There aren’t many songwriters who can turn a story about a scorned ghost into a stadium anthem; then again, there’s only one Taylor Swift. “My Tears Ricochet” is a heartbreaking and exquisite gem of indie goth from Swift’s eighth studio album folklore, where she paints with the blood of a murdered lover metaphor to heal the wounds of her real-life career betrayal.
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Swift’s murder ballad isn’t of the Nick Cave variety. Cave puts you in the room at the scene of the crime. It’s before the police tape preserves the area. Swift’s is more like Salman Rushdie’s magic realism when the human figures of The Satanic Verses tumble from a hijacked jetliner, and each detail holds significance in virtue, kindness, pain, and karma.
The album is full of mystique, recorded in secrecy and co-written with someone named William Bowery, creating a riddle the Swifties took to the internet in a panic to solve. “My Tears Ricochet” sparked the album. Something profound must have kindled its fire.
“Triggered” by Divorce Stories
Swift told Entertainment Weekly she began writing “My Tears Ricochet” after watching the 2019 film Marriage Story. The Noah Baumbach-directed film stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson and follows a stage director and his wife, an actor, through an exhausting divorce.
Even on my worst day
Did I deserve, babe all the hell you gave me?
’Cause I loved you
I swear I loved you ’til my dying day
She explained how she felt “very triggered” by any stories or movies about divorce. The grueling and bitter marriage collapse paralleled her experience leaving her former record label, Big Machine. A public dispute erupted over the purchase of her back catalog masters. The label, run by Scott Borchetta, sold the masters of Swift’s first six studio albums to music manager Scooter Braun.
Braun’s Ithaca Holdings owned the rights before selling to a private equity company in 2020. Swift responded by recording new versions known as Taylor’s Versions to regain control of her work following the purchase. The new owners, Shamrock Holdings, control the original album masters, beginning with her 2006 self-titled debut through Reputation (2017).
I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace
And you’re the hero flying around saving face
And if I’m dead to you why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name
Wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet
Though Swift has never experienced divorce, the messy ending to her 15-year professional relationship with Borchetta felt equally catastrophic. She wrote “My Tears Ricochet” using imagery likening divorce to a bloodied and broken relationship.
Funeral Song
Swift co-wrote the icy goth ballad with Jack Antonoff and William Bowery—whom the sleuths identified as her former boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn. Keeping with folklore’s surreal themes, “My Tears Ricochet” follows the ghost of a dead woman who haunts her former lover and murderer.
I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace
And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves
You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same
The battleship metaphor adds weight to the heaviness of loss and betrayal. Swift’s imagery shows how one wrong move can sink you. Set aside the vast number of awards and sold-out stadium tours, Swift’s vivid confessionals are a reminder of why she’s one of the most compelling songwriters of her generation.
‘folklore’
The National’s Aaron Dessner, folklore’s co-producer, told Vulture he considers “My Tears Ricochet” a beacon for the record. The album’s first song set the tone for the surrealism and darkness of Swift’s cabin folk. She echoed the earthy sounds of The National and Bon Iver but infused their indie soundscapes with confessional poetry.
“My Tears Ricochet” opens with melancholy angels singing like sad ghosts preparing for a funeral. It’s a bitter and sorrowful song beginning a new chapter in Swift’s life. NPR called it “more sophisticated” yet still “classic Taylor Swift.”
It’s easy to think of Swift as a permanent teenage artist. Or at least, an artist meant only for young, predominantly female fans. The sophistication NPR speaks of is more than the song’s dark subject. It’s the way life hardens and picks at the soft edges. Working with Dessner, the dad rockers following his band finally had something to relate to on a Taylor Swift album.
The “classic” part of NPR’s description is in the phrase: Cursing my name, wishing I stayed. It’s how she turns on a phrase with rapid syllables, a quasi-folk rap. Nashville is full of songwriters using this move, but no one does it like Swift.
Isolation and Escapism
Swift’s turn at indie folk happened in isolation during the lockdown. The album’s introspection was the time-stop replacing fast-paced lives and stuffed-to-the-gills calendars. Her themes of escapism and romanticism result not only from the lockdown but from what she thought through a bitter professional breakup and betrayal.
Her gift is writing deeply personal confessionals in a way resonant with perfect strangers. Most pop stars enjoy fleeting moments, but eras define Taylor Swift.
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Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
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