What Taylor’s “Honey” Lyrics Really Mean
Podcast Episode: December 1, 2025
Episode Description
You can call me anything you want, sweetheart, because in this lyric breakdown we’re tackling the sticky sweet sentiment of Honey!
In the 11th track from The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift redefines the language of love, one term of endearment at a time. But is there more going on in this track than meets the eye?
That was a trick question: of course there is! Taylor’s using double entendres and dual meanings to trace how words like “sweetheart” and “honey” were used as weapons, and are now used as real terms of affection.
We’ll pour through this track line by line, relate it to its “sister track” Call it What You Want, and see what we can learn about this new love of a Showgirl.
Listen to the Episode
Episode Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Swiftly Sung Stories Podcast, I’m Jen, your Swiftie English teacher, and today we’re tackling track 11 in my track-by-track analysis of The Life of a Showgirl, and we’re diving straight into Call it What You Want Part 2, aka Honey.
In this song, our showgirl narrator redefines the language of love, one term of endearment at a time. But is there more to this track than this sticky-sweet title implies? We’re going to find out together.
In my last few episodes, I analyzed Taylor’s prologue poem, and the first 9 tracks of this album. So go check those out, because it lays a lot of groundwork for understanding all the themes that Taylor’s exploring in these lyrics. The Life of a Showgirl is really about how the show gets in the way of the girl, and it’s a theme we’re going to see play out again in Honey.
Also, all of this content is available on my website if you want the text version with annotated lyrics, and if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can also find me wherever you get your podcasts and vice versa.
Okay, so first let’s lay a little groundwork for the themes within the song, then we’ll roll into our dissection of Honey, line by line.
Intro & The Purpose of Honey on Showgirl
Before we go into detail, a quick caveat: I’m not here to discover what Taylor Swift did, I’m here to discover what the art does. I only really discuss Taylor’s personal life in my lyrical analysis when it’s essential to understanding the text, or when it really helps us to put the lyrics into context. Everything I’m about to get into is my opinion as a writer and former English teacher, and your lens is different, and that’s what makes it great. I’m not claiming my analysis is fact or the only meaning, I’m just going to point out different interpretations and lyrical connections so you can draw your own conclusions. So take what resonates, and leave the rest.
So. What’s up with Honey? It’s not really a standout song on this record, it’s not super deep, it uses a lot of repetition, and while it’s really really catchy, what’s it really saying?
Honey is plopped between Cancelled – which is a really scathing satire about cancel culture – and the title track, The Life of a Showgirl, which is about how the showgirl life isn’t all that it appears. It’s polished on the outside, and bruised on the inside.
So what purpose does Honey serve? To me, this song makes the most sense as a sort of updated version, or a sequel, of Call it What You Want. There’s of course the lyrical connections, “call it what you want” vs. “you can call me honey if you want.” Those are very similar.
But these two tracks are also both second to last, with call it what you want being sandwiched between track 13, This is Why We can’t have nice things, and the final track 15 on reputation, New Year’s Day. So in the overall narrative of each album, they’re kind of wind-down songs, right? She’s taken us on this emotional rollercoaster, and then in both Honey and Call it What You Want, she looks back on all the lessons learned and reflects on how much she’s changed before she closes out the story, the album.
I have an upcoming episode in my Taylor Swift 101 series, once I’ve completed Showgirl, that will dive into how Taylor uses narrative structure in detail, if you’re curious about that, so remember to subscribe so you don’t miss it. It’ll be a really interesting and detailed look at exactly how she takes us on these storytelling journeys through songs and through albums.
So while Honey might not be the most emotionally hard-hitting song or revealing song on Showgirl, it does serve a purpose, and that purpose is reflection. Look where I was before, and look where I am now. And the song structure she uses here is really reflective of that.
Honey is an unusual song structure for Taylor, and I think that’s part of why this track doesn’t feel as impactful as others. It begins with an intro, then goes directly into the first chorus. There’s also no real bridge, which is always Taylor’s emotional climax of any song, and though the final pre-chorus acts like a bridge, there’s no real vulnerable moments like she gives us in most other songs.
But I point this out because I think it fits in with the theme of the song, which is switching it up, feeling brand new, changing and growing and redefining what love should feel like. She hasn’t stuck with her old way of doing things here, her tried-and-true song structure, because these characters in Honey are also entering a new era and a new way of life and love. So it makes sense that she’s switching up even the format of her writing here.
Okay, so let’s get into it line by line.
Intro & Chorus: Call it What You Want Part Deux
So there’s a short intro in which our narrator says, “You can call me “Honey” if you want because I’m the one you want.” She’s setting up the central metaphor that will run throughout the song. “Honey” and other terms of endearment will come to mean different things as this track goes on.
But from the jump, these lyrics remind us of: “So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to.” And it almost feels like a reply or an answer, right?, “call it what you want,” “you can call me honey if you want.”
Call it what you want from reputation is about not needing to put a label on her relationship or this period of her life. And in the lyrics she goes through all the things you can call it: hiding, running away, a love bubble, a rescue – you can call it anything that you want.
But here, she does label it. “You can call me honey”. In the larger character arc of Taylor Swift, it feels like she’s moved from uncertainty or the unknown to the other end of the spectrum: feeling sure. And she is sure: “because I’m the one you want.” She’s saying, ‘you can call me this because I know you mean it.’ So she’s gone from, ‘I don’t know what this is but I know I want it’ to ‘I know what I want, and it’s you, and I know you want me.’ There’s no more doubt or waffling or eschewing labels. It’s sincerity and security and she’s 100% sure.
She then goes into the first chorus: “When anyone called me ‘Sweetheart’, it was passive-aggressive at the bar.” Here’s our second term of endearment, or second label for your partner, and she’s going to list quite a few in this song.
“Sweetheart” can be a term of endearment like “honey,” but in her past experience, it was used like mean-girl ammunition. She remembers being on a night out at the bar, and some girl sarcastically calling her “sweetheart”, which was meant to cut her down or demean her.
“And the bitch was tellin’ me to back off,” she continues, “’Cause her man had looked at me wrong.” So she juxtaposes “sweetheart” with “bitch,” and this is purposeful: they can mean the same thing depending on the context in which they’re used.
In this past use of “sweetheart,” a woman at the bar was angry because her “man had looked at me wrong.” This woman is using “sweetheart” when she means “bitch,” which sets up this theme of covert and double meanings that will run through the rest of the song. That’s the schtick of Honey: terms of endearment that can be endearing, or they can be demeaning.
“If anyone called me ‘Honey’,” she goes on, “It was standin’ in the bathroom, white teeth.” She flashes back to this other scenario where a term of endearment was used to demean her.
Here, it feels like we’re maybe in a high school bathroom, where these mean girls with fangs of white teeth speak in daggers.
“They were sayin’ that skirt don’t fit me,” she recalls, “And I cried the whole way home.” She recalls being shamed for the way she looks, which is incredibly high school-coded.
But this last line feels familiar: “I cried the whole way home” feels a lot like “the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.” This time, it’s “the girl in the skirt.” Both times, she’s made to feel small and insecure. Both times, she’s wearing something that symbolizes innocence or femininity: a dress vs a skirt. And these are really moments where that innocence is lost.
So because of these incidents in the past, she’s developed these kind of pavlovian responses to words like “sweetheart” and “honey”. They only meant shame to her, but now, they’re coming to mean something different.
But then it all changes: “But you touched my face, Redefined all of those blues when you say ‘Honey’.”
The face touching imagery feels incredibly intimate, and what she really means is, ‘you’ve touched a part of me that no one has been able to reach.’ All those previous “blues” – the insecurities, the double-speak, the bullying – is all in the past. Because when this person calls her “honey,” or “sweetheart,” he’s being truly intimate. And we know it’s true intimacy because it’s displayed in this simple face-touching imagery. He’s really seeing her.
So to “redefine all of those blues” is to take these moments where “honey” and “sweetheart” were weaponized, and erase them. She’ll no longer have this shame trigger when she hears those words directed at her.
Verse 1: Pink Skies
Going into the first verse, she begins with some more romantic imagery: “Summertime spritz, pink skies,” We’re 13 lines into this song, by the way, and we’ve only just reached the first verse. This is that odd structure.
So “Summertime spritz” is this lighthearted, cheerful vibe, and then we get “pink skies,” which is the opposite of the “blues” she described previously. This is optimism emerging from her past pessimism.
But if pink skies sound familiar, they should: it was a big part of the Lover album and era, which symbolized this new, positive outlook. It’s the same vibe here. But this whole section is also really similar to invisible string from folklore: “time, curious time, gave me the blues, and then purple pink skies.”
So she’s using sky imagery and metaphors to describe moving from a stormy time of life into a clear, smooth sailing and happier time. She also uses this sky-clearing language in Opalite, so it’s a recurring motif throughout this album, and also shows up a lot in previous albums.
She goes on and names another color: “Wintergreen kiss, all mine.” So she’s contrasted summer and winter, summertime spritz, wintergreen kiss, with this more kind of seasonal and weather imagery.
Taylor usually uses winter as a metaphor for a time of deep reflection and sometimes depression (think “back to december”, “gray november, I’ve been down since July”), but here, winter is depicted as crisp and cool. We can imagine a wintergreen kiss as kissing someone chewing wintergreen gum, so it’s romantic and it’s refreshing. It’s not the same depressive winters as before. And it’s “all mine”, which means there’s no games, there’s no back and forth. There’s just trust and love.
Then she expands on that: “Gave it a different meaning ’cause you mean it when you talk.”
The subject of this line is, I think “honey,” so she’s saying he gave this label a different meaning because he means it sincerely. But there’s also the larger meaning of, you gave love a different meaning, because you’re not playing games. There’s no hidden meanings or speaking in code in this relationship. He says what he means, and he means “honey” as in ‘you’re sweet, and you’re mine.’
“Honey, I’m home, we could play house,” she continues, which pulls in this 1950s nuclear family-coded phrase. To “play house” is usually a childhood game, where kids play make believe happy family. But it seems she has some more adult-appropriate games in mind.
“We can bed down, pick me up,” she goes on, which uses two double entendres. To “bed down” means to get an improvised bed set up, like during camping. But “bed down” here refers to naughtier bedroom activities.
Then there’s “Pick me up” which we can also glean a few different meanings from. There’s “come pick me up,” like come collect me and take me home. Then there’s being “picked up” in a womanizer sort of way, like a ‘pickup artist.’ Then there’s literally being picked up and carried, which I think is what she’s talking about here.
After she’s “picked up,” she asks, “Who’s the baddest in the land?” and this alludes to Snow White’s evil Queen, who asks her magic mirror, “mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Here, she’s more of a good queen, but she’s kind of asking, ‘who’s been a bad, bad girl’ in a naughty, flirty way.
Here, they’re both “the baddest in the land” as in naughty in the bedroom, but also as in badass, like powerful and potent, both together and separately.
“What’s the plan?” she asks, then quickly answers herself, “You could be my forever night stand,
Honey.” So she’s wondering what their future holds, like what’s the plan for our life, and then answers herself: wherever you go, I’ll follow. Or wherever I go, you’re coming with me.
But I think this line is my favorite: “Forever night stand” is a play on “one night stand” – it’s permanence versus impermanence. He’ll be her “forever night stand,” or a permanent fixture in her bedroom and in her life, and she’s implicitly contrasting that with something temporary – a one night stand. It’s a really clever use of language.
Verse 2
Then the second verse repeats a couple of lines: “You can call me “Honey” if you want because I’m the one you want,” and then she repeats, “I’m the one you want” again. This repetition is reinforcement. There’s no doubt that he wants her. It’s security and fidelity: “I’m the one you want.” There’s no questioning, or “call it what you want.” What he wants is her, and the other way around.
“You give it different meaning, ’cause you mean it when you talk,” she repeats, but by now, we can tell that “it” isn’t just the word “honey.” “It” really means intimacy, trust, and comfort. “It” really begins to mean, you gave me an entirely new definition of love.
We’re also beginning to see that “Honey,” and “sweetheart”, and any other term of endearment, are just stand-ins for what she’s really getting at: love. It’s not just the TERM of endearment that’s changed meaning – it’s the endearment itself. Because here, it does what it says on the tin. There’s no pretense and there’s no hidden agenda. He’s redefined what love really means to her, because all the games are over. There’s no back and forth. There’s nothing up in the air – there’s no call it what you want – all that uncertainty is gone.
“Sweetie, it’s yours, kicking in doors,” she continues, “Take it to the floor, give me more.” Here, the “it” of “it’s yours” means everything, and all of her. Like she says in Death by a Thousand Cuts: “my heart, my hips, my body, my love”.
In prior relationships, there may have been “kicking in doors” in dramatic fights, but here, it’s playful: they can’t wait to make it to the bedroom, or they’d kick in doors to be able to reach or rescue one another.
Then “Take it to the floor” is another double entendre. It usually means to drive fast, like pedal to the metal. But here, it has a steamier meaning. And it’s this passionate scene, right? kicking in doors and needing one another so desperately that they can’t even make it to the bed. “Give me more” is both something you’d utter in bed, and has a deeper emotional meaning: ‘give me all of you, because you have all of me.’
She goes on, “Buy the paint in the color of your eyes.” Remember, they’re still “playing house” here, and she’s imagining decorating this new space, and she wants it to look like him, or match him. This is similar to “have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you.” She’s setting up this new life, and she wants it all to look like him.
With this paint she wants to “graffiti my whole damn life, Honey.” She wants to be enveloped in him, in every part of her life, both the showgirl, and the girl.
But this also reminds us of a much earlier song, Cold as You: “You put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray.” Here, there are no emotional walls erected between them, and though she doesn’t specify his eye color here, we understand that it’s probably the opposite of depressive gray. She wants to color drench her life in the color of him.
She’s all in, in other words. And she said this specifically in the prologue poem: “if he’s in, you are too.” And though she doesn’t specify a color here, remember that color symbolism is important in Taylor’s universe. She wants her entire universe painted the color of him, whatever color that is. So even though she doesn’t tell us what his eye color is, it still fits in the vein of this larger long-running metaphor of her colors of love.
Final Pre-Chorus: Forever Night Stand
Moving onto the final pre-chorus, though there’s no official bridge in this track, this final pre-chorus really serves as the bridge, and it’s the most vulnerable bit of the song, as Taylor’s bridges tend to be.
So she says, “When anyone called me late night,” she says of her past lovers, “He was screwin’ around with my mind.”
Whenever she’d get a late night phone call in the past, it was a booty call. And more than that, it was manipulative. These previous lovers didn’t mean it when they talked, or they didn’t say what they meant. They didn’t want her; they wanted her body, or the idea of her. Maybe they wanted the showgirl, and were disappointed when they saw the girl underneath.
“Askin’, ‘What are you wearin’?’, Too high to remember in the morning.” This past lover would call in a drug-fueled haze, trying to get into her pants. But it was all insincere, or it was all a game. But now that’s all over, and now “it’s heroin but this time with an ‘e’.”
“And when anyone called me ‘Lovely’,” she continues, “They were findin’ ways not to praise me.” So “Lovely”, like “sweetheart” and “honey,” can similarly be used in this dismissive, demeaning way. I live in the UK and I often hear “lovely” used as “ok, now that’s done, let’s move on. Lovely.” It’s dismissive.
So they used to call her “lovely” when they were trying to avoid any real intimacy or vulnerability. Instead of saying “that was amazing” or “you are amazing”, they dismiss her with this use of “lovely.” Wiping their hands and walking away. It’s either that, or they’re commenting on her looks instead of her worth. Her appearance instead of her contents.
“But you say it like you’re in awe of me,” she says of his use of “lovely,” “And you stay until the morning, Honey.” Not only does he use the word “lovely” as a real term of affection, but uses it to express this sort of awe and admiration of her, both physically and emotionally. Instead of “lovely, let’s move on,” it’s “you are so lovely.” And he means it, and we know he means it, because he stays.
And this line might seem insignificant – “You stay until the morning.” But really, it answers one of Taylor’s longest-running questions: “who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?”
And now, the answer is right in front of her: “you could stay.” You could be my forever night stand.
The chorus repeats, then she ends this track with a simple, one-line outro: “But you can call me “Honey” if you want.” And we can insert any term of endearment here, she’s saying ‘you can call me whatever you want, because I know you mean it. It’s not empty jargon, it’s real, meaningful language, and it’s this new language of love that’s been redefined for her.
“Call ME what you want,” she’s saying, because this relationship has redefined the very language of love.
Outro
That’s it for my analysis of Honey, so let me know in the comments what you think of this track, and what it means to you. That’s the most important part of all of this – not what it means to me, or what it means to Taylor – it’s what it means to you. What’s your favorite line? Let me know, and please like and subscribe so you don’t miss my next episode, where we’re diving deep into the title track: The Life of a Showgirl. This is where we’ll tie all these narrative threads together and reflect back on this album as a whole, so you won’t want to miss it.
Thanks so much for being here with me – it really means a lot to me as I’m just starting this channel. All of this content is available on my website linked in the show notes where you can find these annotated lyrics that you’ve seen if you’re watching on YouTube, and I also have lyric quizzes, analysis of over 250 of Taylor’s songs, and so much more. So go check that out, and I’ll see you in the next track.
