The Road Not Taken Looks Real Good Now

Taylor Swift “Tis the Damn Season”

“Tis the Damn Season” is like the dark mirror of “Invisible String,” in which the ways two people are tied together are more like a knot of emotional complications than some magical romantic inevitability. The protagonist is a young woman who’s come back to her home town for the holidays who slips back into old feelings for an ex who never left town or moved on. She’s pulled into the gravitational field of their feelings but is incredibly unsure about how close she wants to get to them – “you can call me ‘babe’ for the weekend, ’tis the damn season.”

Even if they are coming on too strong and she’s a bit hesitant, it’s clear enough these two really do love one another. But it’s also apparent that they’re both actually just engaging with their doubts and insecurities about staying or leaving town as the ex tries to hang on tightly to something they thought they’d lost and she worries that she won’t find anyone as eager and accepting somewhere else. Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner attain a very well-calibrated level of melodrama in this song – just enough to sell the weight of the feelings, but reserved enough to keep it centered in the protagonist’s bittersweet ambivalence.

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