How Generative AI Interprets Lyrics: Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

by Paul Halley | 2024 | THOUGHTS

And I love you, it’s ruining my life. I love you, it’s ruining my life. I touched you for only a fortnight. I touched you, but I touched you.

Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)

Tell me something awful, like you are a poet.

I Hate It Here

I feel so high school every time I look at you. I wanna find you in a crowd just to hide from you.

So High School

You left your typewriter at my apartment, straight from the tortured poets department. I think some things I never say, like, “Who uses typewriters anyway?”

The Tortured Poets Department

Lookin’ backwards Might be the only way to move forward

The Manuscript

Just a brink in a wrinkle of time.

So High School

I laughed in your face and said, “You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith. This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’rе modern idiots”

The Tortured Poets Department

Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more.

Clara Bow

You look like Stevie Nicks / In ’75, the hair and lips / Crowd goes wild at her fingertips / Half moonshine, a full еclipse

Clara Bow

When I picture my hometown, there’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you. And a plaque underneath it that threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school.

thanK you aIMee

Are you still a mind reader? A natural scene stealer? I’ve heard great things, Peter. But life was always easier on you than it was on me.

Peter

My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade. We wished we could live in instead of this.

I Hate It Here

Promise to be dazzling

Clara Bow

I saw in my mind ferry lights through the mist. I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift. Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away.

So Long, London

Things I think about before I go to bed.

by Paul Halley | 2024 | THOUGHTS

You don’t receive love by trying to attract it.

by Paul Halley | 2024 | THOUGHTS

You don’t receive love by trying to attract it. It doesn’t come with a new outfit, a new haircut, a new fancy job or car, a revision to the text you were about to send, or a selfie posted to your social media. If you keep thinking that way, you’re going to start thinking poorly of your outfit, your hair, your job, your car, your words, and your photos when love doesn’t arrive from that effort.

You receive love by *being* the love want to receive. You receive love by opening your heart up and giving out the love you have to everyone who crosses your path. To the homeless person who needs a cigarette, to your neighbor who needs a helping hand, to your coworker who needs instructions, to your friends who need a listening ear, to your family who needs your commitment. They all need your love. So give it away and it will return in abundance.

‘Red’ is my favorite Taylor Swift song.

by Paul Halley | 2024 | THOUGHTS

“Red” (2012/2021) — This is my favorite Taylor Swift song. It shows us the emotional roller coaster of love and loss, like many of her songs do so well. But this song takes it a step further by illustrating how some parts of that roller coaster are so intimate and so vulnerable, that sometimes we need to stretch the bounds of language to express what we feel, and what we went through.

The lines in “Red” compare the unique experiences she had with “him” (touching, fighting, forgetting, etc.) to other somewhat-universal experiences that fans can visualize and latch onto (like “realizing all you ever wanted was right there in front of you”).

But there are other experiences with “him” that are more difficult to describe, and the lyrics prove that to us. More liminal experiences like “losing” and
“missing.” So Taylor uses color and metaphor to represent these particular experiences and feelings.

Taylor could’ve easily wrote “Losing him was like drowning in the vast blue ocean.” But instead she wrote, “Losing him was blue.” She could’ve easily wrote “Missing him was like a dark gray night, all alone.” But instead she wrote, “Losing him was dark gray.” She could’ve easily said “Loving him was like the bloom of a red, red rose.” But instead she wrote, “Loving him was red.”

This song reminds me of a day at work when I was substitute teaching elementary school. I asked the kiddos to tell me how they were feeling using a color and to explain why they chose that color. They all told me that the color they chose reminded them of how they felt. None of it made logical sense because we don’t feel colors, and emotions don’t come in a Crayloa box. But somehow, all the kids understood each other that day.

Taylor has a way of resonating with her fans that sometimes doesn’t make sense. Her writing is so personal and so vulnerable, how could anyone relate? Yet her music and her writing resonates with millions of fans spanning across generations, for 10 whole albums (so far!).

Healing through experience.

by Paul Halley | 2024 | THOUGHTS

In the moments where you’ve dealt with something painful or upsetting, did you ever have a moment where it all just clicked in your head? Like, you spent so much time worrying or feeling confused or just wasn’t able to make sense of a situation…And then suddenly, after all the rumination, anxiety, and talks with the people you trust (that didn’t fully help at the time), the lightbulb just went off? Suddenly, you figured out not how to heal, but that you’ve already healed.

There are moments in life that put a weight on top of you that you just can’t bear to hold. But then you realize, “I did hold that weight, and I held it with strength the entire time — and I didn’t let it crush me. Instead, I kept carrying until I had even more strength to lift myself up, let go of it, and throw it as far away from me as I could.”

In other words, all the time you spent holding onto the pain, trying to figure out how to heal — it was those moments where the healing took place.

I know you’ve dealt with these moments. We all have.

Don’t try to run away from what you’re going through. Sit with it. Hold onto it. Feel it. And then one day, something will click in your head. What clicks is what you’ve learned from carrying it for so long. What clicks is the sudden realization that everything you’ve gone through in this situation *was* the healing that needed to take place.

I will never be a perfect man.

by Paul Halley | 2023 | THOUGHTS

I have somewhat-heartbrokenly accepted the fact that I will never be a perfect man. But I try my best everyday to be a good man. To protect and provide my family and friends. To rely on myself. To have courage and independence and strength. To accept others without judgment. To use my emotions strategically. To do whatever it takes to have a clear head and be without brain fog. To protect children and respect the elderly. To be of service. To forgive.

I did not always have these values, and I admit I am not always 100% aligned with them. But expecting myself to be 100% aligned all the time is an expectation of perfection. But what I can expect from myself is that I’ll always try my best