


The overall lyric of the song is a play on the “we’re losing him/her” often heard in emergency room situations in medical shows. Swift had sounded almost dismissive of matrimony in a recent song, “Lavender Haze,” the leadoff song of “Midnights,” which included the verse, “All they keep askin’ me is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kind of girl they see s a one-night or a wife,” while eschewing the idea of “the 1950s shit they want from me.” The mention of marriage, or the lack of it, will be particularly provocative to fans. Naturally, first reactions were that it might describe cracks in a years-long relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, which seemed to be characterized in much happier terms on the rest of “Midnights” as well as four albums preceding it. It would hardly have fit, stylistically or thematically, on that record, as the album tended toward upbeat, sensual fare, while this is the first song Swift has put out in years that appears to describe a present-day relationship in unhappy terms and is likely to be perceived as personal, not fictional. It’s being billed as a “Vault Track,” written during the same writing sessions that produced the smash “ Midnights” album. The song is not a letdown in that regard. Inevitably, some of the first attendees to get their hands on it went back to their cars and uploaded the ravenously anticipated new track for the rest of the world to hear… and to scour for perceived personal details. Fans were so eager to get their hands on the disc, because she had advertised it as the only way to get the new song, that lines began forming in earnest at the stadium on Thursday, well in advance of the merch stands opening up for the day at 12:30 p.m.

Earlier in the day, though, the new track was not widely available, as it was first released exclusively on a CD edition that currently is only available to fans patronizing her merchandise stands at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Late Friday, Swift made the track widely available in a digital release at her webstore.
