Tom Hiddleston Probably Won't Be A Fan Of Taylor Swift's "Dancing With My Hands Tied"
Taylor Swift has done it again. She's letting us in. On her latest and highly-anticipated album, Reputation, the songwriting superstar is giving fans insight into a relationship at a crossroads. And she's making good use of commonly known metaphors while she's at it. The lyrics for Taylor Swift's "Dancing With Our Hands Tied" paint an intense picture of what could potentially be her short-lived romance with Tom Hiddleston.
Five years ago, Taylor danced like she was made of "Starlight." On "Holy Ground," she wouldn't dance unless she was dancing alongside a certain special someone. With "Out of the Woods," she "moved the furniture" so she could dance, even when she knew it wasn't going to work out. One of her most popular anthems suggests that when it comes to haters and exes, we should pretty much "Shake It Off" and forget everything else. I'm sensing a theme.
Now, she's illustrating a moment in time that had her stuck, but still moving. In lust, but still hesitant. In "Dancing With Our Hands Tied," it sounds like Taylor's heart was seriously on the line and she knew it. The lyrics read:
I, I loved you in secret.
First sight, yeah, we love without reason.
Oh, twenty-five years old.
Oh, how were you to know
And my, my love had been frozen.
Deep blue, but you painted me golden.
Oh, and you held me close.
Oh, how was I to know that.
I could've spent forever with your hands in my pockets
Picture of your face in an invisible locket.
You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it.
I had a bad feeling.
And darling, you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis.
People started talking, putting us through our paces
I knew there was no one in the world who could take it.
I had a bad feeling.
You can take the Taylor out a romance but you can't take the romance out of Taylor. Even with her "hands tied," she still laments the whimsical yet fleeting split seconds that make this crazy thing called love worth jumping head first into. Even when you have a bad feeling about it.
But what about when you can't make something work just the way you want it to? Can you still bask in the glow of what is (or was)? She certainly made a figurative effort to do so when she danced "in the refrigerator light" on Red's requiem-for-a-break-up, "All Too Well." But I can't help but compare her new jam to upbeat heartbreakers like "Holy Ground," or even "I Knew You Were Trouble."
She goes on in ""Dancing With Our Hands Tied" to say,
But we were dancing
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied.
Yeah, we were dancing
like it was the first time, first time.
Yeah, we were dancing
Dancing with our hands tied, hands tied.
Yeah, we were dancing
And I had a bad feeling.
But we were dancing
I, I loved you in spite of deep fears that the world would divide us.
So, baby, can we dance, oh, through an avalanche?
And say, say that we got it?
I'm a mess, but I'm the mess that you wanted.
Oh, 'cause it's gravity
Oh, keeping you with me
But who is Taylor referring to, exactly? Speculation about her song subject abounds. Her potential dance partners include former flames Tom Hiddleston and Calvin Harris, as well as current love Joe Alwyn.
The "people started talking, putting us through our paces" and "no one in this world who could take it" leads me to believe Hiddleston might the guy in question here, considering their brief courtship was highly publicized and scrutinized to the point that, well, maybe no one could take it.
And Taylor was technically 26 when they started dated, but maybe she was 25 when he caught her eye unbeknownst to him. And speaking of dancing, remember the video of the two of them having an epic dance battle at the 2016 Met Gala? Hmmm... Plus, I honestly don't think she would say she had a bad feeling about a relationship she's in RIGHT NOW, aka Alwyn. That would just be awkward.
As Taylor notes in "You Are In Love" off of 1989, she's "spent her whole life" trying to put love into words. Well, with emotional and gripping lines like these, she's managed to do that many times over before turning 30.
