She’s not aiming for the Pulitzer prize in literature but the lyrics are clever and catchy and the songwriter shows  masterful skill in  wielding her central metaphor consistently and swinging her languid meter and rhyme as if it were effortless. 

         “Exile” features a prominent male perspective, deep and dark, haunting as the song progresses, yet the female counterpoint, lyrically contradicting the male, seizes the narrative melodically, becoming the chorus in the end, becoming, ironically, the imprint for the LSS (“last song syndrome”).

        We are all exiles anywhere we are during the pandemic and Taylor Swift’s work is a melancholic meeting of such of the most intense exile-collaborators.

                  ♥   ♥    ♥

(the first vid embedded below was released last week, it’s part of the “Folklore” concert, and, i think, recorded-as-live)