Top Taylor Swift Songs about the Old Ones

Taylor Swift is a musical chameleon who has spanned the country and pop genres and created several chart topping hits. She is a one woman tour de force, working as both singer and songwriter, her dulcet tones acting as the voice of a generation of young women. She is also a fiercely devoted cultist of the ruinous powers that lurk behind the veil of humanity, which can be seen by examining her music with a critical eye. Join me on a journey through her musical catalog and into the very eye of madness.

Wildest Dreams

This song is perhaps her most somber, dark work. In the lyrics she exhorts an unknown third party as follows:

I thought heaven can’t help me now
Nothing lasts forever
But this is gonna take me down
He’s so tall, and handsome as hell
He’s so bad but he does it so well
I can see the end as it begins my one condition is
Say you’ll remember me
Standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset babe
Red lips and rosy cheeks
Say you’ll see me again even if it’s just in your wildest dreams

This person she is addressing is, of course, Cthulhu, dead dreamer of R’lyeh. Taylor Swift realizes no heavenly force can protect her when he rises from his sunken sepulcher. She knows Cthulhu will “take me down” as he takes down all of humanity, proving that nothing lasts forever as all that is or ever was is unmade.

It should be noted Cthulhu is gigantic, truly immense in size. Further, in seeing its true face, Ms Swift’s mind will be shattered, and Cthulhu will appear eerily attractive in its horrid cruelty. The following line “He’s so bad but he does it so well” is a recognition of Cthulhu’s place in the pantheon of the eldest. Taylor Swift’s only hope is that once the dark work is done, once Cthulhu again returns to slumber that this monstrous creature remembers her in its dead dreaming. These memories will stand as the last tattered remnants of her existence.

Looking ahead she says:

And when we’ve had our very last kiss
But my last request it is
<chorus>
You see me in hindsight
Tangled up with you all night
Burn it down

The last kiss being, of course, when Cthulhu shoves her into its ravenous maw, tangling her flesh into its tentacles and devouring her completely as an eternal night falls and the world burns down around them. Truly a nightmarish vision of a grim future Taylor Swift is working to expedite. Absolutely haunting.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Another dark exploration of the hidden world just beyond the veil. The focus of this tune is Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos. A closer look shall reveal the hideous truth.

We hadn’t seen each other in a month
When you said you needed space. (What?)
Then you come around again and say
“Baby, I miss you and I swear I’m gonna change, trust me.”

Nyarlathotep is the deity most likely to walk the earth in the course of its grim duties. To do so requires forcing its immense bulk and power into a feeble human form, which it can only do for so long before needing to return to the stars once more, literally needing “space”. As the servant of Azathoth, Nyarlathotep represents disorder itself. It only stands to reason that in its human guise it told Ms. Swift it is “gonna change”, for it is change itself.

As the song progresses, we witness Taylor Swift becoming more erratic and angry, increasingly emotional at the fickle nature of this vile fiend. She practically froths as she sings “I’m really gonna miss you picking fights, And me falling for it screaming that I’m right”. Nyarlathotep is an entity of madness, who destroys the minds of those who it comes into contact with. Taylor Swift has obviously interacted with this malign force, at great personal cost to her sanity, which is why she wows “we are never ever ever ever getting back together, like ever”, for she knows doing so will destroy her utterly.

 I Knew You Were Trouble

Perhaps her least subtle ode to the old ones. It is no mere coincidence that one of the most popular remixes replaces Taylor Swift’s anguished cries with that of a goat, for I Knew You Were Trouble is an ode the Sub Niggurath, the Black Goat of the woods.

The song begins:

Once upon a time a few mistakes ago
I was in your sights, you got me alone
You found me, you found me, you found me
I guess you didn’t care, and I guess I liked that
And when I fell hard you took a step back
Without me, without me, without me

It is possible, perhaps even likely that Shub Niggurath came to Taylor Swift when she was alone in the woods, which she admits was the culmination of a series of mistakes. In its guise as a fertility god, we can imagine Shub Niggurath lifted her into the air with oily black tentacles and showing her the teeming masses of its vile children. Finally, it released her, dropping her to ground before disappearing once more into the darkness, leaving her alone again. It must have been terrifying.

The chorus of the song starts:

I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now
Flew me to places I’d never been
‘Til you put me down, oh

This confirms our suspicions about what occurred based on the first verse.  Taylor Swift feels shame at the languid embrace she experienced, and abandoned now that Shub Niggurtath has left her behind. Her shattered mind grapples with what she experienced during the brief moments of their encounter. As she wails near the finale, “And the saddest fear comes creeping in
That you never loved me or her, or anyone, or anything, yeah”.

Of course it did not, Taylor. Shub Niggurath is incapable of love, leaving only a swath of devastation in it wake. How nightmarish to be caught in those tides.