Taylor’s Heart, Back From The Dead: “This Love” Analysis, Line by Line

This Love is one of the most underrated tracks on 1989. In the poignant and haunting lyrics, Taylor uses ocean tide metaphors to describe the cycle of a turbulent relationship. 

Lyricall and sonically, this song is like a small preview of the Folklore and Evermore eras. In the following years, she will lean more and more into this type of intricate lyricism. 

This Love is not as complex as those later songs, but still uses incredible metaphors, imagery and symbolism to paint us a haunting portrait of the hands of fate. 

Will her love come back to her, and is it what she needs? 

Here’s my full This Love analysis, line by line and metaphor by metaphor. 

This Love (Taylor’s Version) 

• Title: This Love (Taylor’s Version)
• Written by: Taylor Swift
• Track: 11, 1989 (Taylor’s Version)
• Pen: Fountain
• Lyrics from Genius

This Love Lyrics: Narrative Synopsis 

• Setting: The ocean of Taylor’s heart. 
• Characters: Narrator (Taylor), subject (“you”, on-again off-again lover)
• Mood: Hopeful and hopeless. 
• Conflict: He keeps leaving and reappearing. 
• Inciting Incident: The “tide” brought him “back in.” 
• Quest: Let the hands of fate decide; she can longer do it. 
• Symbols & Metaphors: tide/ocean/waves, skies, good vs. bad, alive vs. dead, light/fire, ghost, scars, hands. 
• Theme: The turbulent toss of an up and down love. 
• Imagery: “Clear blue water / High tide came and brought you in” “Skies grew darker / Currents swept you out again”, “These hands had to let it go free,” “silent screams,” “Lantern, burning / Flickered in my mind for only you”, “losin’ grip, on sinking ships,” “This love is glowing in the dark,” “Your smile, my ghost, I fell to my knees.” 
• Lesson: If something is meant to be, it’ll come back to you. But it might not always be exactly what you needed. 

This Love (Taylor’s Version) Lyric Video

Who is This Love About? 

This was the first song Taylor wrote after the Red era, so it could be about either Harry Styles or Jake Gyllenhaal (given the timeline). 

Taylor has never revealed who inspired the song. 

What is This Love About? 

This Love is about a turbulent relationship. Taylor uses the ebb and flow of the ocean to represent their breakups and makeups. 

Water, light and color play an important role in the many metaphors of this track, mimicking a frothy tide and waves crashing on the beach. 

The theme of fate is also central, where Taylor explores the idea of something ‘meant to be.’ 

This Love Analysis: Line by Line

The first verse opens with gorgeous imagery: “clear blue water / high tide came and brought you in.” He’s metaphorically washed back up on her shores; the ebb and flow of the current has returned him to her. 

“And I could go on and on, on and on, and I will,” she tells us. There’s more to this story, and she’s about to reveal it. 

“Skies grew darker” contrasts with the “clear blue water.” What once was translucent is becoming cloudy and dark; it’s foreshadowing something terrible about to happen. 

“Currents swept you out again / and you were just gone and gone.” The tide took him back out to sea. But what do the “currents” represent? And why is it plural? 

The “currents” could be anything that draws him away: other girls, other interests, other priorities. Suddenly he’s just gone, with no reason why. 

Pre-Chorus & Chorus: “In Silent Screams, In Wildest Dreams”

“In silent screams, in wildest dreams / I never dreamed of this,” describes the enormous loss. 

“Silent screams” conveys her utter frustration in imagery and metaphor. To scream silently means you’re not showing your frustration to the world, or your screams are going unheard. 

“In wildest dreams” references another song on the album, but also means just what it means: a wild hope or delusion. But even in her wildest fantasies, nothing this prolific happened (“I never dreamed of this”). 

“This love is good, this love is bad” shows the duality of her feelings. It’s the highest highs and the lowest lows, all contained within one person and one relationship. It plays with the idea of what’s “good for you” and “bad for you,” and good vs. evil. 

“This love is alive back from the dead” paints his re-emergence as a ghost risen from the grave. Has he come back to haunt her? Is this resurrection a good idea? 

“These hands had to let it go free,” she explains. A proverb in popular culture says, “if you love something, set it free. It’ll come back if it’s meant to be.” 

But after she set him free, “this love came back to me.” It’s returned like a boomerang. Was it meant to be? 

The central theme here is fate, exploring what’s ‘meant to be’ or ‘fated.’ 

It seems like since he came back, it was meant to be. Right? 

🩵🩵 Can you pass the 1989 TV Lyrics Quiz? 🩵🩵

Verse 2: “Tossing, Turning”

Not so fast. She’s now “tossing, turning,” like the waves in the first verse. But it’s implied she’s tossing and turning in bed, and not in the ocean. 

“Struggle through the night with someone new,” she says. But it wasn’t comfortable; she ‘tossed and turned’ all night. 

In the night, there was a “lantern, burning, flickered in my mind for only you.” This plays with the theme of “holding a candle” for someone; it means you have always loved or always will love someone. 

Her lantern for him is burning, but it flickers: it goes on and off, or occasionally illuminates the truth in the darkness. 

“But you were still, gone, gone, gone,” she says. This changes the lantern almost to a lighthouse. She’s put her ‘light on’ (signaled to him), but he can’t see it or is ignoring it. 

Pre-Chorus & Chorus: “Losing Grips on Sinking Ships”

The pre-chorus introduces a new metaphor: “In losin’ grip, on sinking ships / You showed up just in time.” 

“Losing grip on sinking ships” means that this metaphorical boat is going down, and she’s about to lose her grasp and drown. 

But “you showed up just in time.” He rescues her. 

So what is the boat, if it’s not their relationship? Maybe her sanity, maybe her hope. He comes back just in time to ‘right the ship’, and save her from her fate. 

The first part of the chorus repeats, but then we get more, starting with: “This love left a permanent mark.” 

What’s a “permanent mark”? A scar. Or a tattoo. Something on your body – or in your mind – forever. It changed something significant about her that won’t go away. 

“This love is glowing in the dark,” she says. Given the previous lantern metaphor, this could be the same thing.

But something “glowing in the dark” also represents hope; something illuminated, something special. 

Bridge & Outro: “Your Smile, My Ghost, I Fell to My Knees”

The bridge is heartbreaking. “Your kiss, my cheek, I watched you leave.”

This could be a simple goodbye kiss, but it could also be an easter egg that refers to the previous track How You Get the Girl (“picture frames, kisses on cheeks”). Both songs are about an on again, off again relationship. 

“Your smile, my ghost, I fell to my knees” could mean that his smile is haunting her, or that she’s a ghost of her former self.

“I fell to my knees” after he left means this either devastated her, or she begged him “on her knees” to stay. 

“When you’re young, you just run,” she explains, which is a common theme on the album when it comes to romance. It’s the perils of youth, when you don’t know what you’re doing, so you just run away. 

“But you come back to what you need” recalls the boomerang effect and fates of the chorus. 

This implies he came back to her because he needed her. But did she need him? She wants him, for sure. But is he good for her? 

The song closes with “this love came back to me,” but we don’t get any clues to what happens next in the narrative. 

Will he stay? Or will the currents sweep him out again? And can she withstand another tidal cycle? 

🩵🩵 Can you pass the 1989 TV Lyrics Quiz? 🩵🩵

This Love Analysis: Final Thoughts 

This Love is hauntingly gorgeous, and the updated vocals on Taylor’s Version make it even moreso. 

I think this is an important piece in the Taylor canon, as it displays the type of songwriting she’ll really lean into in the future. 

This song was ahead of its time, and often overlooked on 1989. But it’s an incredible piece of lyricism, with some of the best metaphors and imagery Taylor has ever used to date.

More Songs From 1989 (Taylor’s Version) 

• Welcome to New York
• Blank Space
• Style
• Out of the Woods
• All You Had to Do Was Stay
• Shake it Off
• I Wish You Would
• Bad Blood
• Wildest Dreams
• How You Get the Girl
• I Know Places
• Clean
• Wonderland
• You Are in Love
• New Romantics
• Slut! [From the Vault]
• Say Don’t Go [From the Vault]
• Now That We Don’t Talk [From the Vault]
• Suburban Legends [From the Vault]
• Is it Over Now? [From the Vault]