The manuscript is one of my favorite songs on The Tortured Poets Department. Why? It starts off on just a piano with Taylor and it is hauntingly beautiful with beautiful lyrics. On a side note she wrote this song herself.
What is this song about?
I know I started this blog out saying who the songs were about, but I feel like it has evolved since. I can still figure out who they’re about and I’ll say, but I don’t think that should be the focus especially with this song. This song perfectly describes her approach to her music and her lyrics and encapsulates everything about her work.
She writes this song in 3rd person, ie no I’s or me’s. This is especially important to the meaning of the song. In the first couple verses, she talks about rereading a “manuscript” aka songs she has written in the past specially for this one “All Too Well”. She talks about the relationship she had with him. This someone she was talking about was Jake Gyllenhaal. He “made coffee every morning in a French press” and they had great “conversation”. He told her “if the sex was half as good as the conversation was soon they’d be pushing strollers.” She did lose her virginity to him and was expecting to spend the rest of her life with him. She loved him. He was her first love.
But as I’ve detailed before, he basically ghosted her and didn’t show up to her birthday party. He made all these promises to her and said he loved her and then he didn’t show up for her. She was devastated and “couldn't sleep unless it was in her mother's bed”. We also saw this in the “All Too Well” music video.
She said it was hard to write the song. She told Good Morning America in 2012, “All Too Well” [was difficult to write emotionally] because it took me a really long time to filter through everything I wanted to put in the song without it being a 10 minute song, which you can’t put on an album. I wanted a story that could work in the form of a song and I called my co-writer Liz Rose and said, ‘Come over, we’ve gotta filter this down,’ and it took me a really long time to get it.”
“All Too Well” she became her fans favorite song. It’s my favorite song from her discography. They wanted it played at every show. She even played it at the Grammy’s for them. She told fans at the Reputation tour,
“You turned this song into a collage of memories of watching you scream the words to this song, or seeing pictures that you post to me of you haven written words to this song in your diary, or you showing me your wrist, and you have a tattoo of the lyrics to this song underneath your skin, And that is how you have changed the song ‘All Too Well’ for me.”Back to the song “The Manuscript” Taylor says she moved on from the relationship and “dated boys who were her own age.” It’s had been years since she wrote this song. She wrote the song because “the professor said to write what you know.” By “looking back” she could “move forward”. She was able to perform this song and build a fan base and share it with the world. By releasing this song so personal to her, “she knew what the agony had been for.”
Now all she has left from this relationship is a manuscript or the song that she wrote is the “last souvenir”. “Now and then I [she] re-read[s] the manuscript.” This is talking about her reflecting on this song she refers to as a manuscript which is interesting because in the music video for “All Too Well” the character goes on to become an author and releases a book about the time she had with this lover. What’s interesting about this line is it’s the only line that is written in first person and present tense. It really emphasizes what the song is about. She is saying that she wrote this song for her but then she released it to her fans. They changed the meaning of the song for her. She gave them this song. That’s why she’s talking in third person most of the song. She’s detached herself from the reason song it was originally written for. She changes ton 1st person as she reflects on what the song has become and what it means to her now. The “story isn’t mine anymore” she says. It has changed because she has gave it to the world. The manuscript might’ve been about one song “All Too Well”, but it really encapsulates her whole work. It is interesting that she put this song at the very end of The Tortured Poets Department main album, the one released that is not a special version, but it’s still a bonus track.
In her Instagram on April 19, 2024 she says,
“The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.
And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is out now.”
This is a great concept about releasing stress and being able to move on from things, write it down and not think of it about it anymore. I use this myself quite often.Taylor does it on a grand scale and makes a lot of money from it. She is also emphasizing that she’s not doing this to get it back at people, but to express how she feels. And that basically is the whole message of The Tortured Poets Department and why it is the last song on the album. Living a good life is being able to move on and Taylor does that by writing her music and we all enjoy it. Thank you Taylor for sharing very personal pieces of yourself with us all these years. Your music has been there for me so many times of my life and been able to help me in ways you’ll never know.
Omg i love your blog and just like you i also review of the music albums i love to listen!!
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