Taylor Swift's "Babylon" Changes the Ending

Podcast Episode: November 6, 2026

What if the final song on The Life of a Showgirl changes how we understand the entire album?

In this episode of The Swiftly Sung Stories Podcast, we’re breaking down Taylor Swift’s Babylon line by line. It’s a story of ambition, temptation, and everything we risk losing when we stop appreciating what we have.

But why this story…and why now?

We’ll unpack the song’s metaphors, mythology, and hidden meaning to uncover why Taylor chose to rewrite her own ending. What does Babylon reveal about the end of the showgirl era? And is Taylor hinting at what comes next?

✏️In this episode, we’ll discuss:

How Babylon uses Taylor’s signature narrative storytelling style
What the city of Babylon really represents
Who (or what) could have inspired Babylon
How this song connects to other tracks on Showgirl
What Babylon means for Taylor’s next era
And so much more!

Listen Here

⌛Timestamps

01:18 What kind of TS song is Babylon?
06:32 What does “Babylon” really mean?
11:40 What Inspired Babylon?
14:32 Verse 1: “The casino”
21:24 Pre-Chorus 1: “Where you’re from”
25:04 Chorus 1: “Headphones Gone”
29:13 Verse 2: “20 Watches in the Safe”
33:03 Pre-Chorus 2: “Pretty as a picture”
34:59 Chorus 2: “You wake up on the train”
36:02 Bridge: “Nostalgia as a weapon”
38:46 Pre-Chorus 3: “They’re all at home”
41:08 3rd Chorus: “You LOVE this song”
43:00 Final Pre-Chorus: Back to the beginning
43:54 Final Chorus: “You’re All Alone”
46:22 What it all REALLY means
47:54 What comes next for Taylor?

🎤 Other TS Songs Discussed

📖 Episode Resources

Babylon annotated lyrics blog post
The Rest is History: Babylon (a great resource for learning about Babylon’s history)

Episode Transcript

“What if the final song on The Life of a Showgirl changes how we understand the entire album and Taylor’s entire Showgirl era? Because I think there’s a lot more going on in Babylon than meets the eye. On the surface, Taylor gives us a story about this guy with some seriously questionable morals, using a city that’s as beautiful as it is fragile to represent where his life is headed.

But underneath that story is a pretty powerful message. You can spend your whole life chasing something, only to lose it because you forgot to appreciate what you already had. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Taylor chose to end this album here. So why this story? Why now? And what does Babylon tell us about the bigger story Taylor is trying to tell in The Life of a Showgirl?

Could it even give us a peek at what’s coming next? Today, we’re unpacking the metaphors, the mythology, and the hidden meaning behind Babylon to discover why this song changes everything and might even give us a glimpse into TS13.

Welcome back to the Swiftly Sung Stories podcast, your Taylor Swift English class. If you’re new here, I’m so glad you found me, and if you’re enjoying these literary adventures through Taylor’s music, make sure you subscribe, give this video a like, and stick around for more. I love having you here for these deep dives.

Whether you’re watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast app, thank you for being here, and let’s get straight into it.

[00:01:18] What kind of Taylor Swift song is Babylon?

To understand Babylon, we first have to put it into context. What kind of song is this, and why has she chosen this song to be the real ending, the real final chapter in this showgirl life? Babylon falls into a specific niche of Taylor Swift songs, and that’s her narrative storytelling songs. These are where she tells a full story front to back, filled with characters and setting and backstory and plot points and shifting emotions, and then it all reaches a resolution.

The classic example of this is All Too Well, the 10-minute version, but also the original version, where she begins by painting a scene. She drops us into the middle of this cozy new relationship. We’re going to his sister’s house. We’re singing in the car with autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place.

We’re dancing in the refrigerator light. But then doubt creeps in. He’s keeping this relationship secret. He hasn’t said, “I love you” yet. He says some really brutal things to her, and then it falls apart, and she’s devastated. And through telling this whole story, getting all of the context and all of the details, we can sort of stand back and see what the whole thing really means.

Those are her narrative storytelling songs about painting the whole emotional landscape. And in her New York Times interview this year, this is how she describes this particular genre of songwriting. I really have always just thought it would be so amazing to write books, and it’s so exciting to have the challenge of could I, could I get enough plot points in in a three and a half minute song to where people felt like they read something after they heard it? Or just take you back to that bedtime story, kind of tell me a story. We have this opportunity as a songwriter to tell an entire story, an entire movie, or, or a very detailed description of one scene in a movie, or a very nuanced dynamic between people, or a complicated emotion, and we have only so long to do this.

You can start, like, painting the picture in the verse. You can get to the heart of it at the chorus. But then the bridge can be where you zoom back, you walk 20 feet back, and you see what this entire painting was supposed to be.

Like, you’ve seen brushstrokes, you’ve seen the color tones, but the bridge can be when you step back and you feel everything that that piece of art was supposed to make you feel.

She’s world-building, is what she’s saying, and she does this so beautifully in songs like The Last Great American Dynasty, Love Story, But Daddy I Love Him, You Belong With Me, Ruin the Friendship, and so many more. Babylon is a narrative storytelling song. She’s writing this entire world that this character lives in with the goal of portraying the central message of, don’t take your life for granted.

But this is a very different world than the rest of the Showgirl album lives in. We’re not in the glitz and glam of the stage anymore. We’re in the small, everyday moments that she’s telling us to pay attention to. And that leads me into my second category of Taylor Swift songs that Babylon falls into, and that’s her teaching a lesson songs.

All of her songs teach us a lesson in one way or another, depending on what you take away from them. But in some of them, the lesson is the whole point, and the story is just a vehicle to deliver her message. Which makes these kinds of songs a parable or an allegory. A parable is a short story with the goal of teaching a clear moral or ethical lesson.

It’s the same as a fable like Taylor’s favorite, Scorpion and the Frog. But it uses real-life human situations instead of, you know, fantastical talking animals.

An allegory has the same goal, but it’s longer, and the lesson can be more abstract, or there can be multiple lessons. The Truman Show is an allegory for Big Brother surveillance, what’s really real in our lives, corporate greed, taking advantage of humans. The Matrix is an allegory for reality, what being awake really means.

Babylon is doing the same thing, telling a story of this dude who’s ruining his own life in pursuit of the next best thing, and the lesson is, you’re missing the point. You’re missing what’s right in front of you when you’re always looking off into the horizon, searching for something else. So this song lies somewhere between a parable and an allegory, and she’s done this before, even really recently, in songs like Ruin the Friendship, Father Figure, Cassandra, This Is Me Trying.

But Babylon is doing something a little bit different because she’s not speaking in first person using “I” in this song. It’s almost like it’s not from her personal experience. She’s playing the narrator and speaking directly to the central character in second person using “you”. So it’s not, “I didn’t know it was Babylon till it was gone.”

It’s, “You never knew it was Babylon till it was gone.” And this changes how the story feels and how it comes across, and maybe even hints at what her goal is with this song. And since this is the new ending to this album and era, it really feels like this is her final message to us in this whole showgirl journey.

I’ve lived, I’ve loved, I’ve lost, and this is my final takeaway from everything that I’ve been through, and now I’m closing the book and passing along my lessons to you, dear reader.

[00:06:32] What does Babylon even mean?

But what even is this song about? If something is Babylon, what, what does that even mean? It’s not super simple and straightforward because the mythology of Babylon is not super simple and straightforward.

So we’re gonna unpack it a little bit together. I’m not gonna give a full history lesson, but Babylon was an ancient Mesopotamian city, now in modern-day Iraq, and at its height it was the largest and greatest city in the world. It was epic in its scale and its modernity and its wealth and its power. It had the most impressive feats of engineering and architecture the world had ever seen.

It contained either two or three of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, depending on whose list you’re looking at. The Walls of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate, and the Hanging Gardens, which Taylor referenced in Cowboy Like Me. “Now you hang from my lips like the Gardens of Babylon.” And that lyric, because we don’t know if this ancient wonder ever really existed or not, there’s no archeological evidence that the gardens existed.

So that lyric is using this lore of these gardens as a metaphor for this mythic romance. It’s almost too beautiful, too perfect to be believed. So Babylon is this epic place that feels like it belongs in a storybook, not a history book. It has everything. But it ceased to exist as the greatest city in the world in 539 BCE because it’s at that point that Babylon is besieged and the city falls.

The Persian Empire takes over the Babylonian Empire, putting an end not only to the city as it existed, but to the entire dynasty. All of a sudden, this great place, the most incredible place to ever exist up until that point, was gone. That’s one of the pieces of this Babylon metaphor, the actual history.

A great thing that falls apart. But then there’s another layer to this, because religious texts tell a completely different tale about Babylon. Christianity, which Taylor’s definitely referencing in this song, says it wasn’t this mythic place, it was a den of iniquity. It was full of sex workers and drinking and debauchery.

And in the Book of Revelation, Babylon is personified as a prostitute. The hoard of Babylon is what it’s called. Other religions have different accounts, but Judaism portrays Babylon as the oppressor. But Christianity, which is what we’re focusing on here, because Taylor’s focusing on it, says that Babylon is this forbidden place of sin.

It represents lust and greed and corruption and everything that goes against their Christian God. So that Christian mythology says that Babylon fell because of this sin. The Babylonian Empire got too greedy, too selfish, too worldly, too multicultural, so they lost it all. They portray Babylon as a monument to human arrogance, and it collapsed under its own weight, so they say.

So there’s the actual historical place, then there’s the religious significance, and then there’s the third aspect, which is what Babylon has come to symbolize ever since. Because it’s kind of taken on a life of its own in our modern culture, and today it’s a code word for something that was once great but is now lost.

That’s definitely how Taylor’s using it. But I want you to pay attention to the why it was lost in this song. That’s where all of these different mythologies about Babylon come into play, because historians would say Babylon fell because empires fall. Christianity says Babylon fell because of sin. And then there are all these other modern-day interpretations of Babylon.

Depending on the meaning that you wanna paste onto it, it can fit whatever narrative you wanna tell. And artists have been using Babylon as a metaphor, as a piece of symbolism forever. In his poem Babylon, English poet Robert Graves compares Babylon to lost innocence. Childhood is Babylon, and growing up into an adult, experiencing all the horrors of the world, that’s the fall of Babylon, and you can never get it back once you’ve seen what the real world is really like.

In reggae music, in Rastafarian culture, Babylon symbolizes the oppressor. With great power comes great corruption. In the show Babylon 5, Babylon represents a crossroads. Can mankind live in peace? Can we build this great society together, or will it always devolve into chaos because of human nature?

Damien Chazelle’s 2022 film Babylon compares the golden age of Hollywood to Babylon. They’re on the cutting edge. They’re doing all of these incredible things in film, but it devolves into debauchery and becomes this machine that will chew you up and spit you out. All of these modern interpretations have one thing in common: Babylon is always a double-edged sword.

It can mean something great, something powerful, something epic, but it’s always in danger of toppling under the weight of human nature. If we don’t listen to our better angels, we are risking it all. So it’s not just something incredible that goes away. It’s got all of these layers to it. It’s no different in Taylor’s lyrics here, which we’re about to get into

[00:11:40] What Inspired Babylon?

But first, there’s one more thing that I want us to think about as we dive into the lyrics. Why is she telling us this story in the first place? And why is she using Babylon to do it? Taylor doesn’t just write metaphors and characters because she wants to tell a random story. They all have a deeper purpose, or the narrative serves as a code for the story that she’s really telling.

And an example of this is in The Last Great American Dynasty. She tells us this story about the previous owner of Holiday House, but the moral of the story isn’t about a house or about Rebecca Harkness. It’s about Taylor, how the public perceives Taylor, told through this lens of what came before. So she’s using the house and Rebecca to tell us something about herself.

She’s doing the same thing in Babylon, using the story of this dude who seems to never be grateful a day in his life to show us what happens when you don’t appreciate what you have. But why has she written a song like Babylon now? Why on this album? What could have inspired her to tell this particular story?

Let’s think about it this way. What’s been Babylonian in Taylor’s life recently? It’s been quite a lot. The Eras Tour, for one. The greatest tour to ever tour ever, and it’s over. And she told us that Showgirl is about the, her life during the eras tour.

So she could be looking back and thinking, wow, you know, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

There’s her reclamation of her masters, which was definitely Babylonian in the way it happened. This epic, massive collection of her life’s work crumbled at her feet when it was sold out from under her. In the past almost decade of her life, she’s been clawing her way back using the eras tour to be able to buy it back, and she’s written about the masters heist previously in this album in Father Figure, or so we think.

This empire, this Babylon belongs to me. Leave it with me. That’s the other possibility. And then the third option is she might just be looking back over her career. We just celebrated 20 years of Taylor Swift, 20 years of this showgirl life, and it hasn’t crumbled, but it’s sure been full of pitfalls and missteps and really difficult moments when it probably felt like her career was over.

So Babylon could be her reminder to herself, “Don’t take this for granted, ever. Don’t miss all the best parts.” But unless she tells us directly, we’ll probably never know for sure why she’s written this particular story. I have one more idea that leads into TS13 that I’m gonna throw at you in the end.

But keep these possibilities in mind as we go through the lyrics, and let me know what you think in the comments. What do you think Babylon really represents here, and why? Why did she choose to rewrite the ending of this album with Babylon instead of the title track? Okay. That’s enough context for now.

We will revisit the big picture towards the end of the episode. But now let’s get into Babylon, starting with the first verse.

[00:14:32] Verse 1: “The casino”

The casino doesn’t like when you run the tables. And though the box is wrapped up nice, it’s just a cage to you. Those electric fences buzz, the stallion flees the stable, and that small town’s even smaller now in your rear view. You ran with all the wild things, a liberated libertine who then longed for home.

Can we just take a second to appreciate her poetry here? Because, because it is poetry. It just happens to be set to music

This imagery, “Electric fences buzz. Stallion flees the stable.” Incredible. If you look closely, though, this entire first verse is a series of metaphors. The whole thing. Metaphor after metaphor, and they all have at least two meanings. Some of them have three meanings, and we’re gonna get into all of these layers.

The first thing I’m noticing, though, is that she sets the tone from the very first line. ” The casino doesn’t like when you run the tables.” She’s about to give us advice. This is her clue that it– this is a morality song, a, a teaching-a-lesson song. The casino isn’t an actual casino. It’s a metaphor. To run the table means to win so many times in a row that your opponent never really had a chance to play, never mind win.

It’s a metaphor that originally stems from billiards, from shooting pool. Sinking s-so many shots in a row that your opponent doesn’t even get a turn. It’s being a pool shark, running the tables, and it can also be used in gambling. But what happens if you keep winning at a casino? The pit boss is gonna come tap you on the shoulder, and they’re gonna get you out of there real quick.

An actual casino really doesn’t like when you run the tables, because they think you’re cheating. In a casino, the house always wins. In this metaphorical casino, the casino of life, karma always wins. If you keep pushing full steam ahead at life, she’s saying, and never stop to look around, it’s not gonna end well for you.

The universe will put a stop to that real quick, because you get what you give, and that’s foreshadowing what’s gonna happen to our central character here in a moment. She’s setting up these themes of greed and selfishness that are gonna continue for this person. If you take and take and take, you never give anything in return, you’re never gonna get anything.

And though the box is wrapped up nice, it’s just a cage to you. Another metaphor for life, if something is wrapped up nice, it means it looks good from the outside. But it’s not a present that’s wrapped up nice. She doesn’t say it’s a gift. It’s a box, an empty box. You can make anything as beautiful as you want to on the outside, but on the inside, if it’s empty, the outside doesn’t matter.

And if this idea feels familiar, it should. She’s touched on it several times in this album, especially in Wishlist. I don’t want a life that looks perfect on the outside. I want a life, a love, that feels real on the inside. It’s the same thing here. The box for this character represents two things, pretty packaging, looking like you have it all, and being caged in, being boxed in or penned in.

And this, the very idea of this picture-perfect life, having it all, still feels like a cage to this person. They feel trapped. So we already get the sense of what kinda dude this is. He’s selfish, and he can’t see what’s right in front of his face

Those electric fences buzz. The stallion flees the stable. So we have a box that feels like a cage, and then we have a cage that feels like a cage. If he’s a horse, he’s surrounded by metaphorical electric fences. He feels trapped, but it’s in the life he built. The buzz of the electric fence, which is, it’s great imagery, is sort of this alarm going off in his head, this desire to run away.

And a stallion is often a metaphor for a playboy or a stud. And what happens when a horse gets spooked? They run away. So she’s hinting at this old adage, wild horses can’t be tamed, meaning you can’t make someone be something they’re not meant to be. And then there’s also the saying, wild horses couldn’t drag me, which means you can’t force me to do this thing I really don’t wanna do.

So while on the surface, the stallion fleeing the stable means he’s now running wild, but she’s also subtly pointing out that no one forced him to run, and no one forced him to stay. This, this is all just his nature. He’s making the choice. He feels trapped for reasons we don’t quite understand yet. And at this point, he just feels restless, like this unsettled person that can’t ever really find what he’s looking for.

Then after he runs away, the stallion flees the stable. That small town’s even smaller now in your rearview. So he runs, he looks back to where he came from, but he doesn’t see this as, you know, h- his place of origin. He doesn’t see it as something beautiful. He doesn’t appreciate it. He’s looking down on it.

He’s looking back with contempt, not gratitude. The small town is smaller, meaning he thinks of his past and, and maybe the people in it as insignificant or unimportant, and this is gonna be a pattern for him. You ran with all the wild things, a liberated libertine who then longed for home. I love the alliteration there, liberated libertine.

It’s also just a really clever turn of phrase because a libertine is a person, usually a man, who sleeps around. Did that make you think of the band The Libertines a little differently? Yeah. So a liberated libertine means that he’s been released or freed from that cage or that small town, and now he’s free to do what he pleases with whom he pleases.

She’s calling him a slut, basically. But what happens after he runs wild living his best party life? He then longed for home. She’s describing a man who wants to have his cake and eat it too, and this will become important when this character finally settles down and makes his own family unit because he can’t have it both ways.

He wants the cake on the counter all pretty in the display, but he also wants to eat it, and you can’t have both. The casino isn’t gonna let you keep playing if you don’t play fair. So in this first verse alone, she’s given us this huge amount of character building almost entirely using metaphors. But now heading into the chorus, we have a really good sense of who this is.

And in her narrative storytelling songs, this is how they always begin. She bins- begins by laying the foundation. We get the who, what, when, where, and then as she moves the plot forward, we’re gonna get the why.

‘

[00:21:24] Pre-Chorus 1: “Where you’re from”

So here’s the first pre-chorus, ’cause it’s where you’re from, Aunt Virginia with a church dress on, no elbows on the table, and the neighbor’s lawn always looked better. Your hand-me-down sweater should’ve been from the mall

I don’t like this dude already He’s not meant to be likable, but I don’t like him. So he was a liberated libertine who then longed for home ‘ cause it’s where you’re from. He wants to run as far away from his hometown as he can, but he also wants to go back there. But no matter where you go, no matter how far you run away, you can’t rewrite your history. But here’s the other side of this, which longing for home, that’s nostalgia, and she’s bringing in this other big theme of this song, wishing you could go back in time.

Possibly leading us back to debut Taylor’s version. Could be a little Easter egg there. Long for home ’cause it’s where you’re from. But then I love what she does next. She pulls us into these nostalgic memories. We’ve been looking at him from the outside, but then she gives us a peek inside his head.

It’s like we’re inside this nostalgic film reel in his mind, and this is her cinematic style of, of storytelling, zooming out to see the big picture and then zooming in to see the visceral details. And here’s the first one. Aunt Virginia with a church dress on. He’s thinking of his past with his family, an older relative, and she’s subtly bringing in this Christian motif with, with the church dress.

But Aunt Virginia, that sounds like a pretty godly woman, and he kinda sounds like the sinful little boy who can’t sit still in the pews. But keep this motif in mind as we reach the first use of Babylon, the Christianity going on here. Then his next memory is no elbows on the table. So he was raised in this house where manners mattered, and he had to be the good boy who went to church on Sundays.

Is he behaving like that now? N-no, but this could also maybe make him feel caged. Maybe that’s his motivation. Doesn’t like being told what to do And the neighbor’s lawn always looked better. He was the kind of person who always thought the grass was greener on the other side. And this is a crucial little detail because she just revealed how he was raised with these Christian love thy neighbor morals, but it didn’t stick.

He was always this way. He always wanted something bigger and something better. But then we get a little bit almost of his internal childhood monologue. Your hand-me-down sweater should have been from the mall. He’s not grateful he had a sweater. He wanted a better one. So what she’s doing here is so interesting because she’s using these Taylor trigger words for nostalgia.

The mall, like she used in August, and Coney Island, and sweaters like in Cardigan and Fortnight. And these are really common pieces of imagery she uses when she wants to conjure this nostalgic vibe. But in this character’s nostalgia, he’s not looking back with gratitude or, uh, you know, “I wish I could go back to that simple time, meet me behind the mall.”

He’s looking back with contempt. “I should have had better. I deserved better.” And this is the attitude that will carry him into adulthood. “I will never settle for less. I deserve more.” But I want us to keep this in mind as we move into the chorus.

Is it really nostalgia if you’re not looking back in fondness? If you’re looking back and thinking, “God, I hated that. I hated that life,” isn’t that just being bitter and resentful, not nostalgic?

[00:25:04] Chorus 1: “Headphones Gone”

Then she moves into the first chorus and you hate the song, but you wake up on the train with your headphones gone. Then that melody is all you want. You never knew it was Babylon till it was gone

So previously, he was being bitter about his sweater and the lawn, and then it’s, ” You hate this song.” So she’s dropping us into a totally different metaphor. She’s also switching something else up really subtly. In the previous pre-chorus, we were in past tense. The neighbor’s lawn always looked better.

Hand-me-down sweater should have been from the mall. But now we’re in present tense. You hate this song currently. We were in his memories or in his ruminations really, and now we’re in the present moment, and this song is that looping negativity in his mind. He wanted it all, but he never got it. I deserve better.

I’ll run away. I’ll show them all what I really am. This song that he hates but longs for after his headphones are stolen or lost is his life. He hates the way he’s living it because he can’t live in the moment and appreciate his life. But once it’s gone, he just wants it back. But everything in the Babylon lyrics can have a double or even triple meaning.

So what else is this song? You might remember a little tune called Opalite on this album. Life is a song. It ends when it ends. Life is short, it’s finite, but it’s beautiful, and you can either sing along and enjoy it, or you can turn it off and say, “I hate this song.” Shutting off the possibility of anything good happening to you.

You can be grateful or you can be resentful. The headphones, though, are his ability to stay attuned, to stay in the moment. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. If you don’t keep tabs on the things that are important, your metaphorical headphones, the things that tether you to the tune, the song of life, will disappear.

Someone else will take them, or you’ll lose them and never be able to get it back It’s also interesting, though, that he’s sitting on a train, and this is a code word in the Taylor Swift universe that she uses to portray time passing or seasons changing or life moving from one era to the next. You took the night train for a reason in Champagne Problems.

In Cardigan, it’s stepping on the last train. Or in New Romantics, we’re waiting for trains that just aren’t coming. And there’s many more. Our character’s on a train, probably running away again because that’s what the stallion does best. And in that running away, he’s gonna lose his connection to what really matters.

He’s gonna lose his metaphorical headphones, his anchor to home, this song. And once it’s gone, then that melody is all you want. It’s all he longs for. Like Joni Mitchell says, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” But as soon as it’s gone, he misses it. But did he even appreciate it? Did he even notice it while he had it?

Was he even listening? You never knew it was Babylon, she says, and then she closes out this first chorus with, “Till it was gone.” She’s pulling in her song title and her central metaphor here for the first time, and it was Babylon, in this particular instance, is referring to the subject, that melody. You never knew that that melody was Babylon till it was gone.

So on the surface, it just means that living life presently and not always striving for the next best thing, the greener grass, is Babylon. That’s the most epic, beautiful thing in the world, is living in the moment. But this whole section has been about his childhood and his origin story, and as we move on, we’re gonna focus on different eras of his life.

And each of these, what is or what could be Babylon, changes a little bit each time. And remember that Babylon is always more than one thing. It’s always a double-edged sword. It can be the greatest, shiniest pinnacle of perfection, but it’s always in danger of crumbling because of human nature, and his nature is precarious at best

[00:29:13] Verse 2: “20 Watches in the Safe”

Here’s the second verse. Give the people what they want, then you keep it moving. Make your plans and friends a stranger’s makeup on your tie. 20 watches in the safe ’cause your time is money. Love is ice upon the ladder that you need to climb. She captured your attention, so free of all pretension, it stopped you cold So we’re moving forward in the timeline of his life now.

The first verse was about his childhood, and now he’s an adult, and this is the kind of person that he is. Give the people what they want, then you keep it moving. We’re watching him move through his life, but it’s like he’s automated. He’s ticking boxes. He lives transactionally, giving the people what they want, and then he moves on to the next order fulfillment.

He’s going like an assembly line, never stopping to smell the roses, so to speak. But he’s also not stopping to ask himself what he wants, which is interesting. Make your plans and friends, a stranger’s makeup on your tie. He’s doing the things he’s supposed to do or things maybe he thinks he’s supposed to do, make plans and friends, but he’s not enjoying any of it.

Has he really asked himself what he wants to do? ‘Cause it, it seems like he’s all… He’s just doing this for the optics. He, he’s also careless, though, with a stranger’s makeup on your tie. That implies that he’s sleeping around with strangers, using sex for temporary pleasure instead of for emotional connection.

He might make out with them or have sex with them, but they’re still a stranger to him. But then this is one of my favorite lines. 20 watches in the safe ’cause your time is money.

He is gluttonous and greedy, owning 20 watches, and he still can’t spend his time wisely. He spends his time making money to buy watches to tell time to make more money, but he still can’t live in the moment. It’s perfect example of irony. Chef’s kiss. Then love is ice upon the ladder that you need to climb.

So during his climb up the social ladder, love is just something that can make him slip and fall down. It’s dangerous, not beautiful. It’s something to be avoided, not something to embrace. And a lot like our villain in Patient Zero, he’s on a free solo social climb. He sees love, emotional connection, as something that can make him slip and fall.

It complicates his ambition instead of being his ambition. But this metaphor also describes his heart. It’s icy cold But then something changes. She captured your attention, so free of all pretension it stopped you cold. He noticed her, this potential love interest, and it stops his cold heart. Maybe because she was so different from him. he’s quintessentially pretentious, and she is not. Maybe opposites attract, but in the long run, it doesn’t make for a very strong bond. Taylor’s language here is intentional, though, because it always is. Captured your attention. She doesn’t say got your attention, captured your attention.

She’s pulling back in the language of the previous verse, where he felt caged and flees the stables. Here, he captures. It’s, it’s foreboding. She’s foreshadowing that this is not gonna end well. But it stopped you cold is interesting, because it seems like he can’t stop. He can never notice what is right in front of his face.

So for him to actually pause and notice something, that’s not a small thing. Will it work out, though? Probably not. It’s not looking good.

[00:33:03] Pre-Chorus 2: “Pretty as a picture”

And we learn why it’s not looking good in the second pre-chorus. Because she loved you so, pretty as a picture that you didn’t post. Looking at you like you’re made of solid gold. Never official. You mention you’re single to the girls at the bar. She stopped you cold because she loved you so. She didn’t make him pause his free solo social climb because he loved her.

It’s because she loved him. He had something to gain from her. That’s why he stopped. This is his transactional nature, even in love. But this person and this romance are pretty as a picture that you didn’t post. This love is not curated for optics. It’s natural and it’s real. It’s not posed for the camera.

It’s not manufactured in order to polish his image. It’s something private that’s just for them. It could be what lifts him out of his shallow existence. But will it? Because I don’t have high hopes. Do you? But it, it’s a glimmer of hope. She’s looking at you like you’re made of solid gold, she says.

And this tells us two things. One, she really loves him and admires him, and two, he’s getting exactly the kind of attention and admiration that he’s always craved. He wants to be seen as valuable and rich and rare, and he gets exactly that kind of validation from her. But even then, after he gets all of the things he’s been after, he still can’t commit.

He still has one foot out the door. Never official. You mention you’re single to the girls at the bar. He has the thing that he’s wanted right in front of him, but he turns his back at every chance. Plus, he’s a liar and a cheater. So now we learn that this love, which kinda seems like it was his only hope of redemption, didn’t actually change him at all

[00:34:59] Chorus 2

Then she repeats the chorus again word for word, ” You hate this song, but you wake up on the train with your headphones gone.” But each time she repeats it, it means something slightly different. Here it means that he hates this shallow life that he’s living, or maybe he hates that he can’t commit to this woman who really loves him and could make his life better.

And then in the final two choruses, she’s gonna flip from hate this song to love this song. But this time I’m really honing in on, ” You wake up on the train,” because this life is moving ahead. This train, whether you want it to or not, it’s always moving forward, whether you’re asleep or awake. And one day you might wake up, you might come to and look around and realize that everything has changed because you were sleeping through it.

You didn’t have your eyes open. You weren’t aware that this was your last chance. This character really is sleeping through his own life. He’s totally oblivious to what matters, what he should really be paying attention to. And in the bridge, she’s gonna get into why

[00:36:02] Bridge: “Nostalgia as a weapon”

So here’s the bridge. You’re using nostalgia as a weapon to hurt yourself. But darling, you end up hurting everybody else. The self-harm of never being where you are. It’s bedtime, but you’re sitting in your car. You’re missing all the best parts.

This bridge is a direct accusation. You are using nostalgia as a weapon to hurt yourself. You are living in the past or anywhere other than here, and you can’t see that it’s only making it worse. And the weapon is the idea that the past was better, or this person over there was better, or that job was better, or any of the woulda, coulda, shouldas.

But darling, you end up hurting everybody else. When you can’t live in the moment and you live in a daydream, you affect everyone else who lives in the real world. But it’s not just nostalgia here that’s the weapon. It’s this idea that this particular character has that he has always deserved better.

That is incredibly hurtful to people in your life who will always feel like second best, like you’re settling for them, or just like they’re temporary until you move on to the next best thing. But then Taylor pulls in the most powerful line in this whole song, ” The self-harm of never being where you are.”

You are self-harming, she says, by never living in the moment. You’re missing it. You’re letting life pass you by.

If you don’t open your eyes and live in the now, it’s not just daydreaming, it’s not just obliviousness, it’s not just selfishness, it’s actually self-punishment. You are self-sabotaging the rest of your life if you can’t start actively living your life as it is now. And then she zooms in on this little moment of him in the present that really illustrates everything that he is.

” It’s bedtime, but you’re sitting in your car.” And then she closes out the bridge with, “You’re missing all the best parts.” Bedtime is an intimate moment that he’s missing out on, either putting his child to bed or going to bed with his partner. Instead of being with them, he’s in his car, ready to run away again.

And here’s where we see what he’s really been doing all along while he’s running away. He’s avoiding intimacy. He’s scared of being known or being seen. He’s scared of being vulnerable, and that’s why he runs away. And while bedtime might seem like a, a small thing, it is the small things. That’s her point.

It’s the small moments of connection that make up a life. It’s all the best parts that will slip away faster than those stolen headphones on the train if you don’t wake up and take action.

[00:38:46] Pre-Chorus 3: “They’re all at home”

And where are all the best parts? They’re all at home. She’s hanging Christmas lights with your son, sneak into the bathroom to call her mom and say, “It’s not working. It’s just not worth it if we’re not what he wants.” They’re at home cozy in the house, and he’s sitting out in the cold in the car. Another metaphor for how he’s living his life.

And then we zoom inside the house, and we’re gonna see what’s really going on for his partner. She’s hanging Christmas lights with their kid. She’s making memories instead of living in them. She’s being in the moment instead of running away from the moment. And what’s so interesting to me is that Taylor’s using this nostalgic imagery, Christmas lights, like she’s used in Lover, to draw this distinction between the good sort of nostalgia, these cozy family moments, versus the harmful kind of nostalgia, getting stuck in the mindset of everything was better in the past, or everything was better over there or over there, or with that person.

It’s not all perfect inside this house, even though they do have the good kind of nostalgia, because she is in a crisis because of him. She’ll sneak into the bathroom to call her mom. She slips away from this special time with her child, protecting him from this conversation that’s about to happen, and she reveals what’s really going on.

It’s not working. If we are not what he wants, I gotta go.” And this reveals a lot about their differences because in conflict, she reaches out for connection while he runs away to sever that connection.

And while he’s quit her a million little times by running away, it seems like it’s taken her a while to get to this point where she is ready to quit him for good. The bottom line is that she feels unwanted, and she feels unwanted because he has never made her, or likely their son, a priority. Everything else, the money, and the mistresses, and the social climb took precedent.

And even when he was there physically, he wasn’t really there emotionally. And that’s a deep wound. That’s a really deep wound. That would be hard for any couple to get past. This is the train that is moving on with or without him.

The family he made, they are not sticking around and being present if he can’t stick around and be present

[00:41:08] 3rd Chorus: “You LOVE this song”

Then as we move into the final chorus, she does something really interesting. She changes the lyrics just slightly. ” But you love this song.” Formerly it was hate, now it’s love. “But you love this song. You wake up on the train with your headphones gone, then that melody is all you want. You never knew it was Babylon, and now it’s almost gone.”

But because we’ve just been zoomed in on the woman’s point of view, it’s unclear whose perspective we’re in here. If we’re in the woman’s point of view, she loves him, and it’s gonna be very hard to let go, but she kinda has no choice. But if we’re back to our protagonist’s point of view, then he’s admitting one of two things: either, “I love my family,” or, “I love this playboy life, and I can’t give it up for anyone.”

And that depends on who the “you” is you think she’s talking to, and whatever you think the song metaphor means. So let me know what you think in the comments. What is she really saying here? Or is it meant to sort of illustrate his flip-flopping between decisions?

Because the switching between love and hate, it really does illustrate his oscillating between making good choices and bad choices. He gets himself on the right track, and then he derails himself. He misses the past, then he despises the past. He loves his partner, and then he cheats on his partner. He just can’t sit still, and he can’t see where he’s gone wrong.

Every time he tries to sort of course-correct, he gets further and further away from the trail, and now it’s almost gone. We’re at, at the point of no return. And this part is really giving you’re losing me vibes. Like, “Stop, you’re losing me. I can’t find a pulse. My heart won’t start anymore for you.”

It’s not working if we’re not what he wants

[00:43:00] Final Pre-Chorus: Back to the beginning

Then in the final pre-chorus, she goes back to the beginning, back to where you’re from, which is incredibly poetic, and we take this final ride through his nostalgic memories.

Aunt Virginia with a church dress on, no elbows on the table. It’s almost gone, and the neighbor’s lawn always looked better. Your hand-me-down sweater should’ve been from the mall. This is his mind tracing the path back through his origin story. Aunt Virginia, table manners, neighbor’s lawn, and the hand-me-down sweater.

This is where he lives instead of inside his l- his life, hanging Christmas lights with his son. He lives in here instead. And in the background, our narrator, Taylor, pops in with this reminder, “It’s almost gone.” The past and the present and the future are slipping away between his fingers because he never learned how to hold on to what’s important.

[00:43:54] Final Chorus: “You’re All Alone”

Then when we reach the final chorus, “But you love this song. You wake up on the train and you’re all alone. Then that memory is all you want. You never knew that it was Babylon till it was gone.” So she’s using you love this song again, and that headphone line is, is totally gone.

It’s like the headphones were never there in the first place, and he can’t listen to the song of life, as cheesy as that sounds, even if he wants to, because that requires other people, and he’s all alone. His connection to the real world, to real life, to other people, is now totally severed, and he spent so much time running away on that train that that’s where he’s at now, running alone.

And I find it incredibly poetic that the absence of the headphone metaphor is where we learn what the headphone metaphor meant, and it means letting people in, listening, companionship, being attuned, opening yourself up to the possibility of love or being loved. But for our protagonist, it’s too late. He didn’t listen, and now he’s gone.

And after she’s gone, after she left him, then that memory is all you want. And here’s our second revelation that’s not really a big revelation, but she reveals it anyway. Melody was always code for memory. If you don’t live in the moment, if you don’t have gratitude for what you have, all you will be left with are memories, never opportunities to make new ones.

You’ll only have the faint memory of that song instead of a person to sing it with. Life is a song. It ends when it ends, and this one is most definitely over. ” You never knew it was Babylon,” she says one more time, “till it was gone.” And now it is gone. This story does not end well for our central character because it’s too late.

Just like the mythic city of Babylon collapsed under its own weight, he had it all, but he just couldn’t see it or appreciate it. He was his own downfall, and everyone else around him suffered the consequences. But his Babylon, the good things in his life, didn’t just disappear for a single reason, just like the ancient city of Babylon didn’t fall for a single reason. He didn’t lose it all for just one reason. It’s all of it. It’s everything combined.

[00:46:22] What it REALLY means

So we’ve gone through the lyrics, and here’s where I wanna zoom back out and take a look at the big picture.

This is the song that closes out the album now, and it’s a song that says essentially, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” But before the encore, the title track was our closing message, and that song says, you know, this life is not all it’s cracked up to be. The life of a showgirl is full of pain and pitfalls.

But Babylon ends this album on a more optimistic note. It’s also, though, the only song on the album that doesn’t speak in first person. She didn’t do the and it was me reveal in the end of Babylon like she’s done in other narrative storytelling songs like The Last Great American Dynasty.

She’s not centering herself in this particular story in an album that has been very much centered on herself speaking in first person about her own experiences. And since Taylor loves to string thematic threads between albums, like how Hits Different from Midnights leads directly into Fortnight from TTPD, it feels like she’s steering away from the showgirl glitz and glam and into something more universal, maybe something more introspective.

The final track on any of her albums has two jobs. One, tie up the larger narrative of the album, and two, lead into the next one.

[00:47:54] What comes next for Taylor?

So why Babylon? Why here? Why now? Here are my theories. One, Babylon is what the life of a showgirl has been all about. It’s not what was happening behind the scenes of the Eras Tour.

It was never about that. It was what was happening behind the scenes of her entire career, the things she has learned throughout her life. the life lessons of a showgirl, and Babylon is the bookend. Because if you think about it, each song on Showgirl has its own lesson. The Fate of Ophelia, I wasn’t cursed, I was just choosing the wrong partners.

Opalite, I wasn’t cursed, I was just choosing the wrong partners. Father Figure, I was always the one with power the whole time, I just didn’t know it. Wishlist, I don’t need any of this crap. I just want that person. I know what’s important now. Babylon is looking back and saying, “Out of all of these lessons I’ve learned, this is the most important one, and I now pass along this wisdom to you, my audience, dear reader.

Appreciate what you have while you have it. Hold onto what’s important, and let go of what isn’t.” That feels like the most heartfelt message on this entire album, and it feels like probably the most important thing she’s learned throughout her career. Gratitude, relationships, family, hold tight, appreciate every era while you are in it.

And here’s my second theory. Babylon is leading us directly into the future, and that could be either TS 13 or Debut Taylor’s version or both. And this is not me chanting more. This is me just narrating logically what we know will happen next.

We know that Debut is re-recorded. She told us that outright in her master’s letter. My guess is that after award season is over and she will likely win the Oscar for Toy Story for Best Original Song, my guess is that after that is over and she can focus on something new, something new will come. TS 13 will be her most anticipated album to date, not only because it bears her lucky number, but because it will likely come in or around the 20th year of her career in the music industry.

This is gonna be a big album

So to see this more reflective side of Showgirl and this kind of tone shift that comes at the end, I’m anticipating TS 13 not only to be looking back to see how far she’s come, but also to pave a new direction into her future. So with this new closing track, we have this new trajectory that focuses on gratitude, on reflection, on appreciation, and on living in the moment.

Debut Taylor’s version, just by its very nature, is going to be reflective as well. So which one of these is she breadcrumbing us towards with Babylon? I don’t know, but I think we will have the answers probably after the Oscars in March of 2027, ’cause our girl wants an EGOT.

And if she is working on a musical so she can win a Tony, do not speak to me for three to five business days because I will be catatonic. I am a huge theater nerd That would be incredible

So that’s Babylon, guys. That’s where we’ve been in Showgirl. That’s where we’re going next. And no matter where you think Taylor is headed, I do love that she’s given us the encore and especially Babylon, because I think it shifts the album into something more reflective and more relatable. Before, the focus was really on the cutthroat industry and all the pain it caused.

So I think Babylon could symbolize her new outlook on love and life and carry us into her most anticipated album of her career. But let me know your thoughts in the comments, Thank you so much for joining me here at Swiftly Sung Stories. And before you go, please give this episode a like, subscribe on YouTube or hit follow on whatever podcast app you’re listening on. You’ll really wanna stay tuned and hit the bell to be notified when I release my next video, because while we await what’s coming next for Taylor, I’m taking us back to Sad Girl Autumn with a trip through the Tortured Poets Department.

You guys are the best. Thank you for being here and supporting the podcast, and I will see you next time!”