Lover Is A Breakup Album
So since Joe Alwyn did one (1) vaguely bad thing according to Taylor, it's obvious that every other good thing she's said about Joe has been negated and he is now literally Satan, because that's how relationships work I think. With this in mind, Lover is now obviously a breakup album. This can be seen by looking through the tracks one by one, which paints a compelling picture of her realization of the breakup and coming to terms with it.
The album starts with I Forgot That You Existed, which is obviously about Joe Alwyn. She has forgotten who he is, or at least tries to, perhaps as a response to going through a Cruel Summer with him. She describes him as being "like a devil", showing how Joe is pure evil and how spending a summer together led to "it's blue, the feeling I've got". These two tracks serve as a retrospective of the entire cruel relationship.
We then proceed to Lover, which is actually a masterpiece of irony. The first sentence, "We could leave the Christmas lights up till January", gives the game away, as no normal couple would do such an unhinged thing. Thus the rest of the song is a falsified vision of a marriage, which we know for a fact did not happen and was purely fictional, showing how nobody would think of marrying Joe.
Afterwards, on The Man she claims that the archetypal male is arrogant and brags about "raking in dollars and getting bitches and models". It seems almost certain that she is basing this caricature on Joe here, as he is aggravated by it enough that he engages in combat with Taylor. This is referenced in the song The Archer, a heartbreaking ballad that shows despite Taylor's initial faith in Joe ("you could stay"), this is not reciprocated as they figuratively go to war, and she certainly does not intend to go down without a fight ("combat, I'm ready for combat").
Sensing that Joe has got the message that they're over, Taylor is overjoyed and displays this sense of euphoria in I Think He Knows. "I want you, bless my soul" is a backhanded way of saying that Joe leaving her has blessed her life by cutting off deadweight. Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince further solidifies this thought, explicitly portraying Taylor as the beloved Miss Americana and Joe as someone who will always be known as a heartbreaker. This braggadocio is reinforced on Paper Rings, where Joe is chided for being unable to afford jewellery, and on Cornelia Street, where Taylor shows that she can rent a house in Tribeca and abandon it at the first sign of her lover's disinterest because she's rich. Although this might call for some nuanced discussion of Taylor's materialistic values, we shall ignore this since this is a hit piece on Joe.
Unfortunately, it seems that Taylor starts to have second thoughts. Death By A Thousand Cuts displays her thought process: although she doesn't feel sad immediately after breaking up with Joe, she slowly gets more and more regretful, hence the "thousand cuts". She even goes to London in order to reconnect with him (London Boy), making delusional statements like calling London an enjoyable city. This highly irregular response is clearly a sign that Taylor is not at her clearest here. Luckily, on the way there she comes to her senses, a process which is masterfully (albeit quite heavy-handedly) likened to recovering from an illness in Soon You'll Get Better.
However, since Taylor is in London with Joe anyway, she obliges and spends the night with him even though he is not the one she wants; hence, a False God. The next morning, Taylor communicates her intent to end things for real this time, prompting Joe to fly into a fit of rage. Taylor simply says that You Need To Calm Down and also acknowledges that she is guilty of playing with Joe's emotions like the humble person that she is (Afterglow), but then she finally realizes the glaringly obvious truth: that Joe's emotions don't matter because he is just some irrelevant actor and she is quite literally a global superstar. As an affirmation of her self-worth, she pens ME!.
Finally, after telling Joe that she only sees him as a friend who plays hopscotch and video games who her (It's Nice To Have A Friend), she steps into the Daylight and lets her flop ex-boyfriend go, discovering that she is the only one who matters.
To conclude, I will be rethinking my life decisions if I see any of these stupid "hindsight is 20/20 amirite?????" re-contextualization posts.
