Has Taylor Swift 'caged' herself and is it worth it?
Let's take a deeper look at all of Taylor Swift's lyrical references to the word "cage."
I just finished editing a book that should be coming out soon called The Taylor Swiftionary: The Unofficial Taylor Swift Lyric Encyclopedia.
I was FINALLY able to put the coding skills I learned during my PhD student to good use (using R, in case you are into computers). I broke down ALL of Taylor Swift’s 250+ songs in her complete updated discography (insert shameless plug here to subscribe to my Substack and get access to The Complete Lyrics e-book for free) word-by-word. For each word in her lyrical vocabulary, I defined the word (using a free open-sourced dictionary) and listed all of the lines in her lyrics where that word is found. Ultimately, it looks something like this (after days of formatting in word) for all 3000+ words in her song vocabulary:
Once I narrowed it down to the words that were used less than 100 times (most of those were quite boring, well, like the word “quite,” for example), I have a 750 page unit of a hardback linen book arriving at my doorstep (tomorrow hopefully!). I will release it soon after a final edit, including in e-book form.
But first, I want to share my findings each week taking one word Out of the Woods at a time to explore her vocabulary and self-references in more detail.
So today, in my start to the Out of the Words series, I want to tackle her references to the word CAGE.
The first reason for choosing this word is the current state of the internet. I am contributing to this Swiftie community that Taylor Swift has cultivated (heavy on the ‘cult’ in ‘cultivated) because Swifties have been so incredibly generous to me both on and off the internet. Particularly on Tik Tok (@taylormadebookstore), I have only seen words of support, inclusion, and authentic kindness. I hope that many American Tik Tok refugees can also find that same generosity and connection over here on Substack, engaging with the rest of the world in a way that feels necessary in 2025. I’m guessing many of you must feel caged today as a result.
And feeling caged is one theme Taylor Swift knows all too well. Like with most emotions that are specific and often hard to define, she generously offers a glimpse into her own expression of these emotions through admirable vulnerability.
Secondly, I chose this word (and ultimately theme) because there has been a lot of discourse online about how her latest album The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) and her previous release (excluding re-recordings), Midnights, are sister albums. Taylor has mentioned that folklore and evermore, her pandemic records, are sister albums throughout their release and in many Eras Tour speech asides. She still has not explicitly said the same about the twin flames of TTPD and Midnights, but she certainly hinted at it in her behind the scenes music video footage.
To many, the link between TTPD and Midnights as sister albums has been obvious to them since the TTPD release. To others, this is clearly a revelation. To many on Reddit, each album has a sister and so does each song in a self-referential endless loop. To me, this is what I love about her art. There are endless interpretations. And your own interpretations of any one song will inevitably change too– over the many years we are all bound to re-listen to her treasures.
But, I am getting off track here. Maybe someday soon I will go into more detail about all of the subtle (and not so subtle) connections between these two specific albums. For now, I want to very briefly lead you through all the ties in her albums using our first word, CAGE.
As you can see, she began writing about cages explicitly in her 1989 album. As the dictionary definition of CAGE implies, she uses it to address the feelings of a trapped animal, loosing control and meant to feel feral and isolated by her overseers. There are many more of her lyrics that reference this feeling (phrases such as ‘circus’, ‘prey’, and ‘monster on a hill’ come to mind). It is an integral part (perhaps sadly so) of her dealing with her two sides– Taylor Swift the brand and Taylor Swift the human. Perhaps, I will write more musings on this sentiment that is very familiar in her work (and transcends beyond fame) as I pull more words Out of The Woods in this series.
The cage became gold during her reputation era, which is visually referenced in her Look What You Made Me Do music video. Gold is a color that she often associates with rebirth (think, Daylight), which likely relates to her taking control over these two sides of her (Taylor the hero and the Anti-hero, if you will) starting with her reputation redemption arc.
She then referenced cages in folklore, questioning other’s opinions on her caged feelings. These caged sentiments were likely also relevant to the feelings we all were experiencing during the pandemic; caged and isolated in our homes, without much control over what comes next.
This now brings us to Midnights, where she mentions ‘full of cages, full of fences’ in her song Midnight Rain in reference to her ‘wasteland’ of a town. In Midnight Rain, she accepts that her caging, in many ways, was her own doing.
He wanted it comfortable
I wanted that pain
One interpretation (of many) is that pain is her cage she has created for herself. “Chasing that fame” has consequences that only she can understand.
In TTPD she carries on that theme, but this time pointing the blame outward to the people who “raise you to cage you” and even directing our attention to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived as one of the culprits. Both references appear to convict ‘The Music Industry’ as a collective AND particular people in that industry (Scooter and even her own family, perhaps?) of caging her in an attempt to squeeze ‘more’ after her (because the crowd is always chanting “more”).
So the ultimate questions remain, has she caged herself and (maybe even more interesting), is it worth it? If even Taylor Swift herself is selling merchandise (Christmas merchandise even) of gold cages on her website, who is really caging who really?
In case you are interested, here is a sneak peak of the cover of The Taylor Swiftionary. What do you think?
Keep your eyes out here for a new word each week! And thanks for reading my stream of thoughts!