After releasing two breezy singles this summer off her upcoming album, Lover, Taylor Swift surprised fans with an emotionally raw track, called “The Archer.”
“Track five is kind of a tradition that really started with you guys. Instinctively I was putting a very vulnerable, personal, honest and emotional song on track five,” Taylor shared, clarifying this is not the next single and it won’t have a music video.
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“It’s just a song that I love on the album,” she added, while on the set filming her next music video. “But I haven’t made a video for it. It’s just sort of a glimpse into another side of the album I wanted to show you.”
During her Instagram Live, the 10-time Grammy winner brought out stacks of her diaries from the past and present to reveal two things.
Since her songs have been open diaries for years, she decided to just go ahead and hand the rest of them to us.
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She has scanned 120 pages of her actual diaries and is sharing them with fans who purchase any of the deluxe editions of her Lover albums. Each booklet will have 30 pages of entries from her, and it also includes blank pages for Swifties to write their own entries.
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While her last two hits, “ME!” and “You Need To Calm Down” have been the perfect songs to dance to and sing at the top of your lungs in the car, this one cuts.
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The personal and revealing lyrics show a side of Swift we haven’t heard from in awhile.
On the chorus she sings, “I’ve been the archer, I’ve been the prey/Who could ever leave me, darling/But who could stay?”
In possibly one of the most relatable lines in music history she shares her own battle with self-acceptance, “And I cut off my nose just to spite my face/ Then I hate my reflection for years and years.”
Can we send this girl a hug for being so real?
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Just listen to her sing, “I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost/The room is on fire, invisible smoke/And all of my heroes die all alone/Help me hold on to you,” and try not to tear up.
She further pulls down any remaining wall while begging to be accepted by the person she loves, “They see right through me,” she sings before more heart-wrenching lyrics follow: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men/ Couldn’t put me together again/ ‘Cause all of my enemies started out friends/ Let me hold on to you.”
Fans were right to speculate about the single’s name and some even picked up on her Easter egg right away.
In the music video for her last single, “You Need To Calm Down,” Hayley Kiyoko visibly shot a bow and arrow.
If you love the sound, or just think it feels like the old Tay, that’s because it’s produced by Jack Antonoff, who collaborated on a number of her songs in the past, including “Look What You Made Me Do,” “Getaway Car,” “Dress,” “You Are In Love, and “Out Of The Woods.”
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Taylor also took a minute to talk about the new album, slated to debut on August 23.
“It’s very romantic and not just simply fanatically, like it’s all love songs or something,” Swift teased on IG Live. “I think that romance can be found in loneliness or sadness or going through conflicts in your life. [The album] just looks at things in a romantic gaze.”
Fans are already loving the song and pouring over social media to praise the queen.
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And predicting great things for it already.
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And yes, this is what we will all look like when she performs this live.
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All we can really say is thank you.
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It’s an evolution of a past favorite.
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This will make you look at one line with tears in your eyes.
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—I’m speechless.
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Don’t worry, we’re just going to play this on repeat until the album comes out next month.