Infidelity
Songs in which a partner has cheated, is being cheated with, or is suspected of cheating. In Taylor's writing infidelity is sometimes confronted (Should've Said No), sometimes narrated from inside the affair (illicit affairs, High Infidelity), and sometimes used to drive a song's narrative structure (Babe).
Appears in 10 songs
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the illicit love affair as the poem's central situation. Uncle Jerry states explicitly: 'yes, this looks like an illicit love affair' and describes how the hand 'has been promised to another,' the love is 'tarnished but grand' and 'magnificently cursed,' and the lovers must hide, 'what would he do if he found us out?' The husband figure ('he's in the room,' 'drink my husband's wine') confirms the affair's forbidden nature. This reading holds across all of Uncle Jerry's multiple interpretive takes.
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss James's infidelity as the engine of the song's drama. Uncle Jerry notes that James admits to sleeping with the girl from August while claiming he was thinking of Betty the whole time, calling this 'doubly bad for poor August.' They discuss how James reveals his duplicitous nature through the dramatic monologue, he cannot be trusted because he wasn't even faithful to August while with her. Uncle Jerry frames this as James revealing too much about himself, showing that 'August should never have trusted him.'
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss James's infidelity as a structural element of the poem. Uncle Jerry reads 'A friend to all is a friend to none' as Betty questioning whether James's relationship with her was genuine or superficial, noting the word 'friend' operates across registers from 'a very distant and very close relationship', 'a not particularly spiritual but very physical friendship.' The line 'Chase two girls, lose the one' makes the infidelity explicit and carries the additional weight of 'the one', not just losing one of the girls but potentially losing the soulmate. Uncle Jerry connects this to the cardigan-under-the-bed imagery: 'James and August are twisting up on the seats and meanwhile Betty has been tossed up under the bed.'
Explores infidelity of the mind, lustful, sinful thoughts about someone who is not her partner, framed in heavy religious imagery.
A vault track exploring the aftermath of a relationship clouded by suspected infidelity, the narrator interrogates whether the relationship was ever faithful.
The title announces the theme directly, a song about confronting a partner's infidelity and the impossible question of whether to stay.
A quiet, devastating portrait of a secret affair, shame, secrecy, and the particular damage of a relationship that cannot be acknowledged.
Taylor positions herself as complicit in infidelity, she was the affair partner, and the relationship born in betrayal was always doomed.
A retaliatory response to infidelity, another woman has stolen her partner, and Taylor's narrator turns the anger outward rather than inward.
Taylor confronts a partner who cheated and asks why they didn't resist the temptation, one of her earliest direct treatments of betrayal through infidelity.