SWIFT-ERY 25 SOLVED
Duo’s lyrics analysis is Taylor-made
MEET the Harry Potter superfan with the world’s largest collection of wizarding memorabilia - which has taken over her home despite her husband ‘not being a fan’. Tracey Nicol-Lewis (49) has well over 6,300 wizarding items - including wands, special edition books, LEGO sets and artwork - spread across every room in her house.
Her husband, Martin (47), a security officer, claims it’s not his thing - but supports his wife’s passion.
Tracey first watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2002 and fell in love with the characters.
It wasn’t long before she acquired her first Harry Potter collectible - a chocolate frog from her local corner shop.
AN IRISH Taylor Swift superfan made a Google Doc file to analyse every single word of the new album — and says it gave her an exact relationship timeline for the singer.
Claire O’Malley (29) has been a Swiftie since the age of 11, when Taylor released Tim McGraw from her debut self-titled album.
So when The Tortured Poets Department was released on 19 April, she got up at 5am with her friend Ashley Washburn.
The two listened to every single song before deciding they wanted to analyse the lyrics in forensic detail to track the exact timeline of Taylor’s relationship with The 1975 star Matty Healy.
Claire, a programme officer from Dublin, said: “I am fairly confident in the general relationship timeline between Taylor and Matty from my analysis.
Hunt
“The breakup happened over the course of the Eras
Tour so we used her ‘surprise’ songs, in conjunction with what Taylor’s team communicated to the public, to work out her and Matty’s exact relationship status.
“We started to notice all these Easter eggs in the lyrics and so we went on an Easter Egg hunt within the words.” Claire and Ashley spent four days analysing every lyric, mapping out a timeline of Taylor’s relationship with Matty and how it corresponded to the Eras tour, which happened at the time of the relationship. B y entering all 11,000+ words of the album line by line into a Google Doc before “electronically” analysing them, leaving comments in the margins, Claire and Ashley created a 78-page document containing over 400 comments.
It revealed how the official announcement of their breakup directly related to the songs Taylor chose to sing in her surprise set songs in her Eras Tour.
“The surprise songs are Taylor’s
way of choosing two different songs to the original set list”, added Claire. “It’s always something different that only that specific crowd gets to experience.”
Using the ‘surprise songs’ from each of Taylor’s performances in the Eras tour over the time she and Matty were dating, the two were able to “decode” the break-up.
“The surprise songs then were Speak Now, which ties to wedding imagery of speak now or forever hold your peace, and Treacherous, which is about falling in love and not being sure,” Claire explained.
Period
“Other April surprise songs to indicate she was on the rise with Matty would be Today Was A Fairytale, Wonderland and Begin Again. These are more uplifting songs.”
The pair also pinpointed the period when Matty and Taylor were going through a break-up from the surprise songs.
“Towards the end of May, Taylor plays songs along the lines of ‘am I in the right place?’”, explained Claire.
“The song choices...are maybe saying this isn’t the best relationship for her right now.”