that her romantic fate is written as a cautionary tale, she is the fool in her own story.
“Poison blood from the wound of the pricked hand”
Uncle Jerry identifies this as a Sleeping Beauty reference and develops it as a technique, discussing the Arne-Thompson index number 410, the multiple versions of the fairy tale (flax, needle, spinning wheel), and how the prophecy in Sleeping Beauty is changed by the good fairies, 'we can't do away with the whole prophecy, but we can change it slightly.' He connects this directly to the speaker's hope: 'she's using it here, because Cinderella in the Disney sense is a story of a changed prophecy.' Angela asks if it represents a 'tiny bit of hope,' and Uncle Jerry confirms.
The Sleeping Beauty allusion encodes hope within the prophecy framework, if the fairy tale's prophecy could be altered, perhaps the speaker's can be too.
“Hand on the throttle”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss how 'throttle' carries intentional ambiguity, it means to surge forward (as on a train or steamboat), puts her in the driver's seat, but also means to choke someone. Uncle Jerry says 'I wonder if she intentionally has ambiguity' and 'I'm wondering if she's being ambiguous with the word throttle to mean to surge forward or to choke somebody... I think she might mean both in this context.'
The ambiguity of throttle sets up the song's central tension between agency and helplessness, the speaker is both driving forward and being choked by her fate.
“I've been on my knees”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify multiple meanings: she's on her knees begging, on her knees praying, and on her knees because she's been knocked down by life. Uncle Jerry says 'She uses it both figuratively and literally... literally she's on her knees praying, but figuratively, she's been emotionally knocked down.' Angela adds the sense of being 'down and out', knocked to your knees.
The ambiguity of 'on my knees' reinforces the song's themes of helplessness and prayer, the speaker occupies all three states simultaneously.
“Oh, but it's gone again”
Uncle Jerry notes that 'it' is a general reference pronoun with no noun antecedent, and says Taylor does this purposefully, 'she wants us as the reader... to ask, well, what is it?' Since it's 'again,' he thinks it's probably a relationship, another lost relationship.
The ambiguous pronoun invites the listener to project their own reading onto what has been lost, supporting the song's universality.
“it was sinking in”
Uncle Jerry identifies a double meaning: 'sinking in' as idiomatic (the realization is dawning) and also literal (sinking in quicksand, as the next line reveals). He calls it ambiguous, 'the use of sinking is not only idiomatic, but it's also ambiguous.'
The dual meaning bridges the emotional realization with the physical metaphor of quicksand, reinforcing the theme of being pulled under by fate.
“I guess a lesser woman would've lost hope A greater woman wouldn't beg”
Uncle Jerry explicitly identifies this as 'juxtaposition or foil writing' and also as 'antithetical rhetoric' (antithesis). He notes the technique: 'lesser versus greater, lost hope versus begging', two different women set in binary opposition, where the listener is 'supposed to reflect back and forth on them.' He also connects this to Shakespeare's Macbeth, 'lesser than Macbeth and greater.'
The juxtaposition places the speaker between two idealized female responses, defining her as the 'normal woman' who occupies neither extreme, which humanizes the speaker and reinforces the song's emotional accessibility.
“A greater woman has faith But even statues crumble if they're made to wait”
Uncle Jerry identifies the continuation of the lesser/greater woman juxtaposition, 'a greater woman has faith, as opposed to the lesser woman who has no hope.' This second iteration of the greater/lesser binary develops the contrast further.
The repeated juxtaposition deepens the song's exploration of how the speaker positions herself against idealized female responses to suffering.
“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'Like a Wolf at the Moon' as a simile and connects it to the tarot card The Moon, which features a wolf howling. He notes the card can be 'a symbol of error or danger' and can be 'an ominous card.'
The simile connects the speaker's desperate cry to both the tarot card's ominous symbolism and the witchy atmosphere of the bridge.
“I got cursed like Eve got bitten”
Uncle Jerry explicitly identifies this as 'both an allusion and a simile', 'So I'm like Eve.'
The simile connects the speaker's romantic misfortune to the archetypal fall, placing her personal story in a mythic-theological register.
“Feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen”
Uncle Jerry identifies this as a simile, noting the ink pen image suggests she's run out of words to write about this experience. He also connects it to 'last drops of blood', 'she feels like she's bleeding out her life.' Angela confirms by connecting it to TTPD's vinyl poem line 'My veins of pitch black ink.'
The simile captures both creative exhaustion and emotional depletion, tying the speaker's artistic identity to her romantic suffering.
“And I sound like an infant”
Uncle Jerry identifies this as a simile, 'So how does an infant sound? Someone who whines and cries?' Angela adds 'I'm just like having a meltdown.'
The simile marks the speaker's vulnerability and regression, stripped of composure, reduced to inarticulate need.
“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”
Uncle Jerry identifies dactylic metre in this line, 'So we have dactyls, the dactylic meter... I howl like a wolf at the moon. So you have two unstressed syllables and one stressed syllable.' He connects the dactylic rhythm to Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, where the metre 'sounds the hoofbeats it describes', and says it suggests the speaker is 'running headlong into her disastrous life.' Angela confirms this matches the song's rhythm.
The dactylic metre gives the line a galloping, headlong quality that physically enacts the speaker's reckless plunge into fate.
“Please I've been on my knees”
Uncle Jerry discusses how 'most of the lines are at least six syllables, and then you get to the single line in the chorus, please. It really kind of makes it stand out. It's emphatic... that's something that all good poets do is when they do alter the rhythmic pattern, they alter it in a way that is trying to get a message to the reader. And the message is she really needs help.' The break from the established pattern to a single syllable is a deliberate metrical disruption.
The metrical disruption at 'please' enacts the speaker's desperation, the rhythmic pattern breaks just as her composure does.
“Gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table”
Uncle Jerry notes 'this really wonderful rhythmic power, gathered with a coven around a sorceress's table. So I have these alternating trochies and dactyls that are really fun.'
The rhythmic power of the line mirrors the incantatory quality of a coven gathering, supporting the witchy atmosphere.
“And it was written I got cursed like Eve got bitten Oh, was it punishment?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify 'it was written' as a biblical allusion, noting that both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament use the phrase 'it is written' when quoting Old Testament passages. The Eve reference is both an allusion and a simile, Taylor compares herself to Eve being bitten by the serpent and asks whether it was punishment. Uncle Jerry explores the theological complexity: Augustine of Hippo's concept of original sin versus the interpretation that God intended humanity to have free will. The question 'was it punishment?' maps onto Taylor's central question about whether her romantic failures are ordained punishment or a gift pushing her toward something better. Community readers press on the inversion the line invites: in Genesis Eve is not bitten, she does the biting, taking the fruit herself. Heard that way, "I got cursed like Eve got bitten" describes a self-authored curse rather than something done to her, the choice and its consequence both her own. It is an unreliable-narrator's question, is this happening to me or am I doing it to myself, and it pairs with "poison blood" (poisoned, not poisonous) and "I sealed my fate". The surface phrasing carries Eve as the one bitten, a reading the discussion itself reaches for, which is exactly the slip the line plays on: the curse only looks inflicted from outside.
“Poison blood from the wound of the pricked hand Oh, still I dream of him”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the 'pricked hand' and 'poison blood' as a Sleeping Beauty reference. Uncle Jerry specifies this as Aarne-Thompson index number 410, explaining the tradition of stories where a young girl is told by prophecy she will be pricked, sometimes by flax under the fingernail, sometimes by a spinning wheel needle, and fall into a death-like sleep until awakened by true love's kiss. He notes the connection to the song's prophecy theme: in Sleeping Beauty, the prophecy is partially changed by good fairies who alter death to sleep, suggesting a tiny bit of hope that Taylor's prophecy might also change. The line 'still I dream of him' connects to the sleeping/dreaming state of the fairy tale heroine.
“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the Moon as a specific tarot card reference. Uncle Jerry describes the card: the goddess of the moon looking down between two towers with a placid expression, a wolf howling, and a lobster/clawed creature emerging from water below, almost unseen, signifying lurking danger. He explains the Moon card can symbolize error, danger, or an ominous portent. Taylor's line directly echoes the wolf imagery on the card.
“Mine play out like fools in a fable”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the Fool as a specific tarot card reference. Uncle Jerry describes the card in detail: a figure with the sun over his shoulder, a rose in hand, a stave with a satchel, walking straight off a cliff while looking up at the sky, with a dog trying to stop him. He cites a Hebrew idiom from non-canonical literature: 'a fool walks with his dog behind him.' He notes that in all fables featuring fools, from Gimpel the Fool to Chaucer's Miller's Tale, the fool's story never ends well, and Taylor is saying her cards play out the same way.
Uncle Jerry discusses how his interest in tarot cards originated from reading the poetry of William Butler Yeats, noting that Yeats was a master of a Rosicrucian fellowship and many of his poems refer to tarot cards. While not a direct reference in The Prophecy's lyrics, Uncle Jerry uses Yeats as contextual background for understanding the tarot tradition that Taylor draws upon in this song.
on her knees, the posture of begging and of being proposed to
“I've been on my knees”
“Sometimes you just don't know the answer 'til someone's on their knees and asks you” — champagne problems
A community reading hears "I've been on my knees" against champagne problems' "'til someone's on their knees and asks you": the same lowered posture read two ways across the catalogue, the begging supplicant here and the rejected proposal there. In one song she is the one on her knees pleading for her fate to change, in the other it is the man kneeling to ask and being turned down, the gesture of hope meeting refusal from both sides of it.
padding through a home, his once imagined, now hers alone
“Pad around when I get home”
“I see me padding cross your wooden floors” — gold rush
Community readers hear the padding return from gold rush, where she imagines herself "padding cross your wooden floors", into his home and his life, picked up and inverted here, where she pads around her own home alone after the fact. The soft, quiet movement that once pictured belonging in someone else's house now traces the emptiness of her own.
crying out to an indifferent sky
“But I looked to the sky and said "Please"”
“And I still talk to you when I'm screaming at the sky” — my tears ricochet
A community reading pairs "I looked to the sky and said please" with my tears ricochet's "I still talk to you when I'm screaming at the sky": the sky as the address of last resort, the place you direct words when no person is left to hear them. The earlier song screams grief upward at someone gone; this one looks up and asks, quieter but no less without an answer, the heavens standing in both times for everything that cannot reply.
never enough against fame
“No, I could never give you peace” — peace
Angela connects The Prophecy's fear of not being enough to peace's No, I could never give you peace, the two songs asking whether the speaker can offer calm against a life that refuses it.
down since July - low and on her knees
“Please I've been on my knees Change the prophecy ... Let it once be me”
“Gray November I've been down since July” — evermore
The "down" of "I've been down since July" carries more than depression: it is also the posture of supplication, brought low and on the knees. Read that way it reaches forward to The Prophecy, where the same lowness becomes an outright plea - on her knees, begging for the prophecy of always being left alone to be redone. evermore holds the kneeling implicit in a single word; the later song says it aloud.
the cost of fame
“monster on the hill”
Angela folds The Prophecy into Anti-Hero's monster on the hill as another reckoning with what fame costs the person who carries it.
laying the cards on the table
“Cards on the table”
“My cards are on the table” — Foolish One (TV)
A community reading links "Cards on the table" back to the opening of Foolish One, "My cards are on the table": the same gambler's gesture of full disclosure, everything shown at once. In the earlier song it is the hopeful confession of someone betting on a love that will not be returned; here the same laid-out hand reads as a weary readiness to show everything to a fate that has already been written.
fate rewritten against the odds
“redo the prophecy”
“And undo the destiny” — But Daddy I Love Him
A tight lyric pair across the same album: the speaker's "undo the destiny" here answers The Prophecy's plea to "redo the prophecy". Both reach for the language of fate and ask to rewrite it, one song defiant that no outside force can undo what is meant to be, the other pleading for the chance to change what has already been written.
the writer and her ink, bleeding then spent
“Feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen”
“And all at once, the ink bleeds” — loml
Community readers pair the ink across the same album: loml's "and all at once, the ink bleeds" is the wound opening, the heartbreak still wet on the page, while The Prophecy's "the very last drops of an ink pen" is the aftermath, the writer emptied out with nothing left to put down. The two lines hold the beginning and the end of the same act of writing, the bleeding and the running dry.
the self rendered as a howling animal
“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”
“'Cause tail between your legs, you're leavin'” — The Black Dog
Community readers hear the animal register of The Black Dog, the lover leaving "tail between your legs", echoed in The Prophecy's "but I howl like a wolf at the moon". Across both songs the human is rendered as a creature, grief and longing pushing the speaker towards the animal.
the hand on the throttle, flight and full speed
“Hand on the throttle”
“Brand new, full throttle” — So High School
Community readers hear the throttle recur across the catalogue as Taylor's image for a relationship taken at full speed: "Hand on the throttle" here, "Brand new, full throttle" in So High School. The same control surface that means surging forward, gripped tight, reads as exhilaration in the later song and as the white-knuckle effort to steer her own fate in this one.
paper held down and paper carried off
“I'm just a paperweight in shades of greige”
“A feather taken by the wind” — I Look in People's Windows
Community readers set the paperweight against I Look in People's Windows on the same album, where the speaker is "a feather taken by the wind": one image is dead weight pinning paper down, the other is weightlessness blown wherever the air takes it. Two ways of describing the same loss of will, too heavy to move or too light to resist, the paper either trapped under glass or gone on the breeze.
patching cracks at home
“I was in my new house placing daydreams, patching up the crack along the wall” — Cassandra
Angela reads The Prophecy and Cassandra as sequential album companions, both finding the speaker at home in a bad moment, Cassandra patching up the crack along the wall.
the hand on the throttle, flight and full speed
“Hand on the throttle”
“While crossing your jet stream” — Peter
The same flight imagery that community readers trace from the throttle reaches Peter's "while crossing your jet stream": one hand on the controls, the other a vapour trail left in the sky. The throttle gives the pilot's grip and the jet stream the wake, two halves of the same aerial figure that recurs whenever the relationship is pictured as something airborne and hard to hold level.
the plea sent out to the universe, finally answered
“But I looked to the sky and said”
“I might've lingered in purgatory” — The Fate of Ophelia
Community readers hear The Fate of Ophelia as the answer to The Prophecy's plea. Where the earlier song begs the sky for a change of fate from a position of near-hopelessness, this one arrives at the rescue it asked for — the lingering in purgatory ended by someone who finally "came for me." Read together, the two songs frame a call and its long-delayed response.
trading riches for trust
“I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust” — Elizabeth Taylor
Angela sets The Prophecy's I don't want money sentiment beside Elizabeth Taylor's I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust, both speakers naming wealth as the thing they would give up for a faithful companion.
a prophecy begged at, later answered by making your own happiness
“Change the prophecy”
Community readers set the song against Opalite as a question and its later answer: here the speaker begs unseen forces to change a prophecy she feels powerless before, asking who she would even have to speak to; in Opalite the resolution is that you make your own happiness, that the one she needed to speak to was herself. The helplessness of the earlier song is exactly what the later one releases, the fate she pleaded to have rewritten turning out to be hers to write.
England's greatest playwright. Author of Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and the Sonnets.
Major English Romantic poet, literary critic, and author of closet dramas. Known for his literary criticism asserting that 'a single well-chosen word can be poetry.'
Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign, one of the most popular English-language poets.
English poet of the late medieval period, author of The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. Troilus and Criseyde (1380s) is the major Middle English treatment of the Trojan-War lovers narrative and the canonical courtly-love source for the story.
Irish poet and Nobel laureate, author of The Lake Isle of Innisfree and other major works of the Irish literary revival.
Polish-American author who wrote in Yiddish, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1978), known for short stories and novels drawing on Jewish folk tradition.
97.12
- Lyrical Strength
- 99
- Narrative & Structure
- 97
- Production & Atmosphere
- 96
- Lore & Literary References
- 100
- Emotional Impact
- 94