Taylor Swift will be at the Super Bowl. Perfect time to discuss her grammar.
Who is the “girl” in “Hits Different” and “Blank Space”? As with any good song, interpretations abound.
As Super Bowl LVIII begins, Swifties the world over will be watching with one burning question:
Will Taylor finally reveal the true grammar and punctuation behind her music?
For years, fans have debated the meaning of ambiguous punctuation and pronouns in her songs. For someone who has built a career combining unbounded talent with immense relatability, Taylor Swift is a bit of a grammatical enigma.
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Perhaps no song has inspired more grammar debate than “Hits Different” from Swift’s Midnights album, which made history at the Grammys this week for making her the first artist to win four album of the year awards.
“I felt you and I held you for a while,” she sings on the track. “Bet I could still melt your world/ Argumentative, antithetical dream girl.”
Who is the “girl” whom the narrator refers to: “I” or “you”?
Implied punctuation follows world, but exactly what kind of punctuation is a mystery. And are there words that Swift is leaving out for the sake of poetry? The answers conceal a crucial meaning behind the song: Is the narrator addressing the “argumentative, antithetical dream girl,” or is she herself the dream girl?
In one reading, “Argumentative, antithetical dream girl” is in the vocative case and is being directly addressed, just like “Romeo, save me” or “Marry me, Juliet.” Swift’s employment of a less common definition of antithetical makes the listener sit up and take notice, which makes the lyric even catchier. (Typically, antithetical would precede a prepositional phrase that describes what the noun is antithetical to; here, she uses the more obscure definition of antithetical meaning “oppositional.”)
But if the implied punctuation is a period rather than a comma — and we assume that Swift took some poetic liberties and left out a couple of words — then “Hits Different” hits different … ly.
In that reading, Swift could be saying, “Bet I could still melt your world. [I’m your] argumentative, antithetical dream girl.” No narrator jumping required, and she leans hard into her trademark relatability.
Even though the second reading requires filling in more blank spaces, the language is clearer and more direct.
Speaking of blank spaces, “Blank Space” is another Swift hit that inspires pronoun protests.
On the surface, certain lyrics seem to be all about the narrator: “Screaming, crying, perfect storms/ I can make all the tables turn/ Rose garden filled with thorns/ Keep you second guessing like/ ‘Oh my God, who is she?’” In this traditional reading, the narrator’s partner is watching the narrator go crazy and wondering where she came from.
But the song’s video suggests another antecedent for “she,” and some alternative quotation mark placement: In the video, the guy mouths, “Oh my God,” while Swift says, “Who is she?” and gestures somewhere offscreen, suggesting that she refers not to the narrator (in the video, Swift), but to an unseen third party — another woman who’s inspiring righteous jealousy.
As with any good song, interpretations abound. And as with nearly everything else she does, one thing is clear: Swift’s ambiguity is almost certainly intentional.
Swift’s ambiguity is almost certainly intentional.
This is the same woman who, in 2015, after learning the Princeton Review had misquoted one of her lyrics in a practice test question about bad grammar in songs, wrote on her Tumblr, “ACCUSE ME OF ANYTHING BUT DO NOT ATTACK MY GRAMMAR.”
What could be more relatable than that?
The Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, looks at how language, grammar, and punctuation shape our world. Send comments, questions, and accusative pronouns to jeff@theangrygrammarian.com.