Taylor Swift's “Cleveland!”: Is She Making Fun of Us?

Podcast Episode: October 21, 2026

Taylor Swift has never been afraid to poke fun at the absurdities of fame, fandom, and her own public image. But in Cleveland!, she takes that self-aware humour to a whole new level. It’s sarcastic, satirical, and gloriously unserious.

So naturally, I’m taking it extremely seriously.

In this episode of The Swiftly Sung Stories Podcast, we’re unpacking Cleveland! line by line. We’ll explore how Taylor uses satire, sarcasm, and self-deprecation to poke fun at the Swiftie universe. And that includes, perhaps most especially, the woman who created it in the first place.

Taylor Swift has never been afraid to poke fun at the absurdities of fame, fandom, and her own public image. But in “Cleveland!”, she takes that self-aware humour to a whole new level. It’s sarcastic, satirical, and gloriously unserious.

So naturally, I’m taking it extremely seriously.

✏️In this episode, we’ll discuss:

Taylor’s “glitter gel pen” songs
How Taylor has used satire to clap back in the past
Who (or what) Taylor might be clapping back at here
What Cleveland! really represents
And much more!

Listen to the Episode

⌛Timestamps

01:20 What’s Going on With Cleveland?
02:19 Taylor’s Glitter Gel Pen Songs
04:07 Taylor’s Satirical Songs
09:25 Why Did Taylor Write Cleveland?
14:03 Randy Newman’s Satirical Cleveland Song
16:06 Lyric Analysis: Verse 1
21:29 1st Pre-Chorus
23:19 1st Chorus
31:37 Verse 2
37:34 The Bridge
41:38 Final Chorus
44:46 Does Cleveland Stick the Landing?
47:18 What’s Next

🎤 Other TS Songs Discussed

📖 Episode Resources

Episode Transcript

Intro [00:00]

“Taylor Swift has written a song making fun of herself, her fans, and pretty much the entire culture that surrounds her.

Cleveland!, with an exclamation point, is silly and lighthearted and sarcastic and satirical. This song does not take itself seriously at all. So naturally, my response is to take it extremely seriously and make an entire episode analyzing it line by line,

Today on the Swiftly Sung Stories podcast, we are unpacking Cleveland!, a song in which Taylor roasts us and roasts herself. But here’s the question: when Taylor makes herself the punchline, who’s actually the butt of the joke?

Let’s get into it.

Before we dive in, if you love the literary side of Taylor Swift, if you love learning, if you ever wish that there was an actual Taylor Swift English class, welcome home. You are so in the right place. I use my background as an English teacher to unpack Taylor’s lyrics, her storytelling, and her whole cinematic universe so we can figure out what’s really going on underneath the surface and hopefully learn a thing or two along the way.

So if that sounds like your kind of thing, make sure you are subscribed on YouTube or Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you get your podcasts. And send this to your Swiftie friends who love doing lyrical deep dives with you. It really helps me expand my reach and get the word out about this podcast. I appreciate it so very much.

[00:01:20] What’s Going on With Cleveland?

Watching the reaction to Cleveland and the whole encore, but particularly Cleveland, has been incredibly interesting and not at all surprising. There’s the side of the internet saying, “What the hell is this? She’s so cringey.” And then there’s the side of the internet saying, “Dude, she’s always been like this.

Like, where have you been?” Both reactions are valid because you can like what you like, as Taylor tells us in this track. Any reaction is correct in its own way. But you know me, I like to get more analytical than that here.

And I can tell you, having studied and analyzed every single one of Taylor’s studio album songs, all of which you can find on my website linked in the show notes, Cleveland falls into two specific categories of Taylor Swift songs. Number one, it is a glitter gel pen song, and number two, it is a satirical song.

And these are two tools in Taylor’s toolbox that she uses for very specific purposes, and she has used these tools for a long time.

[00:02:19] Taylor’s Glitter Gel Pen Songs

So first, what’s a glitter gel pen song? In 2022, when Taylor was accepting the Songwriter of the Decade award at the Nashville Songwriting Awards, she gave this incredible acceptance speech.

And during that speech, she revealed something really important. She told us how she categorizes her own songs. And she does this. She says according to what she imagines having in her hand while she’s writing them. her three genres are fountain pen songs. This is her most common category.

Basically pouring her heart out using really vivid imagery and metaphors and details. You think like All Too Well and Maroon. Then there’s quill pen songs, which are a bit more antiquated. There’s flowery phrasing. Think Willow, Ivy, The Lakes. And then there’s glitter gel pen songs, and here’s how Taylor describes these:

The third category is called Glitter Gel Pen. And it lives up to its name in every way. Frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat. Glitter Gel Pen lyrics don’t care if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously. Me? Is she about to me us? Glitter Gel Pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an angel in the back

Every once in a while in these fraught times in which we live.

So these are songs that are silly and sarcastic. Think of Shake It Off, You Need to Calm Down, Wood, 22.

Cleveland definitely falls into this category. But many of these glitter gel pen songs also use a very specific flavor of humor. Like, she’s not making fart jokes. She’s so much wittier than that and smarter than that, and she’s typically being self-deprecating

[00:04:07] Taylor’s Satirical Songs

So she’s using satire, and this is our second category that the song falls into.

Cleveland is a satirical song, and even if you can’t really define what satire is off the top of your head, you know it when you see it. Think SNL, Nathan Fielder, that kind of humor, that’s satire. But something that can get really confusing when we talk about satire because there’s also sarcasm, they’re kind of the same and they’re kind of not.

They’re both forms of humor that we use in storytelling, and they’re often used simultaneously. But what’s different is their intent. And if English isn’t your first language or if you’re neurodivergent like me, these can be really tricky to distinguish when you spot them out in the wild because it’s about reading between the lines.

But basically, sarcasm and satire are ways of making fun of something in a sneaky way, and it’s all about vibes and tone. And this is a really big part of media literacy, understanding whether you’re supposed to take something seriously or not. So here’s the difference: sarcasm is pointed at one person. Say Ricky is late to class. He walks in in the middle of a lecture and the professor says, “So glad you could join us today, Ricky.” But she says it in, in that annoyed way. She’s not glad Ricky joined because he’s interrupting class. You can tell just from her tone there she’s being sarcastic, but just towards Ricky.

She’s not calling out anybody else. But satire, on the other hand, this is meant to poke fun at or point out something that’s unfair in the world at large. It’s not pointed at just one particular person. It’s making you laugh, but it’s more used to make you think, usually with this really, like, dark, wry humor, but also using things like exaggeration and parody and irony and even sarcasm to point to this particular thing.

So let’s say we’re back in our classroom. Ricky is late again, and he says, “I’m so sorry. My boss wouldn’t let me go.” The professor then assigns him a 10-page essay on the importance of work-life balance and announces that it is due tomorrow morning. That is a satirical situation because number one, it, it’s funny looking from the outside if you’re not Ricky.

Like, it sucks to be Ricky. But looking from the outside, this professor is a hypocrite. It’s ironic. And two, it’s because it points out this discrepancy that, like, we’re supposed to have work-life balance, but if we ever wanna make it to be successful in, in whatever that is, getting good grades or getting a raise, that’s often impossible to do.

You can’t balance your work and your life and still expect to be super successful. So the point of satire is to get you to think, to start a conversation using humor, while the point of sarcasm is just to be kinda mean without seeming like you’re being mean. And Taylor has used both sarcasm and satire for a really long time.

Since the beginning of her songwriting, it’s, it’s baked into her humor. But a couple of her songs are strictly satire, and they are not meant to be taken seriously at all. Cleveland is definitely one of those. But the kind of textbook example of a Taylor satire song that, that I always go back to when I talk about this is Blank Space.

Now, Blank Space was written at a time when the, this is what she calls it, slut-shaming, so I’m gonna use that term. As she told us in the 1989 Taylor’s Version prologue, the slut-shaming was getting really, really loud and really harmful. So she does what is now a trademark Taylor move, which is instead of running away from the controversy, hoping it just dies down and goes away on its own, she does the opposite.

She leans in, and she uses humor to make fun of others for making fun of her. So she writes Blank Space, which essentially says, like, ” Yeah, I’ve got a roster full of men. I’m gonna love ’em and leave ’em, and you … Do you wanna be next? You look like my next mistake. You know, love’s a game. Wanna play?” She’s not actually saying that with a straight face.

She’s not saying, “I’m a man eater, and I’m gonna eat you.” She’s saying, “They’re calling me a man eater, and do you see how ridiculous that is? Do they do this to male pop stars my age? No, they don’t.” So she’s using humor and exaggeration to point to the real issue. And she also does this in Anti-Hero, “I’m the problem.

It’s me,” Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, “But daddy, I love him,” most recently in Cancelled. We have this precedent leading up to Cleveland. Satire’s a tool, and she uses it when she needs to clap back. And next, we’re gonna look at what she could possibly be clapping back at. But one more quick note about her use of satire.

You’ll notice that there’s an exclamation point in the title of Cleveland, and that’s another signal that the song will be satire. She has used exclamation points in four other songs leading up to this: Me!, Slut!, Florida!, and Cancelled!

And all of those songs are satire to one degree or another. So that’s another signal that this song is not to be taken literally. That’s her little bat signal, like, “I’m being unserious, so I’m using an exclamation point where one is not needed.”

[00:09:25] Why Did Taylor Write Cleveland?

But what is Cleveland really about? And if she’s using humor to bite back, what is she biting back at?

If she wrote Blank Space in response to the slut-shaming of that era, what is she responding to in Cleveland? And this is my best guess, and this is only speculation based on what I know and based on evidence in the text. But I think she’s responding to two big things. One, the critical reception of this album, The Life of a Showgirl.

It was not the most warmly received album or era of her career, and people said it sucked. And remember that this was an album that came out after she met and fell in love with and got engaged to Travis Kelce. But why does that matter what was going on in her personal life at the time this album was released?

Because those two things are never mutually exclusive for Taylor, and they never have been. Her career and her personal life are always tangled in this messy web that she can never quite escape. So that’s the second thing that I think she’s responding to here, is the perception of her relationship and how her relationship may have changed her.

A lot of the chatter online after this album came out was, “Now that she’s happy, her songwriting really sucks.” And to really try to understand Cleveland better, I try to put myself in her shoes, what that must have felt like. Because for a lot of us, it can feel like, “Oh, boo-hoo, poor little rich girl got a bad review,” which is valid.

But picture this. I’ve just wrapped up a record-breaking world tour. I’m the most successful artist in the world in a career that I built with my own two hands. I’ve just won a decades-long battle to repurchase my life’s work that was stolen by men trying to use me for profit. And personally, after two heart-wrenching breakups that I detailed extensively in a massive double album, I felt that I was destined to be alone forever.

I climbed to the top of this mountain, and it’s really lonely up here, and isolating, and no one can stand beside me. But then I met someone. And it turns out he’s the one I’ve been looking for this whole time, and I’m madly in love. I’ve found my person. So I’m gonna write an album inspired by this whole rollercoaster I’ve been on,

And it’s by the numbers a massive success. It breaks all of the streaming records instantly. And then the love of my life asks me to marry him. But what does the public say about this album, about my relationship, while I’m at peak happiness? They say that now that I’ve made it to the top and found everything that I’ve been searching for, that somehow my songwriting sucks.

Being happy in my personal life somehow negates my professional life and achievements. That is a heavy place to be in. And that’s the thing about Taylor’s universe, if you’ve been around for a minute, you know this. Every new piece of music she puts out will be criticized to death. It’s happening right this moment with The Encore.

It’s too poppy or it’s not poppy enough. It’s too sad. It’s not sad enough. Her writing is juvenile or her writing is too complex, I can’t understand it. The chatter will never end. But this chatter was slightly different because it blames her happiness, like her, her personal relationship, her personal life, just like in the 1989 era.

And a lot of what this album is about is that battle between her private life and her public persona. Can those two things ever coexist peacefully or will they always be at war? And this is something that she’s been writing circles around for several albums now. So I think The Encore and a song like Cleveland is really interesting because it’s almost an epilogue to the Showgirl album.

She told us it was written after this album came out, and with previous deluxe versions, songs were all written around the same time and just, like, released at different times. But these are a distance apart, and she’s had some time to rest and reflect on Showgirl and the whole whirlwind, and it seems she’s thinking, “I can’t win.

I can’t ever just be enough for these people.” So what does she do? She does what Taylor does, which is that she fights back, but with humor and wit and satire instead of rage and anger. And this is what allows her to say what she wants to say, but in a kind of coded message. And the Cleveland lyrics are the key, but the code won’t be deciphered by the people who make fun of her.

So she’s creating this inside joke, and the people we are laughing at don’t know that we’re laughing at them

[00:14:03] Randy Newman’s Satirical Cleveland Song

But would you believe me if I told you that Taylor isn’t the first artist to write a satirical song about Cleveland? I kind of didn’t believe it either, but in 1972, Randy Newman, whom you know from creating the Toy Story musical universe, wrote a song called Burn On about a very specific event in Cleveland’s history, and that’s the Burning River.

The Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland on its way to feed Lake Erie, at one point it was so polluted because of all the factories and the industrial waste and oil being dumped into it, it caught on fire no less than 13 times in 20 years. In 1969, it caught on fire for what would be the last time, and that’s the fire that Randy Newman was inspired by.

So he wrote this song that calls Cleveland the City of Light, using this dark humor to point out that, like, the city is literally in flames, and he calls it the, the City of Magic, but it’s not, it’s not magical, but he’s hinting that it could be maybe if there were some environmental protections and people actually gave a shit.

The Cuyahoga River was cleaned up, and today Cleveland, though it’s still sometimes called the Mistake on the Lake, is a much nicer city. But it is not a dream destination for anyone, and if you’re not American, you might be missing this bit of Taylor’s joke, which is that Cleveland is no fantasy city anyone wants to visit like New York or Paris or London.

It is a mid-size Midwest city in Ohio not known for much other than the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and some sports teams. So Taylor’s song and Randy Newman’s song hinge on this perception of Cleveland that it’s not magical. It’s not the City of Light. It’s no one’s dream destination, and that’s a major part of the satire.

Okay, so that was a lot of backstory, but we have thoroughly set the scene, so we are all gonna get on the same page going in. Let’s get into it line by line. Here is Cleveland.

[00:16:06] Lyric Analysis: Verse 1

She’s not as hot as she was, but she was only a four. She was never a girl’s girl. She was just a… And with all that money why’s she dressed like trash? When she smiles it’s annoying and have you seen her?” Can we talk about that iconic first line, “She’s not as hot as she was, but she was only a four”?

She’s, like, setting the tone right from the jump, which I love. I’m about to poke fun at myself, that’s what she’s saying. And we can imagine that she’s narrating this kind of perspective of these online bros who are saying, “Ugh, she’s not hot anymore,” you know? And maybe another dude replies, “Dude, she was only a four to begin with.”

Like, so she’s less hot now. That would make her, what, a two or a three? Like, ch- she’s not, of course. She’s stunning, and this is part of the joke. And she’s setting up what is gonna become a central theme of the song, which are the narratives that the public writes about her versus the private narrative her husband writes about her or that she writes about herself.

And then we have more public chatter. This time it’s from a female lens. “She was never a girl’s girl. She was just a…” And you know the word that we all heard during that blank space in the lyrics, right? I don’t think I can say it on here without getting my episode marked as explicit, but it begins with a W.

But she’s doing something really clever here, which is called a subverted rhyme or a mind rhyme, where the rhyme is implied but it’s not explicitly stated. And this is used a lot in childhood rhymes, nursery rhymes, like Miss Susie Had a Steamboat. But it’s also used in pop songs, and you’ll know this one from Mr.

Brightside. “Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick, and it’s all in my head but she’s touching his chest now.” We hear the word that they mean in our minds, but we don’t hear it from the speaker. it essentially allows you to say the word without saying the word because our minds will fill in the blanks, especially when there’s a rhyme scheme that’s already established.

So here it would rhyme with four. And that’s a part of this, like, cheeky silliness of the song. She’s making fun of herself like the public makes fun of her to point out the ridiculousness of all of this, and she’s using this really playful, childish poetic device. So there’s the format and then there’s what she’s actually saying.

And never a girl’s girl. That’s likely pointing to that infamous Snake Gate episode in the 1989 era in which Kim Kardashian turned the entire internet against her. Because what is the opposite of a girl’s girl? A snake. And on the page, what is that em dash in the lyrics where that mind rhyme, the word that rhymes with four?

It’s a blank space. And in this line in particular, the rhyme that implies she’s definitely calling back to that 1989 era again. And as we’re gonna see as we go on, this song runs parallel to Blank Space in its humor and its satire, and then also in this line where she’s saying essentially, “They’re calling me a slut.”

And Slut! with an exclamation point is another track that parallels this one on 1989. So the parallels are paralleling. And then she goes on, “And with all of that money, why is she dressed like trash?” And if you’ve existed on the internet in the Taylor Swift universe, you’d know that these are more really common complaints about Taylor.

One, she has too much money, and two, her fashion sense is tacky. She’s a billionaire, and yet she’s trashy. And the point here is that old saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” And as we’re about to learn, she is a treasure to a man who loves her. Is it corny? Yes. But is it also true? Yes.

She’s not for everyone. Not everyone understands her or her choices or her style or her music, and that’s okay, because you can’t please everyone all the time, which is the central message of this song she goes on, “When she smiles, it’s annoying, and have you seen her?” What we expect to hear is ass, pointing out this really harsh body commentary whi- which is calmer now than it used to be, but it’s still entirely too loud.

And again, pointing back to 1989, the blank space era. But when she smiles, it’s annoying, though. Like, that’s the most interesting part of this for me because what does smiling mean? That you’re happy, that you’re joyful, and how can someone’s smile be annoying? Why would that joy cause you to cringe? If you hate that person or if you hate yourself, that smile could be annoying, but if you love someone, their smile is the best smile you’ve ever seen.

And this is another common gripe about Taylor and has been for 20 years, that she’s annoying. But this is more pointed. Her smile, her happiness, her joy is annoying, and that’s within my theory of what she’s clapping back at, that her music sucks now that she’s happy. And adding another layer of irony, people will say that this song is annoying because it’s happy, and upbeat, and silly, and doesn’t take itself seriously.

So she’s got, she got layers going on here. We’re just peeling back the onion.

[00:21:29] 1st Pre-Chorus

But then she takes the subverted rhyme and goes somewhere totally unexpected when she enters the pre-chorus. Instead of have you seen her ass, it’s have you seen her stumbling clumsily? Would you even call that dancing? And here’s another common criticism that Taylor can’t dance, and she’s admitted this.

It’s something that she’s worked really hard on throughout her career, and you can see the difference when you watch earlier tour films, 1989, Reputation, versus the Eras Tour. Her choreo and her movement has grown by miles. So what she’s just listed in the first verse are all these common gripes that people have had against Taylor since she became a star.

She’s annoying. She can’t dance. She’s not hot enough. She has too much money. She’s trashy. She’s a snake. She’s a slut. But after she’s pointed out all of these complaints, she says something totally unexpected. She says, “I can see what you mean.” And that phrase, I can see, that means you can identify what this other person means.

You don’t have to agree, and it’s often a signal that you don’t agree. So she’s not conceding. She’s saying, “Yeah,” like, “I’m not perfect, and I can see how other people might say these things or think these things about me. I don’t agree, but I can see why they say that, why they might think that.” But the irony here is that she’s made millions and been in the public eye in the first place because she makes art that people like, and she’s managed to remain in the public’s good graces against all odds, not just because we love her music, but because we love her.

And yet people still love to hate her. This is the contradiction that she’s pointing out with satire.

[00:23:19] 1st Chorus

And then she continues in the chorus, ” And now I guess there’s something we all can agree on.” Hmm. Do we agree? No, not all. I do not agree. Taylor is not annoying or a bad dancer or just a four, not to me, hopefully not to you if you’re watching this.

She’s being sarcastic here. She’s not agreeing like, “Yeah, I’m annoying. Yeah, I can’t dance.” That’s not what she’s saying. What she’s getting at is we all agree with whatever we want to agree with. There are camps over here who hate her and camps over there that love her. And even within those camps, people don’t agree with one another.

We’ll have to agree to disagree is basically what she’s getting at. And she’s also lyrically kind of shrugging because the next line is, “But my baby likes what he likes.” And that “but” is a load-bearing word in that phrase. We can all agree, but we actually don’t agree at all.

Because there’s this person over here who loves me, so I guess we don’t all agree on your opinion of me at all. And then the overall message is, it doesn’t matter what you think about me because your opinion doesn’t matter to me. You know whose opinion does matter? My baby. I don’t care what you think of me because I finally found someone who loves me for exactly who I am.

And this is also part of the satire, which we’re gonna dig into in a moment. She’s not saying that his is the only opinion that matters. This is part of the whole shtick. So there’s something we all can agree on, but my baby likes what he likes. He already took me to Cleveland. And this is her central metaphor that ties her whole narrative together.

But it’s really layered, and I think that what a lot of people are missing is they take Cleveland at face value. But it, it’s not just a city, it’s a metaphor. We know that Travis Kelce, Taylor’s now husband, is from Cleveland, specifically Cleveland Heights. So on the surface, this means he took her to see his hometown.

And you don’t just take anyone to the place where you were born and raised. You take people you intend to be with forever. And he did it already. He did it quickly in their relationship. So she’s implying that marriage and forever is on the horizon, and that they knew they were meant to be pretty instantly.

This was a fast connection. And it’s a deep connection because they’re truly getting to know one another. It’s not a surface-level love at first sight thing. It’s real. that’s one level of the Cleveland metaphor. I don’t care what you think about me. I have found the only person that matters, the person I’ve been searching for, and it’s a real, deep connection.

But then there’s the humor of this line because Cleveland is not a dream city for most people to visit. It’s not exciting like New York. It’s not glamorous like Paris. It’s a city that is called the Mistake on the Lake. And no shade to Clevelanders. I think your city is lovely. It’s just not a city that many people have on their bucket list, except maybe for like sporting events or the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which is a great museum.

You should go see it. But Taylor is a person who could visit anywhere, anytime, at any expense. So to say, “He took me to Cleveland,” is kind of the equivalent of saying, “He took me to Pizza Hut.”

It’s this cheeky, satirical way of saying, your idea of me, your opinion of me, and what I should act like, and what I should look like, and who I should be in a relationship with means nothing. All that matters is my own opinion because my idea of paradise, my idea of perfection is mine alone. And it doesn’t matter where he takes me, as long as I’m with him, life is perfect.

It’s a lot like the song Wishlist on this album, where she doesn’t want the jet set life, she doesn’t want designer everything. She just wants this person. And in that way, Cleveland is actually like Wishlist’s sarcastic cousin. My wishlist isn’t Cartier and a holiday in the Maldives. It’s a driveway with a basketball hoop in Cleveland.

So to Taylor, Cleveland represents this fundamental difference of opinion. Some people think it’s trashy and look at it and say, “Ugh, I would never step foot in Cleveland.” But for some people, it’s perfect. So for her to frame Cleveland as the ultimate expression of love is ironic, and it’s also part of this tongue-in-cheek satire of the song.

But it’s gonna get deeper than that as we continue. So he takes her to Cleveland physically or metaphorically or both, and showed me the heights. And this is another layered metaphor. Cleveland Heights is a suburb of Cleveland, where we know Jason and Travis Kelce grew up. So that’s the s- the straight up meaning.

But then there’s alternate meanings of the heights. There’s New Heights, the podcast that the Kelce brothers host, which Taylor has appeared on and actually announced this album on. And she also actually punned on that podcast title in Wood with new heights of manhood. So there’s precedent for that meaning.

And then finally, there’s the metaphorical heights, like the pinnacle, the height of what love can be. And she’s reached the peak. He showed me what real love looks like and feels like, and he showed me the heights. So hate all you like, this is the love of my life. This portion is really layered, too. So hate all you like has a straightforward meaning of like, you can hate me all you want.

I don’t care. But to hate all you like points out this major contradiction in the Swiftie universe because it does seem like many fans love to hate Taylor. So what she means is either you say that you hate me, but you love me, or you say that you love me, but you really hate me You might actually hate all of the things you like.

And she’s touched on this subject before, this weird parasocial love-hate fan relationship in But Daddy I Love Him. These people only raise you to cage you, and they try to save you ’cause they hate you. So these people are her public, her fans, the people who call themselves fans but actually just wanna hate her.

So hate me all you want, she says, you know, but, like, maybe look internally and asking why you’re doing that or, like, are you projecting? And then there’s this really definitive statement: “This is the love of my life.” And at first glance, we automatically assume she’s talking about Travis here, and she is.

But this song, up until this point, has been about herself and her fame and not her husband. So what is the other love of her life? Her career. Performing, songwriting. That’s what she’s been talking about in her verses, not her relationship. This is also the love of her life. It’s not just what she does, it is who she is.

So in that way, she’s also saying, “You can hate my music all you like. You can hate my smile or my body or my style or my choices,” but that’s showgirl me. Because remember, this album is drawing the distinction between these two sides of herself, the showgirl Taylor, the one in the spotlight, and the private Taylor, who lives and loves and gets married and has her own private world.

So not only is she proclaiming her love for Travis here and for her career, which she’s done several times in this album to both, but she’s also subtly pointing out that it’s her life and not ours. This is the love of my life. And when we’re griping about her smile or her clothes or her body, we’re complaining about the showgirl, the public persona.

We don’t get to complain about private Taylor because we don’t even know her. We don’t have a say in what she does or who she loves. We can like her, we can love her, or we can hate her, but we don’t get to live her life for her

[00:31:37] Verse 2

The second verse starts, “The taste of me is acquired, but it’s his favorite dish.”

A little bit of cheeky innuendo there. If food is an acquired taste, it means, like, you might not like it at first, or it takes a while to learn to love it and appreciate it. Like oysters are an acquired taste. But she’s twisting this food metaphor to mean his love for her.

She’s not the easiest person to get to know or to love. She’s not for everyone, but it’s his favorite dish. I’m not for everyone, I’m for him, is what she’s saying. And like in Wood, she’s pulling in this, like, silly innuendo to taste of me. Naughty. Naughty Taylor. He says, “I look like an angel.

They say I hate that,” blank. And so our minds insert the rhyme here, and the backing vocals even slip a little bit and go bi- So there are two dueling narratives happening here. She’s his angel, and she’s the public’s devil. So again, she’s playing with this private versus public persona.

He gets to know the angelic side, the personal side, and the showgirl gets called the B word,

And there is an interesting lyrical parallel here that I wanna thank the Taylor Seminars on TikTok for pointing this out, because I didn’t catch it. The Albatross, also a song about her private versus public life, she says, “The devil that you know now looks more like an angel. I’m the life you chose and all this terrible danger.” in both of these songs, she’s comparing herself to the devil and to the angel, and it seems that she kind of thinks of herself as containing both. And it’s basically her saying, “I come with a lot of baggage. He can see me as angelic, but, but this life you chose when you chose me can be devilish. It can be hellish, because I come with an enormous amount of scrutiny and public opinion and speculation baked in.

So you can’t really separate the showgirl from the girl if you wanna be with me.” So that’s an interesting parallel there. There, that house with the porch is where he lived as a kid. We’re on the suburban streets of Cleveland Heights, and he’s showing her his roots, his origin story.

And he’s being real and vulnerable, which contrasts with all of these outside opinions swirling about her and their relationship in the rest of this narrative. What it looks like from the outside versus what it feels like on the inside. Those are two different things. But that porch imagery feels familiar, and yes, it could just be a detail that fits within the meter, but Taylor has mentioned porches several times before, and they usually symbolize either homecoming or waiting for someone.

In Mary’s Song, the same one that says, ” I’ll be 87, you’ll be 89,” she says, “We’ll rock our babies on that very front porch.” So it represents this idea of forever or happily ever after. And then there’s in Cardigan, “I knew you’d be standing in my front porch light, and I knew you’d come back to me.” So there, it means homecoming, leaving the candle burning, waiting for this person to come back.

And it’s the same in Fresh Out The Slammer, “Now, pretty baby, I’m running to the house where you still wait up, and that porch light gleams.” So for her to now say, “There’s the porch”- There’s his porch. That means essentially, this is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for, a person who doesn’t make me leave the light on or wait outside or just shows up out of nowhere.

He says, “There’s the porch.” So it’s all right in front of her on a platter, and there’s no games. Just kind of a cool full circle moment in her lyricism. “

“He’s been saying forever,” she goes on, “and this, this trip to Cleveland and the porch that shows us that he means it.” But her inner monologue is kind of churning here, and she’s still worrying that outside forces are gonna come knocking because she says, “He must not have read that scathing take about how I’m fake, and he could find someone younger.”

She’s being both sarcastic and satirical here. He doesn’t read the think pieces that tear her down on the internet, and if he did, we have a feeling it just wouldn’t affect him. And like in Lavender Haze, “They’re bringing up my history, but you aren’t even listening.” And then, “He could find someone younger.”

It’s pointing out this obsession with youth in pop culture, especially with female celebrities. Taylor’s just 37 years old, and she’s considered a, like, senior pop star, which is both hilarious and terrifying because she’s probably the most accomplished 37-year-old in the world. He could find someone younger, but he doesn’t want to.

And this is, again, pointing out this surface-level criticism versus what she’s really like. He’s not concerned with all that chatter. He’s not in it for the hot young girl. He’s in it for her and, and everything that she is Then she repeats, “I can see what they mean.” And this is another shrug. Like, yeah, he could find someone younger.

Yeah, a lot of people call me fake. A lot of people write hit pieces on me, but whatever. He’s not listening. And then she goes back into the chorus. “There’s something we all can agree on.” We still don’t agree, and that’s the joke. That this is real, this is forever, and everything outside of this true love, it’s all just churning fake gossip.

It doesn’t matter.

[00:37:34] The Bridge

Moving into the bridge, at this point, we’d usually expect the emotional climax of the song. That’s what Taylor uses her bridges for. But in her sillier tracks, in her glitter gel pen songs, it’s usually when the song becomes the most unhinged, and Cleveland is no exception. So in the bridge, she says, “He likes what he likes, what he likes, and he likes me.”

And then she repeats this line twice. Repetition is used to drive home a specific point, and what sticks in our head is “likes what he likes” because it contrasts with the earlier “hate all you like.” It’s the opposite. She’s pointing out this contradiction. There’s the outside world, the people who love to hate me, and then there’s him who loves to love me.

It’s the real versus the fake. And it also reminds us that we’re allowed to love who we love and like what we like. And our opinions, though we tend to shout them all over the internet, are just that. They’re opinions. They don’t hold much weight when it comes to a person’s real life and real relationships Then the next portion is spoken word, which changes the tone and makes it feel more personal, more specific, like she’s speaking directly to us or like whispering this secret to us.

And she says it completely without a straight face. I don’t know how she does this, but just in her tone we can tell she’s being totally unserious just by the tone of her voice. “You only need to find one person in this entire world,” she says, “who doesn’t find you completely insufferable.” Now she’s like clobbering us over the head with, “I am not being serious.

This song is not serious.” Because this line is so ridiculous if you really think about it. Is that all we need in life to be okay is to find one person that doesn’t hate us? No, of course not. He finds her so much more than not completely insufferable. He loves her. But this line is basically addressed directly to the internet haters because who do they portray her to be?

This fake person who is annoying and dates too many people and is always whining about losing love. A pick me girl. They’re, they’re calling her a pick me girl. So she’s stepping into those shoes in a satirical way and saying, “Look, I found someone to pick me. All I needed to do was find one and I did. Yay.”

It’s total satire. And where else has she done this? I got a blank space, baby. I’m a man eater and I’ll eat you. I’m the problem. It’s me. Of course your problem with me is actually me. It wouldn’t be that you’re projecting all of your self-loathing onto me. They’re all the same song, just a different tune.

And then she makes it more unhinged because she addresses these people directly. “And I have an important announcement to make,” she says, “I found mine.” And I’m paying attention to that last word, especially when she repeats it. “Well, I found mine.” It’s mine, she’s saying, not yours. Not yours to critique, not your relationship to live, not your career to build.

It’s all mine, so you can think whatever you wanna think. But it’s my life, not yours. And this is just really a silly hyperbolic F-you to anyone who talks shit about her. I don’t care, she’s saying, because I found my person. He likes me and he loves me for exactly who I am, and you don’t even really know me at all But on the serious, genuine side of things, she’s also kind of taking a victory lap because after years of heartbreak and scrutiny and being told she’s too annoying and too much, maybe she wasn’t too much.

Maybe all those people were just never enough

[00:41:38] Final Chorus

When we get to the final chorus that serves as the outro, the mask slips a little bit, which is interesting. So the previous line was, “I found mine,” and then it’s, “Yes, that’s something we all can agree on.” So it’s the same line as before, but this time it has a different meaning. We’re not agreeing with all of the critiques about her.

This time we’re actually in agreement. She has found her person. Most of us, because haters gonna hate. But then here’s where the mask slips, because she caveats, “I guess we agree, but-” And that’s her, like, popping out from behind the curtain admitting, “Yeah, I’m being satirical. We don’t agree at all.” And that’s the kind of the point of the song.

There’s nothing that the public will ever come to a consensus on over Taylor Swift, not even her choice of partner, not even when she’s deliriously happy. She is, for whatever reasons, a lightning rod for controversy. ” But my baby likes what he likes,” she repeats. “He already took me to Cleveland.” So by now, Cleveland has come to represent this sort of rebellious, it’s my life and I’ll do what I damn well please kind of attitude.

Like, you think I shouldn’t want to go to Cleveland? Well, too damn bad. I metaphorically live there now, or actually live there because rumor is they just bought a house nearby. Anyway, that satire that, that Cleveland is no one’s dream vacation, that reminds us that this is her life, not ours. We don’t have to understand it.

We don’t have to like it, and we also don’t have to voice our dissent about it. And Cleveland really represents this dichotomy, the outside perception of people, of the city that don’t live there. They think it’s nothing special, but on the inside, it’s probably incredibly special. The haters on the outside of Taylor’s life can point at her and judge her and critique her, but they don’t see the inside.

That’s now what the Cleveland metaphor means because she’s added all of these layers to it. And now it’s time for my favorite bit. She proclaims, “Now I’m wearing white, so hate all you like.” She’s, like, thumbing her nose at all of her haters. Like, “I’m living my dream in a life that I built, in a career that I constructed from scratch, and I’m marrying my dream person.

And what are you doing? You’re just talking shit all over the internet.” And it, it’s a more subtle version of what she did in But Daddy I Love Him. No, you can’t come to the wedding. Because how many of those critics would have killed for an invitation to that wedding? And then she closes out this track with, “This is the love of my life” one last time.

And this is her final gentle or not so gentle reminder, “This is my life, not yours, and I’ll live it exactly the way I want to in Cleveland or New York or London or anywhere I damn well please because I am Taylor goddamn Swift. And who are you?”

[00:44:46] Does Cleveland Stick the Landing?

So after that insane deep dive where I went either too far or not far enough, you can tell me in the comments, what do you guys think of this track?

I think it’s absolutely brilliant on so many levels because the people who love to hate her, what have they been saying about this song? That it’s cheesy. Why is she writing a song about Cleveland? Like, ugh, who wants to go to Cleveland? She’s so corny. This song is annoying. Now she’s with Travis, she can’t write a good song to save her life The incredible irony is that Cleveland is talking directly to them, and they don’t even know it.

These are the same people who heard Cancelled and assumed that she was seriously talking about how she only wants friends who have been through cancel culture. Taylor’s satirical songs are so interesting to me because they’re almost like a litmus test. Like, can you read between the lines, or do you assume that everything she says in her lyrics are meant to be taken as truth?

She’s almost, like, handing us a media literacy exam with songs like these, and I’m here for it. I love it. Maybe I need to do a whole episode on how she’s used satire throughout her career. But with Cleveland, Taylor’s written a song that makes fun of her own fans. And somehow it’s also a love letter because the satire doesn’t just mock its target.

It can also reveal how much the satirist belongs to the world that they’re mocking. She’s not standing outside the Swiftie universe pointing and laughing. She’s a part of it, and the joke works because she’s implicated in it, too. She created this whole thing. The joke isn’t that Swifties are ridiculous or that her haters just don’t get it.

It’s that the whole relationship between Taylor and her fans and the wider world is ridiculous, and it’s unique, and it’s insane. And she’s in on the joke because she created this monster. It’s us, the hungry public, and now she can’t control it. So what does she do? She relinquishes control. She lets go.

Like, yeah, people are gonna do what they’re gonna do. They’re gonna think what they’re gonna think. But it doesn’t mean that she’s gonna take it lying down. It doesn’t mean that she’s gonna be silent about it. So she does what she’s always done, which is write a song about it, and it’s hilarious and cutting and witty, and not everyone is gonna get it.

Just like not everyone is gonna get her.

[00:47:18] What’s Next

Before you go, if you enjoyed this episode, please do me a favor and subscribe on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen or watch. I’m trying to get this show off the ground. I’m a one-woman show with already an incredibly busy life and not enough time or money to do this, but I do it because I love it and I want to.

I wanna create a community here where we can talk about this stuff. I have not monetized this podcast yet. My goal is never to be profitable, but I would like to at least break even. Eventually, I can pay for editing software and hosting and things like that. But I need more subscribers and more listeners to be able to do this.

So please like and subscribe, send to your friends, leave me a comment, and make sure to check out my website linked in the show notes where there is so much more literary Swiftie content. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you in the next episode where we will continue diving into “The Encore.”

See you next time!”