So what is the song So Long, London by Taylor Swift about?

The song being the legendary track 5 on the Tortured Poets Department album is already telling on what we should expect from the song. Taylor has a history of putting the most devastating songs as her fifth track. Songs including “All Too Well”, “My Tears Ricochet”, “Tolerate It”, “Dear John”, and “You are on Your Own Kid” left us emotionally drained and we loved it.

An Arching Goodbye

“So (So) long (Long), London (London)

So (So) long (Long), London (London)

So (So) long (Long), London (London)”

The song starts with an aching goodbye to the city of London and the relationship that brought her there. Although only three words were sang repeatedly, it tells us about how painful the goodbye is to the writer (singer).

The Attempt to Save a Dying Relationship – The Results? Emotional Drain

“I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist

I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift

Pulled him in tighter each time he was driftin’ away

My spine split from carrying us up the hill

Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill

I stopped tryna make him laugh, stopped tryna drill the safe”

The first verse of So Long, London by Taylor Swift focuses on the writer’s effort to maintain a relationship. A relationship that felt one-sided because she was bearing the heaviest weight of the relationship.

The first line of this verse is quite heavy and brilliant. Especially if you know the folklore meaning of fairy lights. Lights from fairies are known to lead lone travelers through beaten paths and when the travelers get to marshes, the light extinguishes leaving them lost.

So, the writer saying she thought she saw fairy lights implied that she was being led on until she realized it was all in her mind. Thus, she was misled until she got lost.  Her next line suggested that she always took the blame whenever there was an argument(rift).

She went on to explain that the relationship was not only having an effect on her mentally but physically as well when she mentioned “spine split” and “weary bones”. And finally, she talks about giving up on making her partner open up to her “drilling the safe” – to force open a secured safe.

Chorus

“Thinkin’, “How much sad did you think I had

Did you think I had in me?”

Oh, the tragedy

So long, London

You’ll find someone”

The first and second line of the chorus features one of the epic lines she introduced when she started talking about the album. These lines implied that the outcome of the relationship made her sad to the point where she had no more sadness in her. Like, she didn’t even know that that level of sadness existed. She concludes the chorus by saying she wishes he finds someone even after she is gone.

The Loneliness I Didn’t Sign Up For

“I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out

I founded the club she’s heard great things about

I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath

I stoppеd CPR, after all, it’s no use

The spirit was gonе, we would never come to

And I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free”

The second verse creates an imagery of loneliness and being an outsider in a place away from home. She also talks about how she stopped trying to bring spark into the relationship since it was already broken beyond repair.

The final line in the verse shows the writer’s anger at how she spent her youthful years enduring all the loneliness.

“For so long, London

Stitches undone

Two graves, one gun

I’ll find someone”

The line about the stitches lends itself to multiple interpretations. It may be making reference to the line in the Midnight’s song “Glitch” where she says Five seconds later, I’m fastening myself to you with a stitch, oh, yeah. That’s at the start of the relationship, she attached herself with a stitch and now that the relationship is over, the stitches are coming undone.

It could also mean that he helped her heal (stitches close wounds), and now that she is hurt, the stitches have been removed leaving an open wound.

The line about the graves and gun has been speculated to mean a lot of different things and as always, I will discuss all of them and leave it to you.

For some people, the gun was the dying relationship and the two graves was the two things she loved but was on the verge of losing – her partner, and the city London.

Others assumed that although the relationship was ending, there was an uncertainty on who will pull the trigger. Considering that she alternates the lines “You’ll find someone” and “I’ll find someone” in the chorus.

The last interpretation infers that she was saying goodbye to two long relationships that originated from London.

“And you say I abandoned the ship

But I was going down with it

My white-knuckle dying grip

Holding tight to your quiet resentment

And my friends said it isn’t right to be scared

Every day of a love affair

Every breath feels like rarest air

When you’re not sure if he wants to be there”

The bridge in So Long, London by Taylor Swift focused on how the writer’s attempt to save her relationship. Here she expresses her fear about using a relationship she tried to hold unto until her ‘knuckles turned white’. She talked about how everyday in the relationship felt like the last and how her partner’s unclear actions made her wonder if he really wanted to continue the relationship.

“So how much sad did you think I had

Did you think I had in me?

How much tragedy?

Just how low did you

Think I’d go ‘fore I’d self-implode?

‘Fore I’d have to go be free?”

In this chorus, the writer talks about how much she had endured and bottled up in the relationship. She keeps questioning herself about how longer she could endure the situation before she breaks down.

The Rage

“You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?

I died on the altar waitin’ for the proof

You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days

And I’m just getting color back into my face

I’m just mad as hell ’cause I loved this place for”

If the writer has been subtle about her anger in the prior verses and choruses, she did not hold back in this verse. She went all out on how her partner didn’t fulfill any of his promises to her. How he was more about grand speeches with no action.

She raged about how she waited for him to show the love he claimed he had for her until she got tired. And how she was always at the receiving end of his sad moods. She ended by emphasizing how mad she is that she has to say goodbye to the city because her relationship didn’t work out.

So Long, London by Taylor Swift is the ultimate goodbye song and it has a brilliant play on words. She used the same phrase “so long” to emphasize how long she has endured emotional torment in her relationship.

So Long, London is the second song that mentions London but these songs are parallel opposites. In London Boy she talks about her love for London and the man who made her love the place.