The Swiftie and The Scholar - The Self-Reflection of Getaway Car

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Today we’re putting the money in the bag and stealing the keys, and discussing Taylor Swift’s Getaway Car from 2017. This cult Swiftie fave is our first track from Reputation, and Angela chose it because she knew Uncle Jerry would love the Dickens reference in the first line.Watch as the duo dissects each line, and Uncle Jerry picks up on the self-reflection Taylor wrote into the song.Works Cited:A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – Affiliate LinkShades of Gray – Carolyn Reeder – Aff LinkNicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens – Aff LinkLexical AmbiguityGetaway Car Shirt – Girl Tribe Co.Writing BTS with JackFollow Us:⁠YouTube⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠Instagram⁠Angela’s Instagram

Welcome to The Swiftie and The Scholar, the podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDowell the Svety. And I am Jerry Coates, the scholar. Hello. Hello, Angela. How's your day? Day is just swell. It's hot.

Okay. Okay. I think we just, maybe we'll just get into it. Oh, no. Oh, no, we're not just getting into it. No, no. Tell a story first. Okay.

So if you watch before, you know that Angela sends me the song or songs, and then I get two or three days to read through them. I write all my stuff up, and I don't do Swifty research because I'm not the Swifty. However, I'm going to tell you that I was at a gas station filling my car up with gas the other night, and I got your text. So Angela sends me a text when she sends me the song on email. Yeah. And since I only check my email infrequently, because I am old. Because you don't have a job and you don't have to check your email. That's nice.

Then she also follows up with a text to remind me. And I swear to you, when I saw your text, I thought, ooh, new songs. And I was excited. And I finished really my car. and I pulled over in the gas station to open my phone and to look up the email so I could read the songs. Look at you. Okay. I'm not a Swiftie.

But I will admit to being Swift curious. I really am. I mean, it's like these are so fun. That is so funny. People have been commenting like, you can see it happening. I can see it happening for him. Not there yet. It's happening.

It's going to be so fun the day it happens. I'm inching. Swift Curious is as close to saying. Swif Curious is hilarious. Okay. We're going to have to put it on a t-shirt or something. Can we, could we market that? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. That's hilarious. I do have, speaking of t-shirts, I do have on the shirt of what we're going to cover today. Getaway car. I'll put a link to this. It's not official merch. Oh, nice. I have my R.E.I. Hiking shirt. Oh. Because we're on a journey today. We are right. Okay.

Getaway car? Yes. Okay. So let me talk about this song for a sec. Okay. This is from, this is our first song from Reputation, which came out in 2017. This is kind of after her reputation crumbled. She had like the Kim and Kanye West scandal, which was like a whole thing.

I actually did see that. Okay. I want you to know I'm not entirely. Okay. Yeah. So we hadn't really seen her in a while, and then she just dropped this album. I don't think it was really very critically acclaimed at the time, but I instantly loved it. This is Chase, my husband.

It's his favorite Taylor Swift album. This song is by Taylor and Jack Antonoff, which is a name that I'm sure you're tired of hearing, but you're going to keep hearing it. A little bit. And we do have, when we get to the end, when it's time for you to listen to this song, because you have not heard this yet, we have the album version. And then we do have a behind the scenes of her and Jack writing this song together. I'm so excited. So it's very fun.

It's just fun to, like, get a peek into the process, you know? Right. But, yeah, that's all for me. Okay. Give us your thoughts. All right. Jumping into getaway car. Okay.

First of all, it's a getaway car, right? And so I'm assuming she's fleeing from something or someone's fleeing from something. Album title, reputation. I didn't know anything at all about what you had just laid out for us, but I assumed it had to do with something about her reputation. If she starts out, it says in the intro with no, nothing good starts in a getaway car. And I don't know, is that sung or spoken? Yeah, it's sung, but it's like distorted.

I think it's actually Jack's voice and it's like, distort. distorted weird sounding. So yeah, that becomes a major theme, the thematic element, right? That something is wrong. We get the idea immediately. It's also very self-reflective. I do think that there are a lot of self-reflective elements in the poem.

You know, and I'll point those out as we go along. So, verse one. Yeah, let's do it. Oh, I mean, come on. I do this, okay, before we even get into this line, I think this line, which is here on this shirt, right here, and I think this is what somehow sparked the idea for this whole podcast. Oh, really? Okay. Because I wore this shirt, I believe it was Mother's Day when we went out to a restaurant with our family. And I had this shirt on, and of course, like, nobody's noticing what's on my shirt.

Like, it's just a jumble of stuff, you know. But then I was thinking about it a couple of days later, and I thought about that line. And I was like, it's like so, that would have been funny if, like, Uncle Jerry saw that on my shirt and asked a question. Then I was like, wait. And I think, so I think that that's, like, literally where this whole idea came from was her starting this. Yeah. So, anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

So, yeah, you know, I have the MA in history, but I also have master's degree in English. and my thesis was on Dickens. So I'm big of that. I was big of the 18th century studies on both my, my MA in English and my PhD studies in English. And so, yeah, Dickens, I mean, I've read all the major novels. I've read the Four Christmas novels. I collect his different publications like all the year round or household words.

Those are magazines. I have been to his home and lunch. many times. I have taken faculty on a tour of the home in London. I've walked his route past the temple to the Whiteheart Inn. The Whiteheart where he

would stop and catch a brew. I've been to the Cheshire Cheese down Fleet Street where Dickens would frequent. What's the Cheshire Cheese? The old Cheshire Cheese is a pub in England. It's a little hard to find if you

walk out the front steps of St. Paul in England you go down about three blocks and turn immediately to the right. It's down an alley and it's one of the oldest pubs It's still just totally functioning. Oh my gosh. It's so great. Are you gonna go there when you go there this? Absolutely I always go to the Cheshire cheese and have You know a A drink. Yeah, fun. Okay So first first first one sorry we haven't even talked about the first line yet Oh, and by the way, yes, I have met Cedric Dickens, his great grandson.

Oh. And I have a signed copy of his book. Cool. And a whole bookshelf over here dedicated to Dickensia. So, yeah, I am more than Dickens curious. Yes. Okay, so first line, it was the best of times. It was the worst of crimes.

All right. Dickens is renowned for his openings and his novels. I mean, you know, the opening of Christmas Carol, you know, Marley was dead. That much was certain. Or the opening of Martin Cheshwit, where there's a little bun in a basket. You know, this is the opening of Tale of Two Cities where he's contrasting London and Paris during the French Revolution. So in London it was the best of times. In Paris, it was the worst of times.

and she takes that opening line, which by the way demonstrates internal rhyme, and she gives a little twist and says crimes. Yes. And so I'm already thinking this is the best song she's ever. So, yeah, I mean, I loved it. You know, you can move on and I'm wondering, okay, what's the crime? What's the time? And she says, I struck a match and blew your mind.

So she is talking to or about someone. To strike a match is also kind of cliche. Blow your mind is a cliche. This is a motif we've talked about already many times where she takes cliches and she puts a different twist on it because artists want to demonstrate difference. And this is one of the ways she demonstrates difference. If I were a beginning graduate student, I would literally, think about writing a thesis on her use of cliché.

Okay. Yeah, or idiomatic phrases. Okay. I think it's absolutely fascinating the way she uses. Agreed. I'm with you. That's what we're doing here. This is our thesis.

There you go. But I didn't mean it, and you didn't see it, so she didn't mean to it. And he was just too numb in the skull or blown by her beauty or whatever to even notice. Yeah, she didn't mean to blow his mind. Right. So the ties were black. All right. So what she's doing is she's introducing us to a fictional situation.

And I don't know if it's a real situation. It may be, but she likes to create a fictional universe. So here we've got a formal affair because ties are black. And she says the lies are white. And so she's creating this color scheme, right, which is really nice because the very next line is in shades of gray and candlelight. Okay, so please don't miss the Sciura. Of course, yeah. Right, the break in the middle of the point line.

That gives us rhythmic power. But also, the color schematics are really interesting. You've got black and white and gray. Yeah, she loves the color. I will say, since you said that, it's maybe fictional, maybe real. This is a real situation. This, I mean, as far as we know, obviously, is about the Met Gala. Do you know the Met Gala?

I do. Yeah. Many times been. Yeah. No, I have. None of us have been to the Met Gala. But it's, so for the Met in New York City, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there's a gala every year that's put on. It's a, it's a fashiony thing. It's just past, just a few weeks ago.

Yeah, it's like in May or something, yeah. And this was, this is about the Met Gala in 2016. Oh, okay. But we can get more into that. Now, are you really sure? No. I'm not into biographical. No, I'm not sure, but I'm 85% sure.

So for those of you are just listening to me. Which is everyone. I'm going to say what she's doing is doing a nice job of building this kind of effective universe. And she meets someone there. It's a formal situation. There are a lot of lies being told, so a formal situation. And she says, I wanted to leave with him.

I needed a to leave him I needed a reason So you know I'm wondering at this point Especially after reading through it several times You know are we dealing with a triangle So she's got one previous relationship She meets a guy at the MetGala and says Ah yes this is my excuse to escape the first relationship

And you've got that look You got it Okay Well I think it's pretty explicit in the song It is yes it is in this fictive universe. Yes. I also found it interesting that we have these moments of the song of self-reflection, right?

Because she says, I needed a reason. And that really caused me moments of self-reflection. Uh-oh. No, I really wondered, I wondered about why listeners love her work so much. And, I mean, I can see that the lyrics are, in terms of its literature, literary value more impressive than a lot of pop songs. Very much. So, yeah.

But I wondered, you know, how they resonate with her as a person or as a character in her songs. And, you know, I wonder how many times we do get into relationships you're looking for a way out. You know, where's the exit door on this one? And how can I do it? And, you know, that moment of self-relection she has, I think, might draw readers in. For sure. It leaves open windows, you know, for... Which we talked about.

We talked about Edgar Lumpo's open window for the reader participation. So now I can participate because I've been in that situation before. Yeah. I personally have not. I've always been dumped. We don't believe that. Except for Valentina.

No, yeah. Don't bring her up. Can I give her last name? No, no, I won't. I also, you know, when you see the phrase Shades of Gray, I also wondered, you know, about 50 Shades of Gray, the E.L. James work. Yeah. You know, that is the spinoff of Twilight. Yeah, fan fiction.

Twilight fan fiction. There's also a novel Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder. Okay. Which is actually in part about breakup. Oh, okay. I mean, it's very good. You know, so I wondered if she knew the work by Carolyn Reader. You know, anytime I see a phrase like that, I have to try to, I connect to literature.

It's my world. Yes, that's what we're doing here. That's right. Okay, end of the first verse. Yes. Okay. Pre-chorus. Pre-chorus.

X marks the spot. Oh, my. There we go again with a cliche, where we fell apart. Okay, so, you know, when you think, there's also. the device of irony here because in the phrase X marks a spot, well, the X should mark treasure, right? Mm. Right. So if you went to this gala to this event and you found X marks a spot, well, then you should be all in the good.

But in fact, it's not good. That's where we fell apart. Exactly right. Interesting. Yeah, I've never put that together. So, yeah, we've got an ironic use of the cliche. Okay. Interesting.

And I'm telling you, she never used the cliche. without purpose. Yeah, except for a cowboy like me, maybe. Oh, yeah. When you got tired of it. Yeah, I'm done with that one. But in the rest of them. You know, we'll see.

I don't know. There must be others in that album I could dislike equally as much. Maybe. So X marked a spot. He poisoned the well, another cliche. I was lying to myself. Another self-admission, self-reflection. And in a lot of ways, I think poems about something.

self-reflection. Yeah. Like why she did this thing? Right. Why did I do it to me? Why did I escape him? Why did I do it to the other guy? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of wise whenever we get in messy relationships, right? Again, I think that's that open window for our listeners. Yeah. Put yourself right in there. Right. You know, we do. We do.

You know, when I read, I just finished rereading Nicholas Nickleby. Oh, yeah. So you're really talking about that. I know. By Charles Dickens. and I'm sitting there furtively writing and marking passages I thought were particularly fine or beautiful and yeah I put myself in the novel

not just in characters but in thematic elements that are occurring or in the mind of the author I'm going to think about what's old chap trying to say so I knew it from the first old fashion okay so an old fashion is alcoholic beverage made with whiskey and sugar and it's typical of the South.

I love an old-fashioned. I do not like whiskey, but I love an old-fashioned. I have in fact never had an old-fashioned. What? Yeah, I just, I knew it was typically Southern drink and so I wondered about the southern

meilu of the poem. Oh, okay. Right. And later on, we meet Bonnie and Clyde who are figures of the south. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, and so even though you may contend biographically that this is the Met Gala nevertheless, it has a kind of southern feel to it. Yeah, interesting. Okay. Yeah, well, especially because later on in the real chorus, as opposed to the pre-court,

she says words like driving and flying, you know, truncating the word to drop the G. Yeah, and then in the next line, we have shotguns, which also feels southern. Southern. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah. You're right. And I love the last line of the pre-porous. We never had a shotgun shot in the dark. First of all, it's alliterative. So for those of you do not remember from your junior high school English class, alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds.

So the S's, the S-H-in shotguns shot are really nicely alliterative. They also have what's called assonance. That's repetition of vowel sounds. It was a repetition of the O in shot, shot, obviously. Yeah, it's nice. It ties the sound of the line together. But also, the idea of a shotgun is scatter shooting, right? The idea that when you use a shotgun, you should hit something, right?

Because the shot scatters out. It should have hit something. Interesting. Yeah. We never had a shotgun chance in the dark means. even though I used a shotgun buddy no

it was just not never going to happen no okay the real course yes you were driving okay now I didn't catch this the first time around

okay and you know not the second time or the third time I'm going to go ahead and admit but I began to realize that she shifts who drives the car

oh Right. So in this first chorus, who's driving the car? You. You are. He's driving. The Patsy guy, the guy she's using to get away from her other relationship. So he's driving the car. He's flying. They're destined not to get far. And with the chorus, you get a really nice rhyme pattern. Car Far, A, A, Mystery, Me, B, B, Car, Heart, and then Lea. leave me.

Oh, this is the A-B-A-B. A-B. Well, not really, yeah. So if the first rhyme sound is A, yeah, and the next rhyme sound is B, B, this would be Car Farr's, A-A, mystery, me, B, B, car-heart, A-A, leave me, B, B.

Okay, yeah. So it's A-A-B-B-B. Yeah, that's nice. It's got this really nice couplet, interlocking rhyme scheme, you know, poetically good work there, Taylor, or Jack. Yeah. I don't know who's in charge of the rhyme

I don't know how that works. Yeah, I think it's her. But yeah, that's nicely done. And they're flying, but they're destined not to get far. Don't pretend it's such a mystery. Think about the place where you first met me. So the place I'm assuming is a place where they tell white lies and where things are formal, which is to say that it's a disingenuous atmosphere.

Yeah, it's not like real life. Right. Yeah, nothing about this formal affair is like our. real lives. That's exactly right. In fact, it's replete with falsehoods because of the lies. So don't think this was ever going to work. Yeah. Right. But nevertheless, he's driving and they're flying and they're driving and it's not a mystery. Riding in a getaway car, there were sirens in the heart, in the beat of your heart. Okay, so I'm just, you know, this is something you catch the first street.

Sirens is a terrific word to employ here. It has a double meaning. Okay, so literally sirens, the sound of the police chasing or that kind of thing. And he's excited, they're driving way quickly. But a siren is also a creature from mythology. Okay, so the sirens of the Odyssey, you know, when Odysseus comes near the sirens,

they call out, they sing to the men, and the men want to drive their boat onto the rocks in search of the sirens. So sirens are these monstrous women. Monstrous femininity again. We're back to that, aren't we? Yeah, so the sirens are these monstrous women who call out, they're kind of mermaid-like creatures,

and they call out, you know, a siren is generally a sound of warning, And this poor idiot, he does not hear the warning, right? Instead, he hears the siren song. On that note, this is a total side note, but do you watch, have you watched Wednesday on Netflix that went to the Adams family show? All right, I'm going to admit that I have, yeah. Okay, that's probably my favorite show right now.

I love it so much. The second season just started last week. Okay. And whenever I was going through this after watching, We rewatched Wednesday to get ready for the new season. And there's sirens at the school at Nevermore Academy. And so that's been like top of mind. But I do think I figured you had watched it.

And if you had and I was going to say you have to go right now and start watching it because I feel like you're going to like it. Yeah, I've seen maybe six episodes. Okay. Yeah. I'm just working my way through the first season. We can't tell who her love interest is. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Is someone inside or someone outside? Yeah. Watch it find out. But yeah, I love her use of, you know, anytime she uses language with what we call lexical ambiguity. Ooh, I like that.

I know, lexical ambiguity. So anytime she uses language that's intentionally ambiguous with multiple meanings, you know, I'm in love with the line. So this is, like I mentioned in another episode, Percy Shelley's Welchellie. chosen word. Yeah, the one word. Right. And then in the last two lines, she goes back to the self-reflected mood. Should have

known, I'd be the first to leave. So you know, what she omits is who should have known? You know, is she still talking about... Oh, she should have known or he should have known? Yeah, so you think that great. Oh, more ambiguity. Right. Yeah, I think it's

he should have known. Right, because we're listening to the beat of his heart and he is driving. But it's her song. Yeah. Yeah, so you wonder who should have known that she'd be the first to leave. Maybe she already knew it. Yeah.

Because think about where they meant. Yeah. And then we got a post-chorus. Yeah, this is our first post-couris. And like what even is a post-couris? It's one after the chorus, but before the pre-cource. Yeah. So in a getaway car, no, they never get far. Nothing that starts in a getaway car. Probably right. Yes.

So she's trying to escape. Verse two. All right. More to the story. Yes. It was the Great Escape. Okay. Great Escape, the movie. Yeah. So hopefully you've all seen Great Escape, classic film. I don't think I've seen it, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah. It's a classic

All-Star film All-Star All-Male cast, practically You know, so I immediately thought of the movie And The Prison Break Okay, so it was a great escape

The Prison Break So we have Sychir, we have Intern Rine We also have a literary device called Lytotis So I, for those of you Who are accounting, she is mounting up literary devices

Lytotis is when you inverse Invert a sentence element So what was a great escape? Oh, okay, so the prison break was the great escape She did it, okay So what she did was she inverts it So why do you use Lytonics? Why do you use Lytotis?

Because you want to emphasize the end of the phrase So prison break She's the one escaping, right? She's getting out of the prison of another life. Interesting. Okay, so. So this, you just made you think of two different things. Okay.

Maybe you, well, you did and then she did, because I'm just listening to this in a new way now, all of a sudden. But so she does that in another, another song came to my mind immediately called Cardigan, which is from folklore. And she does that. She says, to kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed. And it took me a few listens to hear what she was even saying because it's so backwards. And I was like, why is she saying it like that?

But now I know what that is. It's a like. L-I-T-O-T-E-S. To-T-E. L-I-T-E-S. Okay. M-O-U-S-E. And then the prison break, she, I never really caught on to that.

She was saying the prison break here, but now I'm tying that into songs from the tortured poets department, which just came out last year. So seven years after this. this song, she talks about, she has a song called Fresh Out the Slammer. And it's literally about her getting out of a relationship. And she's like likening her relationship to a prison. So she's done that a couple of times now I'm realizing.

So I have two follow-ups. One is it amuses me the way you can quote her songs, the way I can quote poetry. Sorry. No. They're just all in here. Well, I know. That's what I tell people. I've taught this stuff so long. It's all in there. And secondly, you did say something here that I'm going to say again at the end and that I do like the metaphor of the car, the metaphor of the prison, you know, the metaphor of the use of color. I don't know. She just stacks up metaphors as we've talked about.

and again, people, grad students, there is a master's thesis just waiting to be written on her use of metaphors. I mean, half of the use of her literary devices are metaphors. And really, I thought about it myself

because, you know, having only been through relative hand-fewed songs, I mean, you can already see that you want to be able to, you know, a metaphor isn't always just a metaphor. There are spatial metaphors, personal metaphors, there are all kinds of different

elements of metaphor. it would be worthwhile to be a really interesting study to take a look at the patterned use of metaphor in the songs of Taylor Swift. Yeah. So don't forget I gave you that time when you complete your thesis. Send it to us. Yeah, let me know. We want to read that. I do.

I really do, or I want to do it. It just sounds like that. Okay, next line in the verse. The light of freedom on my face. Okay, so light of freedom also rings bells for me. If you've ever seen the Statue of Liberty? Have you been to New York? Never.

No, just kidding. I've been a lot of times. We need to tell that story. Okay, we'll do that next episode. Yeah. Yeah. Statue of Liberty, the torch, is called The Light of Freedom. Yes.

Light of Freedom is also a book about the Underground Railroad. Oh, okay. Didn't know that. There's a movie titled Light of Freedom. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so I don't know if she's seen the movie or the book. but obviously the light of freedom is a manner of escape for slaves. So the question would be, is she a slave to her previous relationship?

Interesting. Okay. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. But you weren't thinking, and I was just drinking. She's doubting those old-fashioned. Yeah, those old-fashioned came back. And he is just smitten.

While he was running after us, I was screaming, go, go, go. You know, this is where, you know, it was affirmed to me as a reader who hadn't seen the song before, that there's a third party and she's running from it. Yeah. Because he's running after us. Yeah, you weren't thinking, I was drinking, and he's back there running after us. Right. And she uses the word screaming.

Again, diction is important. You know, the scream, go, go, go, could make you think of a siren, could make you think of that monstrous feminine character. and then and then she says something that's not said but with three of us honey it's a side show

and a circus ain't a love story and now we're both sorry she thinks it but she doesn't actually say it oh yeah because the the go go go I was screaming go go go is in quotations

but the rest of it isn't so it's just in here it's just in her head it's just in her head Yeah, and you remember, we talked about characterization in another episode, you know, direct and indirect characterization. You learn a lot by direct characterization. She screamed, go, go, go. But you learn a lot from indirect characterization, and that's what she's giving us here. She's also giving us yet another metaphor.

One that we've talked about before. Yes, it's a circus. Her love story is a circus. And now they're both sorry. Yeah. End of verse two. Yes. Okay, that's a good one.

Yeah. Yeah, I really like it. And then we go back to the pre-chorus. X marks the spot where we fell apart. He poisoned the well. Oh, is that different? Every man for himself. Yes.

I was lying to myself before, and now it's he poisoned the well, every man for himself. Right. That's right. So, again, she doesn't use a cliche without an alternative motive. Every man for himself.

means, you know, save yourself if you can, but also, you know, the previous relationship, the guy is chasing the car because he's trying to save himself, trying to save the relationship, the guy's driving the car because he's trying to create a new relationship, saving himself, and she's trying to save herself, getting out. Yeah. That's right, just getting out. So kind of fun, never use the cliche without another purpose. Yeah.

So she's drinking that shot, that old-fashioned, and, um, I hit you like a shotgun shot in the heart. Okay, yeah. Okay, so now we've shifted from scatter shooting to... Right in the heart. Right in the heart. Wait, okay, so what was the other... The other is...

Right, the other. We never had a shotgun shot in the dark. Right. We didn't, but you thought we did. That's fun. Is that great? Yeah. Yeah, I like it.

I think it's fun. and in the second chorus he's still driving the car so you were driving the getaway car we're flying don't pretend it's a mystery remember where we met it's kind of the same stuff yeah same one again the sirens are beating in your heart that kind of thing you should have known yes okay and then in the post chorus we again kind of

have the same thing in a getaway car no they ain't ever yet far and notice how now we're talking about taking a camera eye view, so third person, omniscient view, they never get far. Yeah. Right? So she's beginning to pull away from first person. She's taking herself out a bit a little. Yeah.

Isn't that fun? Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting the way she manipulates first, second, third person pronouns. Mm-hmm. So here we have the third person plural, and we create an omniscient narrator for our fictional world. Interesting. Yeah, nice stuff. Then she has a bridge.

It's a short bridge. time. It is. You like bridges. We love a bridge. This is where she really shines. We were just said. Bonnie and Clyde, and I went, yeah, Bonnie and Clyde. Southern pair, important

to our locale. Yes, yeah. There are several places where Bonnie and Clyde wreaked mayhem in Oak Cliff and South Dallas. I was just going to say, we watched a movie. I have no clue what movie it was. Chase turned it on. I sort of was

paying attention and they were talking it was I guess it must have been about Bonnie and Clyde or something and they were in Oak Cliff like they were talking about streets that I drive on regularly that was fun yeah yeah you may have seen an interview by a friend of mine as a matter of fact he wrote a couple of books on bunny and Clyde so um yeah they're you know Bonnie and Clyde are famous for our area Clyde and his brother are both buried in the Fort Worth Avenue cemetery oh okay and Bonnie's buried about a mile and a half away. Should we go see them? Should we?

Yeah, maybe. Field trip. We could bring the ghost or the siren. Yeah. I wondered if she chose Bonnie and Clyde other than for the southern atmosphere, other than the fact that it lends to the overall extension of the conceit for the getaway car. In the movie version, they show that Bonnie and Clyde don't consummate their relationship. And I wondered if she's thinking about the movie version there.

Interesting. That was a common idea about Bonnie and Clyde. It's probably not factual. As a matter of fact, it may be that Clyde Barrow was fully functional in that regard. Interesting. Okay. That adds a different layer. Yeah, it does add a different layer.

I wonder if she's thinking about the movie or if she's thinking about reality or if she's thinking about that at all. Yeah. Throwing it down. Who knows? Until I switch to the other side, to the other side. Okay. So which side did she switch to?

Yeah, I don't. I mean, it's, yeah. So we've got the side of the old love relationship. Uh-huh. We've got the side of the new love relationship. There's somebody else in this relationship. Yeah. It's her.

So she switched to her own side. How about that? Hmm. Yeah. It's no surprise I turned you in because us traders. Yeah. So she was a traitor to him and then she was a traitor to him. Right.

So don't trust a dumper. Yeah. Okay. Now we get to that moment that I just, I really learned to like, you know, like I said, about the third time around. Who's driving the getaway car? Well, yeah. So first he was.

First he was. And now we get to the breakdown. She says, I'm in a getaway car. car. We don't know who's driving, but she's in there. I left you in a motel. Oh, he's not driving. Put money in a bag and I stole the keys. She took the money, she took the keys. That was the last time you saw me. Yeah, so fun. This is the part when we watch the, when they're writing this later, this is the part they're like figuring out. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I like it because there's a, you know, there's a clear shift in pronoun use to the first person.

Yeah, so before she was, she was just riding in the car, but now, and she doesn't say she's driving here, but she has, it feels like she has more agency in this part. Exactly. Yeah, I think she reveals to us that she was maybe the user all the time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then we go to the chorus. In the chorus, she says, drive in the getaway car. No, no, there's now nobody's, now we don't know who's driving. Well, I think the implication is she, you know, so this is called ellipse, right, when you leave off important information. Yeah.

You know, we, we use ellipse all the time when we speak. So, I am taller than you. Well, actually what I mean is, I am taller than you are tall. Right, okay. Yeah. But we habitually elips that information because it's just too much conversational. Besides, it's self-evident. Right, clearly.

So the ellipse is she is driving the getaway car. I am driving to get a get-away car, right? Interesting. Yeah. So we're flying, we never get far. Don't pretend it's a mystery. Yeah. It's kind of fun, riding in a get-away car.

Yeah, the imagery of this one always, it's just really fun to me. Yeah. Like, I'm picturing her, like, in the, you know, early 1900s. or something like I do too yeah I mean I think that the the bottom line for the remainder of the song yeah it's all just kind of repeating here yeah the outro this diminishing

self that she's kind of floats off is that she's in charge she's all I yeah it's I'm manipulating my own self I'm driving my own car you know you can call it monstrous femininity if you want but I mean I don't think so I think that that's just a personal agency. You know, I mean, we shouldn't have to label it masculine or feminine.

Right. I think that... Just a person making decisions. Exactly. You know, I think that the ability to realize you have personal agency in life is an important one, and that eventually is something that emerges from the song. Yeah. Interesting.

And I'm done. I want to hear it. Okay. That's... So do you... Okay. Yes. Let's do that.

Let's listen. So what we're going to do is listen to the album version, and then we'll listen to Taylor and Jack sort of figuring out the end of this song, and then we'll come back and get your thoughts. Okay. Sounds good. I hope you like it. Okay, we're back. Yes, we're back. Okay, we just heard the song.

Yes. And the, how'd she make the video? Does she just lay her phone down and start shooting? I think so, yeah. That's pretty cool. I love seeing the... Yeah, she doesn't. Yeah, she does that a lot, I think, to just, you know, for perpetuity.

It's fun. It's fun to see the two artists work. Like, they're working it out. Like, even she had trouble rhythmically with some of the lines. Okay, so what did I see when I heard the song? Yeah, go for it. Okay, so, you know, I'm going to say, like, I didn't miss the tonal intentionality entirely, but I did miss some, you know, like in the first verse,

When she says, but I didn't mean it, she says that really apologetically. And I took it more, you know, self-protectingly. Interesting, yeah. But she says it with a good deal more earnestness. Like she's sorry, I'm sorry I had to use you, but it was the only way I could get out. Interesting, yeah. And then when she says the same thing, when she says, I wanted to leave him. She says wanted like I had to, you know.

Didn't have a choice, yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I thought, and then you combine that with something we didn't mention in the, at the very end, in the Ocho. She says, I was riding, I was crying, I was dying, right? And she says that in the sort of diminishing way where she's, again, almost apologetically to the guy she used. I mean, you know what Neil Siddaka told us?

What did he tell us? He said breaking up is hard to do. Oh, of course, of course. Indeed. You know, so I think I missed the earnestness of tone. Yeah, so you thought she was more like, you know, empowered and like happy about, not happy, but like almost proud of the situation maybe or something. She found some patsy to use. And so, yeah, I'm going to back up and say she did find a patsy, but she did so apologize.

She felt a little bit bad about it. I know. It's like, does that make you feel better, dude? I didn't really mean it. Yeah, I had to do it. Hey, thanks for being there. I took your money, too. Yeah.

So it was fun to hear the song. Yeah, did you, what, did you have any thoughts about her and Jack singing and writing together? He can't sing a lid. Yeah. But it was interesting to hear them work out, you know, the rhythm where she kept having a little bit of trouble. And she does, her music uses a syshura, you know. Often.

Often, yeah. Like I noticed in the chorus, even where you don't have punctuation to separate the elements of the line, she says there were sirens, pause. In the beatier heart. Should have known, pause. I'd be the, right. So even though the sysheera is not there, with the commas as they appear in the verse,

nevertheless, they're there the way she phrases it. Yeah. Yeah, and it's part of her, you know, rhythmic element. I would say part of the rhythmic power of the song is creating those breaks. Agreed, yeah. And she has to work through them. I mean, you don't sit down and make a song like this. No.

You know, it takes a minute. Yeah. Yeah, so nice work. Okay. Any final thoughts before we grade? I'm ready to grade. Okay. You know, now maybe I should give myself.

A B for missing the apologetic tone. I think you're okay. Okay, B plus. I think you can have an A because you are so excited. Okay, thank you. A for excitement. I read it in a gas station. Okay, so for the grades, again, we have five criteria.

Yes. The first is lyrical strength. Going right up to the top of the 97? Oh, my goodness. I know. Okay, narrative and structure. Yeah, I got the story. I got the...

Yeah, I feel like this one does have a clear narrative. Right, I got the triangle. I got the, you know, you run away with me. Oh, no, he's following. Now I'm going up in you in the hotel. And I'm free. But I'm sorry about it, but... So clear narrative structure.

How about a 96? Okay. I wonder if getaway cars are highest. drinking one. Production and atmosphere. Yeah, I mean, I liked the song. I especially liked the phrasing. Even more so after watching the video of the two of them working it out and, you know,

just showing how much hard work is there. So I'll say 95. Okay. Lore and Literary References. She got some Dickens in there for you. No, anytime you get Dickens in here, it's going to, it's so, to the top. So I'm going to say

97. Thank you very much for scratching that. Goodness gracious. Okay. An emotional impact. Yeah, you know, I think it's more emotive

than I thought it was. I thought that she was pretty much I've got to use you, dude. But hearing the song changes my feeling about that. So, I mean, I would say a 95. All right. And that gives us

96. Oh, there you go. That's good grade. It's interesting because when I was reading this in the gas station. As we all did, the first time we heard it. I was thinking, it's okay. A lot of the same stuff, a lot of the same metaphors, a little bit of a rhyme scheme, throwed down, you know, rhythmic planning.

But I wasn't smitten with it. And the more I read through it, the more I thought pretty well-written business here. Yeah, it's fun. All right. That's really fun. 96 for Getaway Car. Now I'm curious what you're going to give the rest of the songs on reputation. Okay.

Because a lot of them, I think, are... So we've talked before about her three pens, her glitter gel pin, her quill pin, and her... What's the other one called? I don't know. It just leaves me pensive. Stop. Yes, the more formal Emily Dickinson-esque. Yeah, and so this one I feel like it leans more gel pen in the sounds.

I think so, yeah. But it does feel a little bit more, you know, it's got more depth than a classic gel pen song, I think. Yeah. So, anyway. Yeah, okay, so that's all. Good? Yes, I'm good. Yeah, fun song.

Yes. So the getaway? Yeah, we'll take the getaway car out there. Okay. Okay, yes, please make sure you like, subscribe, follow, share all the things. Loving reading all of your comments. I still have to share some of him, but loving them all still. Please leave those everywhere.

And, yeah, make sure you're following us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Those are all at Swiftian ScholarPod. And I'm at Angela Wyatt on Instagram. And we will be back next week with another song. See you there. All right. Bye.