“It’s time to go by Taylor Swift” will always be one of my favorite ‘therapy sessions’ because it reminds me to leave when a situation turns toxic. This song may mean a lot of different things to other people but I hope it helps you too out of a complicated friendship or relationship.
This is one of the bonus songs on the evermore album. Now let’s breakdown each line of this beautiful song.
Taylor described a number of unpleasant situations that a lot of us have experienced maybe more than we ever want to. The first verse is open to a number of interpretations.
“When your dinner is cold and the chatter gets old
You ask for the tab
Or that moment again, he’s insisting that friends
Look at each other like that”
This could mean a situation where two people in an exclusive relationship but the lady suspects that the man has an intimate relationship with someone they both know. In his defense, he says, something like, it’s not a big deal, even friends can have this kind of interaction, closeness, etc (in fact, friends can look at each other like that). The second interpretation is more about having a relationship with no definition, then you pop the question, (‘I know you like me and we are definitely more than friends’ and he replies with, ‘no, we are just friends despite it all).
The second verse focuses on betrayal from a friend who is close enough to be your sister.
“When the words of a sister come back in whispers
That prove she was not in fact what she seemed
Not a twin from your dreams
She’s a crook who was caught”
When they say things behind your back and you end up hearing about it. Many people speculated that this verse is about her fallout with Karlie Kloss in 2018-2019 but who knows. At the end of the day, it’s a common situation that a lot of us have experienced before.
Let’s skip the third verse for now and focus on the fourth.
“20 years at your job
Then the son of the boss gets the spot that was yours
Or trying to stay for the kids
When keeping it how it is will only break their hearts worse”.
Everybody absolutely hates it when they are not appreciated at work. We all hate it even more when someone else gets the promotion that we deserve. What about when the promotion is given to someone who only got it through their connections? Worse case scenario? It’s Time to Go by Taylor Swift touches on this and she says, that’s the time to leave that work environment.
She say’s that, you know it when it’s time to go, your guts tell you and you feel all the aches in that situation. When you experience that, it’s time to move on. She also reminds us that, moving on doesn’t always mean you are weak and closing that door can open the right doors for you.
It’s Time to Go by Taylor Swift also touches on the unfair situation she experienced when she was denied the right to own her music. The main reason why she had to rerecord some of her albums.
“15 years, 15 million tears
Begging ’til my knees bled
I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all
Then wondered why I left
… Now he sits on his throne in his palace of bones
Praying to his greed
He’s got my past frozen behind glass
But I’ve got me”.
Essentially, Taylor Swift touches on major complex relationships, cheating/indecision, betrayal, unfairness, and underappreciation. If you do not leave these situations, the aches do not go away. They remain and the ‘familiar body aches’ always come back and you break a little inside every time you are hit with the reality of the situation.
If you are in a toxic situation, I hope this reminds you that “It’s time to go”.
