“Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” Meaning: Full Lyrical Analysis
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus is a hauntingly gorgeous track about regret, losing love, and losing pieces of yourself.
But what does this song mean, what’s going on with the title, and what is Taylor really saying in this track?
Here’s my full English teacher analysis of Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus meaning, line by line.

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus by Taylor Swift
- Title: “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”
- Written by: Aaron Dessner, Taylor Swift
- Track: 20, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology
- Pen: Quill
- Lyrics from Genius
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus Explained: Narrative Summary
- Setting: Ruminating about a lost love.
- Characters: Narrator (Taylor), subject (lost love, “you”)
- Mood: Forlorn, grieving, curious.
- Conflict: “You just watched it happen” and “I just watched it happen.” Neither of them took initiative to change their trajectories toward each other.
- Inciting Incident: “Your hologram stumbled into my apartment.” She imagines the ghost of her lost love making out with someone else, and begins a series of ruminations.
- Quest: Figure out if it was real or not. “Will I always wonder?”
- Symbols & Metaphors: “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” “hologram,” “hands in the hair,” “just watched it happen,” “decade would play us for fools,” “my bones”, “bullied you in school,” “my cold, cold heart,” “the way that you were,” “tear my world apart,” “always wondered,” “unabsorb,” “idea of sorts,” “couldn’t watch it happen,” “goddesses, villains and fools,” “plans and lovers and outfits and rules,” “outrun my desertion,” “glint in my eye,” “depths of your sigh,” “passage in time,” “crashed into you,” “wrecks,” “impaired by my youth,” “sell my apartment,” “internet starlet,” “this scarlet maroon,” “float in your orbit,” “watch our phantoms like watching wild horses,” “cooler in theory,” “if you force it,” “didn’t happen,” “will I always wonder?”
- Lesson: Some loves are impossible to forget, and will always haunt you.
What is Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus About?
This track narrates the protagonist’s ruminations over a lost love. Taylor is haunted by the ghost of a past lover, and wonders if they’ll ever get over one another.
Who is Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus About?
Taylor has never explicitly revealed who this track may have been inspired by. Most fans assume that the subject is Matty Healy, whom Taylor has known for 10 years (“as the decade would play us for fools”).
But this song could narrate any of Taylor’s lost loves, and we may never know if she’s talking about one specific person.
A Note on “Maggie and Millie and Molly and May” by EE Cummings
Taylor likely drew inspiration from this short, classic poem in which four kids go to the beach, and each comes away with something different.
The concluding line of the poem is “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.” In short, this means that experiences shape who you are, and each person can be in the same place and learn very different lessons to become different people.
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus Lyrical Analysis: Line by Line

Please note: I use gender neutral pronouns (they/them) to refer to the subject of this track, as the gender of the lost love is not revealed in the lyrics.
“Your hologram stumbled into my apartment,” she begins in the first verse, “Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness.”
Taylor dreams or imagines the ghost of a lost lover (“hologram”) coming home drunk (“stumbled”), making out with some unknown figure. They’re cheating on her, but she can’t do anything to shut off this imaginary affair.
The person her lost lover cheats with is “named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” meaning it could be anyone. This could imply the subject is bisexual, but I think what Taylor is trying to say is that she can imagine them making out with anyone. It still hurts just the same, no matter who it is.
“And I just watched it happen,” she says, helplessly ruminating over this imaginary affair. She can’t do anything to stop her racing thoughts.
“As the decade would play us for fools,” she says, looking back on 10 years of on-again, off-again, “And you saw my bones out with somebody new.” She’s skeletal, like a walking corpse without this lost love. They’re the only one who can reanimate her.
They’ve been playing cat and mouse for a long time, and now she’s with someone else again, “Who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school.”
She’s now with a big, tough jock, “And you just watched it happen.” The subject just stares, doing nothing about her new relationship. They don’t try to get her back, they just look on, even though she would like them to intervene.
Chorus: “Just Say You’ve Always Wondered”

“If you wanna break my cold, cold heart,” she says of her cynical, pessimistic view on love, “Just say, ‘I loved you the way that you were’.”
If they want to put the final nail in the coffin, Taylor encourages them to tell her that she never had to change. Was “the decade” all unnecessary, and she never had to do any of it?
“If you wanna tear my world apart,” she says, “Just say you’ve always wondered.”
If they want to send her spiraling, they can tell her that they’ve always wondered about the possibility of a great romance, just like she has.
Is this an unrequited love that just never worked out? Were they always sending mixed signals, with no one taking initiative?
Verse 2: “I Changed into Goddesses, Villains and Fools”

“You said some things that I can’t unabsorb,” she says in the second verse. This lost love said some hurtful or deeply personal things that she can’t forget.
Like in the lakes, “What should be over burrowed under my skin / In heart-stopping waves of hurt.” She can’t ever go back to the time before she heard these heart-stopping words come out of her lost love’s mouth.
“You turned me into an idea of sorts,” she says to them. She was never real to them, or they never knew the real Taylor behind the Taylor Swift machine. Was the possibility of them getting together just a lovely fantasy that – when grounded in reality – was too scary or too much?
“You needed me, but you needed drugs more,” she says, describing her lost love as a junkie. They chose to get wasted, time and time again, instead of being with her.
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“And I couldn’t watch it happen,” she says helplessly. She couldn’t stand by and watch this person destroy themselves. She could do nothing to help or change them, so she left.
“I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools,” she says of the time in her life after she left them, “Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules.”
Like in mirrorball, “I can change everything about me to fit in.” She tried on a bunch of different personalities, and changed everything about her life, “All to outrun my desertion of you.”
This act of trying on personas was an effort to distract herself from her abandonment of her lost love. It didn’t work.
Is she the “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” – different versions of herself over time, or his different ideas of her – and none of them seem to get it right?
“And you just watched it,” she says of them. They helplessly stood by and watched her perform this chameleon act, doing nothing to put a stop to it.
Bridge: “If The Glint in My Eye Traced the Depths of Your Sigh”

The chorus repeats, then the bridge clarifies how it all ended.
“If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh,” she says in the bridge, alluding to her “starry-eyed” love of this person.
“Depths of your sigh” means the depths of their love and passion for her. When combined, this means that if she recognized that it was really real between them, it could have been different.
Like the girls at the beach of “maggie and milly and molly and may,” they each found different things inside this relationship, and came away with different ideas about love.
She rewinds their narrative, looking “Down that passage in time back to the moment / I crashed into you, like so many wrecks do.” She’s peeking at the moment, as through a crystal ball or time machine, when they met and fell in love.
What does she see? A “crash” and a “wreck.” This makes it feel like it was doomed from the beginning. They were never not going to hurt each other.
She was “Too impaired by my youth to know what to do,” she says of the moment they first met. She was too young and naive to recognize this great love – and great mess – for what it was.
It was a formative experience, like the girls at the beach in the poem. Has it colored her idea of love ever since, or scarred her later attempts at love?
Verse 3: “This Scarlet Maroon”

“So if I sell my apartment,” she says in the third verse, letting go of the home that their ghost still haunts, “And you have some kids with an internet starlet.”
If they both move on physically and emotionally, “Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon / Like it never happened?”
This calls back to Maroon: “so scarlet, it was maroon.” That song looks back at a heartbreak with a realistic perspective, and finally seeing it for what it really was: painful. It wasn’t “burning red” like fiery passion, it was maroon like a bloodstain.
But she was also marooned in that song – as in deserted – and here, she’s the one who deserted her past lover.
She’s asking that if they both move on, will they be able to let go of that deep, dark stain on their souls that this heartbreak caused? Will they ever be able to let go of the highest highs and the lowest lows, or will they always haunt one another?
🪶🤍 Are you a tortured poet? Find out with my TTPD Lyrics Quiz! 🤍🪶
Or, like “maggie and milly and molly and may,” will this single visit to the “beach” mark them forever?
“Could it be enough to just float in your orbit?” she asks her lost love. Will it ever be sufficient to just be in the same universe, so close, but never touching? Or will that only cause more temptation and rumination?
“Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses?” she asks, wondering if they can ever peacefully look back on the ghost of what could have been. “Like watching wild horses” means letting their “phantoms” (ghosts of lost love) run wild and free, and not bother them.
But this also alludes to the classic song by The Rolling Stones: “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.” Will they ever be able to let go of what could have been? Or will “wild horses” always drag them back to the idea of one another?
“Cooler in theory,” she says of this idea of letting go, “but not if you force it to be.” She can’t force herself to forget about this person.
“It just didn’t happen,” she sighs, surrendering to the idea that this person will always haunt her. It “just didn’t happen” between them, and she has to live with that.
Final Chorus & Outro: “Will I Always Wonder?”

The chorus repeats, but this time instead of “Just say, ‘I loved you the way that you were’,” it’s simply: “say that you loved me.”
If his person admits that it was real love – not imagined, and not “an idea of sorts,” – it will break her heart all over again.
“Say you’ll always wonder,” she coaxes them, asking for more heartbreak, like in willow’s “wreck my plans, that’s my man.”
It’s like she’s asking, ‘say you’ll always regret that we didn’t work out. Because I regret you all the time.’
“Cause I wonder,” she says in the outro, in the most candidly honest moment of the whole song.
‘I think about you all the time,’ she says, ‘and I will always wonder what would’ve, could’ve, should’ve been.’
“Will I always wonder?” she asks herself one final time. Will she ever get over this? Or will it stay as a maroon mark on her soul, forever marking her with the stain of lost love?
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus Meaning: Final Thoughts
The title of this song comes to have a different meaning once you get the full context. “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” are not only random people she imagines her lost love cheating with: they’re anyone she could move on with, too.
Will anyone else ever fill the gap left behind by this grand lost love? Will anyone fill that gap for her ex?
If we want to take it a step further, she never reveals the gender of the subject in this track, making it a kind of anonymous fill-in-the-blank. Could it be addressed to any lost love that she never got over?
Is the entire track her ruminations on all her lost loves, or is it addressed to one particular person?
We may never know, but it gives us an intimate peek inside her mind and her heart, which has been “cold” since the first “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” broke it into a million pieces.
More Songs From The Tortured Poets Department
- Stevie Nicks’ TTPD Prologue Poem
- TTPD Epilogue Poem “In Summation”
- Fortnight
- The Tortured Poets Department
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- So Long, London
- But Daddy I Love Him
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- Guilty As Sin?
- Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
- I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)
- Loml
- I Can Do It With A Broken Heart
- The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
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- So High School
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