Secret Session: A Taylor Swift Podcast

Don't know about you, but we simply cannot stop talking about The Tortured Poets Department, so we thought we could talk about the poem/epilogue Taylor wrote to wrap up the album.

P.S. We analyzed the last stanza in the episode "Emergency Session: The Tortured Poets Department" (posted on February 5th). Here's the time-stamp if you want to listen to only that part: 00:20:38.

This song is one hell of a drug! Taylor and Florence's voices together? Yes, thank you. This song is all about wanting to escape and start a new life, join us in this journey.

We cannot stop thinking, talking and listening to The Tortured Poets Department, so let's start with talking about the opening track, Fortnight! She was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to some and get her, and so she started writing this masterpiece of an album...

This music video! Oh, we love it and we broke down every single scene in it! Listen to this in preparation to next week when we'll talk about the song.

Taylor gave us the whole anthology and so we had to share what we thought about these 15 extra stories, that are now ours. We fear we'll never recover from this!!

We finally entered the Tortured Poets Department and we were not disappointed with the evidence we were presented with. Were we allowed to cry? 'Cause we certainly did.

P.S. We recorded this episode right after Taylor dropped The Anthology, so we still hadn't listened to it. You'll be able to listen to our first impressions on it on Sunday. She's so productive it's an art!

It's the last episode before TTPD (AAAH!) and so we needed to talk about the last song off of Midnights, that also really sounds like poetry. Play the game "good or bad advice?" with us and let us know your thoughts!

Take us to the lakes where all the TORTURED POETS went to die... After I Know Places, in this episode we analyze another song where Taylor felt like she needed to escape in order to save her relationship, as well as her mental health. This is THE song about escapism.

P. S. Sorry for the super annoying noise in the background of Noelle's audio, there was a lot of raining going on in Rome!

When Taylor's private life became not so private anymore, she got the idea to get into hiding in order to protect her relationship. We talked about that and more!

We’re officially less than one month away from the album release and we wanted to celebrate this by sharing our predictions! We talked about every single track and went down a few crazy rabbit holes. Chances are we’re wrong about everything, but this was fun!

Timestamps:

1. Side A: Fortnight; The Tortured Poets Department; My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys; Down Bad (00:02:19)

2. Side B: So Long, London; But Daddy I Love Him; Fresh Out the Slammer; Florida!!! (00:17:58)

3. Side C: Guilty as Sin?; Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?; I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can); loml (00:28:16)

4. Side D: I Can Do It With A Broken Heart; The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived; The Alchemy; Clara Bow (00:37:35)

5. Bonus tracks: The Manuscript; The Bolter; The Albatross; The Black Dog (00:51:32)

6. Conclusions (01:11:15)

Part 3 of our series on the door theme. In this episode, we analyze all the steps up to Taylor's door (aka her heart): step 1, "stand there like a ghost, shaking from the rain...". Bonus slander on toxic masculinity, if that's your thing.

Part 2 of our series about the door theme. Once again, we have a door and two people who are trying to communicate. We talked about (false) promises and hope in something that is not really there anymore.

First of three parts on songs with the recurring theme of the door. After a heated fight with her partner, Taylor walks away from their relationship, but that isn't really what she wanted. Teenage angst, passionate slamming of doors, and confusing times are ahead. We analyzed ALL of it... maybe a little too much (as always). Was she (Taylor) worth this mess? Of course.

Taylor was named Person Of The Year 2023 by TIME Magazine and we talked about it! We read some parts of the article written by Sam Lansky and we urge you to spend some minutes reading it if you haven't already.

Disclaimer: we recorded this episode before Taylor announced The Tortured Poets Department and we were still clowning for reputation (Taylor's Version)

Doors came up so often during our analyses that we decided to dedicate an entire episode to the theme of the door! We split the references into three categories and discussed them. Are we reading too much into this? Probably, maybe they’re just doors, but this was fun.

Taylor announced a brand new album at the Grammys and we can't wait to listen to it! We shared our predictions and thoughts about this. We also talked about the fact that Taylor won AOTY for the 4th time... iconic!

Uh oh, we talked way too much about labyrinths this time. Basically this is an appreciation episode on a great example of Taylor’s masterful songwriting. And also an appreciation episode on the Etruscan civilization, our actual roman empire. And we don’t know how breathing works even though we’re both doctors (but not that kind of doctors, fortunately).

Back for another Midnights bonus track! Written and produced by the Holy Trinity, Hits Different really does hit different. From drunkenly thinking about your ex moving on with other girls, to thinking you’re being taken away to a mental institution, Taylor takes us on a major emotional rollercoaster.

What happens when you’re in a long term relationship but you don’t feel like you’re on the same page anymore? And your feelings are fading away, while you’re trying to keep them alive, begging for your partner to try to work on the relationship too. We tried to talk about it in this episode. Enjoy!

Staying in theme with films and what we talked about in our episode about the 1, we decided to talk about If This Was A Movie. If life was a movie – a romantic one – things would be different and easier… but it isn’t. If this was a movie, he would've been the one. Life isn’t a movie, though, or maybe it’s a dramatic movie, who can tell. It’s just more complicated than that.

Happy New Year! We tried to resist the temptation to start the new year with the 1, but it was an iconic thing to do and so here we are. This song is about that person that exited your life, but sometimes you can’t help it but wonder what would’ve happened if they had stayed.

The year is almost over and what better occasion to talk about New Year's Day? We talked about this song and the meaning that Taylor attached to that day, but we also looked back on this year (starting from 00:17:47). We want to thank everyone who listened to our podcast this year and we hope you will stay with us in 2024! Love you 🫶🏼

Happy birthday, Taylor! 🥳🥳 It's been a while since we've talked about our favorite albums, so we thought Taylor's birthday episode could be the perfect time. We talked about the major plot points and all the subplots we can find in the sister albums, and we broke them down track to track (tracks 1-7 in the first part, and tracks 8-17 next week).

Timestamps:

1. Introduction to folklore and evermore (00:02:00)
2. The tracklists in parallel (00:14:18)
3. Tracks 1-7 (00:20:20)
4. Conclusions & our favorite parallels (00:44:47)

It's getting cold and we hadn't talked about Debut for a while, so we decided to talk about Cold As You! We discussed unrequited love and teenage years... and Taylor's amazing songwriting skills.

Happy almost birthday, Noelle! As per tradition, the birthday girl gets to choose the song of her birthday week, and Noelle chose a song particularly close to her heart. Never Grow Up has defined her 23rd year alive, and so she wanted to celebrate the day before turning 24 talking about this song from Speak Now with Alice and all our listeners.

Timestamps:

1. Introduction to Never Grow Up (00:03:08)
2. Lyrical analysis (00:06:44)
3. On growing up (00:34:27)
4. Conclusions (00:56:29)

In Taylor’s albums, track 5 isn’t like the others. It’s personal, it’s emotional, it holds a special meaning. We talked about the different feelings explored in those songs and we discussed the best track 5 in our opinion.

Timestamps:

1. The 5 categories of Track 5s (00:06:41)

2. Our ranking of the Track 5s (00:23:59)

3. Conclusions (00:27:05)

We can't stop listening to the 1989 (Taylor's Version) vault tracks and we decided to talk about our favorite one. This one is so connected with the whole album and we had so much fun finding all the parallels and connecting all the dots!

Happy spooky season 🎃 For our Halloween episode, we decided to talk about the song Haunted. Here Taylor finds herself in the scary (and spooky) limbo between the break down and the break up of a relationship. The end is coming, but still, something keeps her holding on to nothing.

Finally! We've been waiting for you, 1989 (Taylor's Version). And here's our reaction!

It's a long one, obviously, so here are some timestamps:

1. {General impressions & The Prologue} {00:01:30}
2. {Standard tracks} {00:15:50}
3. {Vault tracks} {00:24:50}
4. {Our ranking of the Vault tracks} {01:04:40}
5. {Conclusions} {01:07:07}

P.S. We want to talk about a Vault track soon, but we can't choose which one between "Say Don't Go" and "Is It Over Now?", so we ask you to decide! Answer the poll below, please and thank you 💙

Last week we talked about how everything inside Taylor's head used to be burning red, but today, she's able to see how it all was so much darker, more like maroon.

In this episode we dwell inside a maroon memory for a while, but first we talked about our Eras Tour movie experience! If you want to skip ahead to the song analysis, go to 00:13:25.

Sometimes words aren't enough to describe what you're feeling. Sometimes we feel those red emotions, that are like a fire: they can keep you warm, but they can burn you. And that's what inspired this song and the Red album as a whole.

It’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) release month! And we wanted to celebrate by talking about arguably one of Taylor’s biggest songs and also one of those songs that defined our teenage years. With this one, she took the image that the media was painting of her and she played with this character in a pretty smart way.

Noelle's dog wanted to talk about this song too, so you'll hear her here and there. We promise she's fine!

A song sung by both Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers feels like a dream, but it’s real and it’s called Nothing New. This one is a reflective one, where Taylor opened up about being scared of the future and about the fear of losing relevance. And yes, Taylor, we still want you, 17 years after your debut.

P.S. Happy Red (Taylor's Version) season! 🍂

After the one that we called “the shitty event” in last week’s episode, Taylor felt like she was losing the support of those who were once her fans. There was a lot of self doubt, accompanied by a certain level of helplessness and hopelessness. Luckily, her empire is still up and she's the Queen of our hearts.

You can find our Paramore-head friend, Federica, on Instagram as @fedes_things. Thanks again, Fede!

In honor of the VMAs this week, we decided to talk about this song written in response of the 2009 VMAs incident. We talked about forgiveness and about how we reevaluated this song after lthe release of Speak Now (Taylor's Version).

We're officially entering our 1989 (Taylor's Version) era with this fan favorite song! If we had to describe this song with a word, that would be "anxiety" and we extensively talked about why.

In this song from Midnights, Taylor remembers a situationship that changed her life, and she has a lot of questions about that!

It's been a long time coming but... we're finally back with a new song analysis! In honor of Lover's 4th anniversary, we decided to talk about Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.

Happy 1st birthday Secret Session! We can't believe it's been already one year... and what a year! We did a little recap of what happened and we answered to some of your questions. We're immensly grateful for each and every person who spent their time listening to us because we started this podcast with no expectations whatsoever and it's unbelievable that you care!

Time stamps:

Q&A 09:24

Conclusions 35:42

Well, HELLO HELLO HELLO! So much for our week off, right?! Just kidding, we love that Taylor announced 1989 (her version)! We finally got to witness it through a livestream, so hear all about our first reaction, but also so many other things, like our thoughts on the album cover, the vault tracks and the CDs variants...

SO. FREAKING. EXCITED !!!!!

P.S. We were so stoked about this Emergency Session that we rambled quite a lot in the last few minutes, so if you want to hear about our plans on our London Eras Tour date etc. go to 43:32.

P.P.S. Write us your questions for next week's Q&A!

Let's talk about alcohol in Taylor's discography! Grab a drink, get cozy and listen to some lyrical alcohol talk. 🍻🍷🥂🍾🥃🍹

P. S. We can't make any promises that Taylor will have a reputation Vault track titled Wine, but we have some reasons to think that she does...

P. P. S. Our Instagram was suspended a couple of days ago, so make sure to follow our new page over @secretsessionpodcast_ !!!

Timestamps:

1. The 5 meanings of alcohol in Taylor’s discography (02:38)

2. Being drunk (03:22)

3. Specific drinks (06:47)

4. Wine (08:48)

5. Champagne & other kinds of wine (16:34)

6. Beer (22:01)

7. Cocktails (25:38)

8. Conclusions & some news❓(31:22)

Our 50th episode! WHAT?! And it's about a Red song?!

Today we conclude our 3-part series about the self-written break up songs Taylor wrote about her relationship with a certain JJ. Even if it ended in the usual way, right there where they stood was holy ground.

It was time to talk about a song from Fearless TV! How is this one connected to Last Kiss? Here Taylor was dealing with the breaking down of a relationship and she was angry (throwing chairs and stuff). Because he said "forever and always", but no, he didn't mean it.

Last Kiss Day was just a few days ago and we took this opportunity to talk about this song! Is it really the saddest song Taylor has ever written? We'd say yes, but we also want to know your opinion.

Drop everything now because our Speak Now (Taylor's Version) reaction is here! We absolutely loved it and we wanted to share our opinions! If you want to skip to the part where we talked about the vault tracks, you can click on the timestamps below.

Timestamps:

1. General impressions and the standard tracks (00:08:30)

2. Vault tracks (00:53:55)

3. Conclusions (01:10:41)

This is the 5th and last part of our series about music. We discussed all those situations that make you realize that it's time to leave and move on. We talked about Taylor's decision to leave her old label and about the fact that this is the last song that she put out before releasing her first "Taylor's Version".

Part 4 of our music series! It's time for Karma (the song). Here, we discover that Karma is nice to Taylor because she's a good person, but it's not like that for everyone...

Taylor was kind enough to announce the European dates of The Eras Tour when we were recording this episode! We hope good Karma will be by our side when we'll try to buy the tickets. You can listen to our live reaction; if you're not interested in that, we put time stamps, so you can skip to the part about the song.

Time stamps:

1. European dates announcement (01:55)

2. An introduction to Karma (12:30)

3. Karma lyrics analysis (18:48)

4. The music video (36:50)

5. Conclusions (51:45)

Part 3 of our music series! Today we talk all about Taylor's getting her revenge after The Betrayal™. We even went on a deep dive on vigilantism! 😎

P.S. We recorded this episode exactly 30 minutes before the announcement of the European dates, so that's why we don't mention it. Don’t worry, you'll hear us scream about it next week!