In 2019, Taylor Swift released her 7th studio album “Lover.” The album has many motifs, including social-rights and self acceptance. But the main theme on this album, as indicated by the title, is love.
While songs like “Paper Rings” and “Lover” celebrate that all-encompassing, everlasting, instant kind of love– songs like “Cornelia Street” and “Death By A Thousand Cuts” tell a different story. They showcase the fear of someone leaving you and wallowing in how much it may hurt for you to break up.
In the chorus’ of “Lover,” Swift treasures her love interest by repeating the phrase “You’re my, my, my, my / Lover.”
That repeating my and its melodies appear in a different song… and it’s not “Paper Rings”; it’s “Death By A Thousand Cuts.”
Recently, I came across a TikTok that points out that the chorus of “Death By A Thousand Cuts” can be sung perfectly to the tune of “Canon in D” by Pachelbel; that’s the song people traditionally walk down the aisle to at weddings.
While those in the comments point out that “Canon in D” uses a common chord progression, that didn’t stop fans from speculating that she knew that the love in “Lover” was destined to fail.
Why else would she sample a wedding song in a song about heartbreak all the while connecting it to a song about true love?
Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but what fun is music if you don’t read into it sometimes?