2. Elizabeth Taylor

1. Musical Style: 1950s Movie Melodrama Score

2. Literary References: "Antony and Cleopatra" by William Shakespeare

3. Key Lyric: "Hey, what could possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once?"

4. Favorite Lyric: "Babe, I would trade the Cartier for someone to trust (just kidding)."

5. Taylor's Callback: "...Ready for It?" from "Reputation"—"He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor, every love I've known in comparison is a failure."

6. TL/DR: "I wonder if I'll find the love that Liz Taylor couldn't?"

7. Previous Track 2s: Picture to Burn, Fifteen, Sparks Fly, Red, Blank Space, End Game, Cruel Summer, cardigan, champagne problems, Maroon, The Tortured Poets Department.

When I saw the track listings for Taylor's new album, which rolled out after her announcement on the "New Heights" podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce, I was most excited for her second track, "Elizabeth Taylor."

Shortly after, I got into an exchange with a young woman on Threads who had no idea who Liz Taylor even was. One of the most beautiful, talented, and celebrated actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Liz was also the most scandalous, going through seven husbands (eight, if you count Richard Burton twice, which she did) and enduring decades of tabloid journalism devoted to exposing every last detail of her private and public life.

Hmmm...that sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

It's no wonder Taylor chose another Taylor to write about. Hounded by the press for the entirety of her career, every relationship, big or small, detailed in every corner of the Internet, getting cancelled and moving to England, and performing under the brightest lights imaginable—the parallels of their life and fame are obvious.

The song is about that dynamic and how the right man overcomes it for her: "All the right guys / Promised they'd stay / Under bright lights / They withered away / But you bloom." 

The first verse spells out one of the reasons why Travis is different for her: he's used to the brightest lights, and he blooms under them. Before that previous quote, she sings, "Oftentimes it doesn't feel so glamorous to be me." 

One of the most important factors in understanding Taylor's life and art is that she willingly sacrificed having a "normal" life of privacy in exchange for fame as a singer. She asked for this life, so she doesn't have regrets, but she is a human being with emotions and desires, as was Elizabeth Taylor, and this tension between the famous life and the desire for love and security is the theme of this song.

The key verse and my favorite verse illustrate this tension perfectly. She is "the girl who has everything (fame) and nothing (love) all at once," but when she says she would trade one (Cartier) for the other (trust), she inserts, as an aside, "Just kidding."

Asides were a common technique for Shakespeare, who used the technique to allow his characters to speak the truth directly to the audience. The other Shakespeare connection, of course, is Liz Taylor's starring role as Cleopatra (no, I'm serious...this happened) beside perhaps her greatest love, Richard Burton.

Taylor and Burton also starred in the film version of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," about a married couple fighting as their relationship circles the drain of divorce. Both on screen and in the tabloids, Taylor and Burton lived their relationship within that tension of public and private lives.

For anyone too young to remember Elizabeth Taylor as a person, she was famous for her violet-colored eyes, which Taylor Swift uses as the hook for her chorus: "I'd cry my eyes violet / Elizabeth Taylor / Tell me for real / Do you think it's forever?"

Very few people know what it's like to be as famous as either of these Taylors, which is what I think makes the song so interesting. The bridge is lyrically complex as well, saying "All my white diamonds and lovers are forever," which references Liz's "White Diamonds" perfume brand as well as the classic James Bond film, "Diamonds Are Forever," another tie-in to Hollywood, which she also references in the chorus ("Be my N.Y. when Hollywood hates me / You're only as hot as your last hit, baby").

Swiftie lore takes the track number into serious account, and by placing "Elizabeth Taylor" at track two ("Been number one / but I never had two"), she places it among some of her best songs, including "Fifteen" (Fearless), "Blank Space" (1989), and "cardigan" (folklore). 

The music uses lush Hollywood string arrangements underneath a modern rhythm that emphasizes bass and drums in the way that the first track establishes. The bass drop followed by the string hit at the beginning of the chorus is the most memorable hook, but I love the swell of strings in the bridge, which also serves as the outro.

Judging my social media reaction, many fans already credit this song as their favorite on the album, which is no surprise, as her past track twos have generated some of her most popular hits. 

The song is basically a question: Travis is different from all her past romances, but can she be sure that it will last? She wrote this song before their famous proposal, but while diamonds are forever, not every love lasts as long, as she is well aware. She leaves us with the last line, "Don't you ever end up anything but mine..."

"Mine" was track one from "Speak Now," in which a young romance turns out to be the real thing, the one that lasts forever. Yeah, she's that clever and that specific. None of her lyrics are accidental.