How Taylor Swift’s Songs ‘I Know Places’ and ‘Peace’ Connect Lyrically
As a songwriter, Taylor Swift will use her music to process her own personal experiences, work through hypothetical emotions, and explore fictional stories. For this reason, many of his songs have similar themes or act as unintended sequels to each other. If one looks closely at the lyrics of Swift’s songs “I Know Places” and “Peace,” there are similarities in the songs’ messages.
What Taylor Swift’s Song “I Know Places” Is About
Swift released “I Know Places” on her 2014 album 1989. During a Grammy Pro listening session in 2015, Swift discussed the songwriting process behind “I Know Places.”
Swift also revealed why she created “I Know Places,” saying:
“I had this idea of, you know, when you’re in love, it’s very, in the sense of ‘Out of the Woods’, it’s very precious. It’s fragile. As soon as the world gets a hold of it, whether it’s your friends or the people in town who hear about it… It’s kind of like the first thing people want to do when they hear people are in love is just to try to ruin this…
I was kind of in a place where I was like, ‘Nobody’s going to sign up for this. There are just too many cameras pointed at me. There are too many ridiculous elaborations on my life. It’ll never work.'”
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Swift then decided to write “I Know Places” about the hypothetical situation she needed to hide a relationship she cared about from the public.
“But I decided to write a love song kind of like, what if I met someone really awesome and they were like, ‘Hey, I’m really worried about all this attention you receive,'” Swift said while listening. session.
The message behind Taylor Swift’s song ‘Peace’
In 2020, Swift releases her album folklore. Like “I Know Places”, “Peace” is the penultimate track on the album without the bonus tracks. The similarities between the two songs don’t end there.
During an interview with Paul McCartney in Rolling Stone, Swift revealed that “Peace” means she can’t “control” how the public interferes with her relationship with boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
“’Peace’ is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you’ve done a really good job in your personal life: carving out a human life for yourself in a public life, and how scary it can be when you fall in love and meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of life,” Swift told McCartney.
She continued: “Often in my anxieties I can control how I am as a person and how well I act and rationalize things, but I can’t control if there are 20 photographers out in the bushes. and what they’re doing and if they’re following our car and if they’re interrupting our lives I can’t control if there’s going to be some weird fake headline about us in the news tomorrow.
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“I Know Places” and “Peace” tell a similar story
With the lyrics to “I Know Places”, Swift explores a hypothetical story through the metaphor of being chased by hunters.
“Cause they got the cages, they got the boxes / And the guns / They’re the hunters, we’re the foxes / And we run / Baby, I know places we won’t be found and / They’ll chase their tails trying to find us,” Swift sings in the song.
“Peace” contains the same apprehension and determination as “I Know Places”, and it is based on the same subject matter of protecting a relationship. More hypothetically, Swift asks her partner if he can accept the challenges and fear that come with coming out.
“All these people think love is for show / But I’d die for you in secret / The devil is in the details, but you got a friend in me / Would it be enough if I could never give you peace ?” Swift sings in “Peace.”
Years later, “Peace” appears to be a more mature version of “I Know Places”. With the song, Swift accepts that she might not be able to shield her relationship from the spotlight as she wishes.
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