Bridging

From going down with abandoned ships to getting lost in translation to an evergreen group of friends - I’m deep-diving into our pop queens best bridges.

Cruel Summer - 2019

Bridge starts at 1:39

Her finest bridge for what has only fairly recently become one of her finest songs. “Cruel Summer” is a strange one - it didn’t get the love it deserved off the back of Lover in 2019 - it only began to turn more heads off the back of a resurgence thanks to the Eras tour and TikTok, beginning its transition from pop banger to Swiftian folklore.

“Cruel Summer” is serotonin in song form. A high-octane trip from start to finish. A propane blast. A forever summer song. You’re implored to scream at the top of your lungs because we’ve all been drunk in the back of the car, and we’ve all cried like a baby coming home from the bar.

Best line: “I love you / Ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard.”

All Too Well - 2012

Bridge starts at 4:04

Most Swifties would declare “All Too Well” her magnum-opus. Another effort that was perhaps slightly overlooked at the time of its release in 2012 - and only until Taylor announced that the 10-minute version would be included on her re-recording of Red did this track become globally revered.

A sprawling power-ballad about he who shall not be named - reaches its heartbreaking and unflinching climax when Taylor worries things got lost in translation. It’s Taylor at her most vulnerable and it exhibits one of her most common patterns of thought - I’m going to blame myself for others’ shitty behaviour.

And just when you think that’s dead and buried, and you’re expecting to return to normal service - she only goes and throws in another bridge. A double bridge??? Here, Taylor flexes her vocal prowess to deliver one of the most iconic roars in pop music. Another that you might scream whilst on your knees, arms outstretched and looking to the skies. Imagine being him.

Best line: “You call me up again just to break me like a promise.”

Love Story - 2008

Bridge starts at 2:44

How many bridges in the history of music can act as a catalyst for a marriage proposal? There have been countless couples that have taken the leap from exclusivity to engagement during a particular second of “Love Story” that perhaps every human being on the planet could recite.

Juliet got tired of waiting, but I will never, ever. Because when this bridge arrives, it’s so familiar yet so new because Tay, in classic Tay fashion, switches up her lyrics to further progress a tale we all know and love. A reversal of fortune inspired by the iconic Shakespearean play is the exact kind of whimsicalness she loves to sprinkle over her dynamic storytelling.

She’ll go on to write more personal lyrics than this, but here we get the first glimpse of her unrivalled ability to draw from fictional characters’ experiences and dance with them through a song.

Best line: “Is this in my head? I don’t know what to think / He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said....”

How Did It End? - 2024

Bridge starts at 2:40

Taylor digs into her book of poetry to deliver one of her most eloquently jarring and metaphorically evocative bridges. I've stumped multiple people with the lyrics from this one - is it Shakespeare or Swift? Many couldn’t fathom the truth.

Well guess what - she’s actually a poet. The tangle of words in this bridge somehow make to flow like a god damn slip and slide. It annoyed me so much when I first listened to this song because I wanted nothing more than to be able to join her and sing along. It took forever to learn the lyrics because it’s so perfectly wordy and imaginative. It’s also utterly devastating.

Best line: “Leaving me bereft and reeling / My beloved ghost and me / Sitting in a tree / D Y I N G.”

Champagne Problems - 2020

Bridge starts at 2:25

What I personally believe to be her most depressing song. Your heart shatters each time you hear her explain how you don’t know what your answer to a proposal will be until someone is on their knees and asks you. Love that she uses knees and not knee - implying that this man was begging her to say yes even after she’d rejected him. Ouch. He was once on a knee.

This bridge is especially long and winding - but completes the “Champagne Problems” story arc perfectly. We don’t get a happy ending, but we get ultimate catharsis in the chorus that follows it. This song would be slightly plain and unflattering if not for the reveal-all storytelling of its bridge, solidifying it as one of her best works - and definitely her most admired on 2020’s Evermore. The solo performance of this song garnered her a standing ovation at every single show on the Eras tour, and you can understand why.

Best line: “November flush and your flannel cure.”

August - 2020

Bridge starts at 1:42

“August” sounds like a Cranberries/Mazzy Star late afternoon beer-in-the-sun hang out session. It also makes me feel like I’m in high school and 18 again. The soft rock guitars and laid-back percussion make it such a simple tune - but one that’s elevated due to the fictional lore behind it. Namely, it’s entanglement with fellow Folklore tunes “Cardigan” and “Betty” - which form the Folklorian love triangle that so many of us know and love.

Taylor adopts breathy vocals for the much of the song previous to its bridge. It’s chirpy and it’s catchy - but it feels somewhat restrained. When she unleashes the hound it’s fitting she shouts it - because it’s almost a battle cry from this poor girl who has been played over the entire summer. She cancelled plans just in case you’d call, dude. Meet me BEHIND the mall!!!??? Are you kidding me? Poor August.

Best line: “So much for summer love and saying ‘us’ / Because you weren’t mine to lose.”

So Long, London - 2024

Bridge starts at 2:08

Aaron Dessner’s niftiest production on Taylor’s latest LP. A pulsating four-on-the-floor kick and driven synthy piano are enough to carry us through to what is Taylor’s best bridge on The Tortured Poets Department. It’s a break-up ballad for the ages, a chapter-closer and a knot-tier all in one.

Taylor adopts the metaphor of a shipwreck to describe her relationship’s untimely demise. From going down with it but holding tight to ‘quiet resentment’ - yikes. There is an easy way to say to someone that you’ve been hurt but Taylor doesn’t operate that way. I love the craft she possesses where she can devise a way to say something that’s been said a million times before but translate it into beautiful chaos. She does it time and time again, continually reinventing herself and her lyricism - whilst making it catchy as fuck.

Shout-out to the scream-harmonies Taylor lays down over her natural vocal throughout the entire bridge. It just adds to the desperation, the plea, the knowing it’s over and wanting to say the last word.

Best line: “Holding tight to your quiet resentment and my friends said it isn’t right to be scared.”

Tolerate It - 2020

Bridge starts at 2:29

Taylor loves to adopt the “I am crazy” personae. I will love you more than me. How about I kill you now? The bridge plays on the fatal marriage trope - lots of inspiration taken I’m sure from works like Gone Girl and Rebecca. She goes insane, here. She goes insane because she loves too much and loving too much is forbidden!

It’s cutting lyricism that makes you think and then rewind and play it again and think some more. Where is that man who once threw blankets over her barbed wires? He put her here! It’s heartbreaking altogether. She once loved this guy. She once loved this guy who she now fantasies about sticking a dagger through.

Best line: “I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life.”

Marjorie - 2020

Bridge starts at: 2:10

Unsurprising given her deeply personal discography - but Taylor enters a new arena here where she speaks directly about and to her late grandmother Marjorie. This is a song about getting to know a loved one long after they’ve gone and regretting not showing up more when they were around. It feels like Taylor at her most hurt, her most regretful.

The bridge makes me sob every time. I obviously don’t know Taylor, nor do I know Marjorie - but everything she reflects on here somehow feels deeply relatable and perfectly precise. The deliberate poignance, from recalling how her grandmother loved the amber sky so much to the wonderfully drawn memories, like how they’d go swimming, and Marjorie’s long limbs would always go way past where their feet could touch.

There’s something so beautifully vintage about looking back on memories with your grandparent - a special relationship that none of us probably ever get enough time to bask in. When Taylor finishes the bridge, speaking of Marjorie’s closets of backlogged dreams and how she left them all to her Taylor - fuck. Just cried writing this.

Best line: “I should have asked you questions / I should have asked you how to be / And asked you to write it down for me.”

Enchanted - 2010

Bridge starts at 3:58

It’s a bridge that will not win any awards for bigness or complexity - it’s simple and it’s just two lines. But my goodness does it set us up for that final, climactic, almost cinematic opera house of a chorus.

It unsettles me deeply that she wrote this song in one night about a fleeting moment with the lead singer from Owl City. He also responded to this song with his own version which makes me cringe just as much as it makes me reflect if anybody will ever find me this wonderful? That being said, can we take a second for the sentiment? If somebody told me that they were enchanted to meet me after the fact, I’d combust.

Best line: “Please don’t be in love with someone else / Please don’t have somebody waiting on you.”

Exile (feat. Bon Iver) - 2020

Bridge starts at 2:13

Taylor shares this bridge, vocally, lyrically and sonically with another genius in Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver).

The build-up here is masterful. It’s a release from the somewhat repetitive verse and chorus we’re offered prior to. Their voices somehow, and who would have thought, blend together so nicely? Bon Iver’s vocals sound like an SSRI and Taylor’s sound like bubblegum. On paper this shouldn’t really have worked.

The unexpected chord change indicates something is awry and when Justin cries his first cry we are strapping in for a deeply iconic and devastating moment of 2020. Taylor then waves her magic wand over the piece, deflecting Justin’s battle cries with a call and response for the ages. Also, honourable mention for an absolute masterclass in harmonising and to my 22-year-old self who was not in a great place when this song and album were released.

Best line: “Cause you never gave a warning sign / I gave so many signs.”

Honourable mentions:

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

Death By A Thousand Cuts

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

You’re On Your Own, Kid

Illicit Affairs

Peter