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The Tortured Poets Department 🪶
Since my first listen of “I Hate It Here,” I’ve seen this song as one of the gayest on TTPD — like a sister song to “Ivy,” professing this longing for another life where she is free, untethered from heteropatriarchal norms. Escapism is such a major focus of Taylor’s recent work. We see similar stories being told in “Lavender Haze,” “The Lakes,” “right where you left me,” and notably in “Paris”: for some reason, even while supposedly being in happy relationships and at the height of her fame, she’s aching for something else. In another life, she ‘comes out’ like a débutante, but for now, the finance bro is her eternal consolation prize.
Today I came across this TikTok about some possibly leaked alternative lyrics to “I Hate It Here” that have only been available to some listeners on certain streaming platforms and devices.
Official lyrics:
“Seems like it was never even fun back then.
Nostalgia is a mind’s trick,
If I’d been there, I’d hate it,
It was freezing in the palace.”
Alternative lyrics:
“Seems like it was never even fun back then.
Nostalgia is a mind’s trick,
No midnights in Paris,
It was freezing in the palace.”
To me, this lyric change links the song even more directly with “Paris,” a song in which Taylor imagines herself and a partner in another land, whilst sitting among people whose gossip just doesn’t excite her. Like. this girl is living in gay fantasyland lolll. Or she’s just wholly uninterested in her partners. Either option is tragic.
This is a song about closeting and fantasy worlds, feeling like something is missing in your relationships, being gay.
The other implication of this lyric change involves the controversy over her weird “I’d say the 1830s without all the racists” line. If a prior version of the song didn’t mention “If I’d been there, I’d hate it,” then the song is much weaker at conveying the dangers of romanticizing the past. So I can see why she scrapped the Paris line. But I still think she could’ve done a lot better at expressing this idea, and I absolutely understand how many people are unhappy with the 1830s lyric, even with context given.
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My version has the Paris variation! It sounds like “no midnight in Paris” to me
Same
Here’s another person’s recording of the lyric change!!
It’s a bit hard to make out, but I think it’s also possible she might be saying “moonlit night in Paris,” as opposed to “no midnights in Paris.”
Interesting that she removed the Paris line when it would have tied it to the 1975's song Paris (because she's made so many obvious choices to lead us there). It's like she didn't want this one to be tied to Matty!
I think another explanation is that Midnight In Paris is a Woody Allen movie and referencing it is pretty 😬
Yeah I think this might be why it seems to have gone.
Wait but there are multiple Woody Allen references in this song — “a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy” is one of the closing lines from one of his one act plays (I literally just saw it last week). Do we know any links between Taylor and WA?
It’s definitely “No ‘Midnight In Paris’.” that she sings. Midnight In Paris is a film about a writer time travelling in Paris back to the eras that inspired him and meeting all his literary heroes. For the character in the film, the past is exactly as he’d hoped.
It conveys the same thing as “if I’d been there I’d hate it”, but via a reference to another story, but I suspect it’s removal is because it was made by Woody Allen, who is not a good guy, and she wanted to lose the reference to him.
I’ve been going down a rabbit hole with this song. 1830 in Paris was a “revolution” that Victor Hugo based his Les Mis musical off of when he escaped/exiled himself. The reason for the revolution is even more mind blowing.
Okay, but this explains so much! I was listening to the album on Apple music the second it came out and was listening with my brother. We listen while reading the lyrics and there was a Lyric about Paris and I was like “wtf they made a mistake” because it was only written but the track didn’t match it. I remember joking about how it was a rush job so they weren’t as careful as normal. Now it’s fixed. So idk why they kept the previous version in some places.
And now I’m gonna keep thinking about why she changed the lyrics. Both fit. It might be just because she liked it better, but this is gonna haunt me for a little while.
This is so weird!! I was so confused about how people were hearing Paris. I'm playing from Spotify, so I didn't hear Paris anywhere.
This is so interesting! 😵
Could she be hinting at something happening at Paris when the tour starts in Europe? I mean, she used apple music with the word search to tease TTPD - and now only apple music has the Paris line 🤔
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“turns out it (the muse that your fans are assuming) was that guy you hooked up with ages ago some wanna be z lister” 🫢