Taylor Swift’s “I Hate It Here,” one of the 15 songs on the bonus album to “The Tortured Poets Department,” seems to be a song about discontent.
In it, Swift sings about not feeling at home anywhere — in this era, among her friends. Instead, she has to escape into “secret gardens in my mind” people need a “key to get to,” and the only key is hers.
One of the lyrics is drawing controversy, though. It comes when Swift plays a game imagining other worlds.
“My friends used to play a game where/ We would pick a decade/ We wished we could live in instead of this/ I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists/ And getting married off for the highest bid,” she sings.
She goes on to complicate the story, saying no era is “fun”: “Nostalgia is a mind’s trick/ If I’d been there, I’d hate it/ It was freezing in the palace.”
Swift’s version of the 1830s might involve palaces but people are pointing out what else it involved. Thirty years before the Civil War took place, slavery still was legal throughout the American South.
One X user wrote, “Pretty astonishing to stipulate that she wants to live in the 1830s, ‘except without the racists,’ and not mention slavery, so slavery still exists but everyone’s chill about it.”
People saw “racism” as a minimization of what actually happened in the 1830s, and before and after.
“There is no way Taylor Swift said she’d like to live in an era where Chattel Slavery was the law of the land and say ‘but without the racists.’ Like it was some casual micro aggressions or something. Is this what we’re doing??” one tweet read.
The whole song seems to rebuke society — any era, 1830s or now. She prefers “lunar valleys in my mind/ When they found a better planet/ Only the gentle survived,”she sings.
She also almost seems to address backlash in the song, too. “I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life/ And I’ll get lost on purpose/ This place made me feel worthless,” she sings.
Read the lyrics to ‘I Hate it Here’
Quick, quick
Tell me something awful
Like you are a poet
Trapped inside the body of a finance guy
Tell me all your secrets
All you’ll ever be is
My eternal consolation prize
You see I was a debutant
In another life, but
Now I seem to be scared to go outside
If comfort is a construct
I don’t believe in good luck
Now that I know what’s what
I hate it here so I will go to
Secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
No mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears
I’m there most of the year ‘cause I hate it here
I hate it here
My friends used to play a game where
We would pick a decade
We wished we could live in instead of this
I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists
And getting married off for the highest bid
Everyone would look down
‘Cause it wasn’t fun now
Seems like it was never even fun back then
Nostalgia is a mind’s trick
If I’d been there, I’d hate it
I hate it here so I will go to
Lunar valleys in my mind
When they found a better planet
Only the gentle survived
I dreamed about it in the dark
The night I felt like I might die
No mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears
I’m there most of the year ‘cause I hate it here
I hate it here
I’m lonely, but I’m good
I’m bitter, but I swear I’m fine
I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life
And I’ll get lost on purpose
This place made me feel worthless
Lucid dreams like electricity
The current flies through me and in my fantasies I rise above it
And way up there, I actually love it
I hate it here so I will go to
Secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
No mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears
I’m there most of the year ‘cause I hate it here
I hate it here
Quick, quick
Tell me something awful
Like you are a poet
