Taylor Swift doesn’t sing the first word in her new song “Gorgeous”—a baby does. Like, a literal baby. No one knows whose baby this is. Maybe it’s Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold’s toddler, James. (That’s the popular theory right now, at least.) Maybe it’s a showbiz baby whose job is to say cute words in pop stars’ songs. Is this the same baby who Madonna Autotuned crying for her unreleased song “Autotune Baby?” The one who tells Christina Aguilera she “owns the throne” in “Vanity?” Who knows, man. Your guess is as good as mine.
One mystery fans are making headway in solving, however, is why Swift chose to include a baby’s pipes in “Gorgeous.” It’s a strange choice at first listen, but a closer look at the song’s lyrics helps connects the dots.
In the song, Swift waxes poetic about how she’s furious she can’t act on her feelings for a new guy because she has a boyfriend. “You should take it as a compliment/That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk,” she sings at the top of the track. “You should take it as a compliment/That I’m talking to everyone here but you,” she muses later. These are both pretty immature ways to deal with emotion—it’s almost like she’s back in high school—but a Reddit user theorizes this is completely intentional. Yup.
According to them, this is Swift’s way of showing that love and crushes can easily turn adults into babies. They lose sight of logic and simply obsess over what they want but can’t have—just like a young child complains about wanting candy or toys or a later bedtime. To drive this point home even further, Swift added an actual baby’s voice to the song. She’s the baby here, according to the Reddit user. (Well, that’s what this dude’s turning her into, at least. And, let’s be honest, we’ve all been there.)
Here’s the theory in the Redditor’s words:
“She realizes that she’s extremely attracted to him and interested in
him, but also acknowledges that these thoughts are wrong considering
she is not broken up with the other guy,” the Redditor writes. “This
seems like a scenario that could happen to any person, at any
age…She also admits there is nothing she wants more than what she
can’t have, like a child upset over not getting a toy that they want.
They continue, “Yes, these feelings of displacing blame on another
person and viewing someone as a thing she can’t have are childish. But
that still doesn’t mean at 27 she can’t feel them. I think the child’s
voice in the beginning is no coincidence but an allusion to her
self-awareness that these feelings are pretty juvenile.”
Makes sense, right? Leave it to Swift to turn a baby’s coos into social commentary.
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