Revisit part one here
Swift’s immersive visual snippets, playful rhythms, and gluttonous vocabulary make her a praiseworthy songwriter. Over the years we’ve seen her move away from template means of execution—no longer the final chorus always repeated and fading—so the tight, confident walk generated through experimentation in “Hits Different”, particularly within a permissive field like pop, isn’t surprising. But the quality of thorough resolution in this track surprises. No one said getting through the night lands on a high note.
I’m curious about how I lived it and how it faded. I’m more curious about how a song explicitly about missing someone was effective in holding a moment of fruit and flower closer—and not at all because of the threat of loss later on.
Is it within the reaching traditions—that final excellently ridiculous expulsion, “…to take me AWAAAAY”? Is it within the simpler synths, low but cradling in the mix, a kind of lonesome raw part embedded in you that knows the only way to it is through it? Is it, as for me it tends to be, within a tender surprise (also found in “Anti-Hero”) of a third verse: “Is that your key in the door/is it okay?”
I said I lived it and it faded; what I meant is that it held its time and now when I listen it’s less for a caplet of memory and more because once you’re in you’re in. Perhaps this is elemental to crush music; perhaps I’m appreciative of a time-stamp (having doused my hours in “shit my friends say to get me by” the day it was released); or perhaps I’m learning much about how each session of the gut’s shakings responds to different cadres.
You could tack it—cherishing this piece for its capacity to hold love’s early hints, even if shuttered soon for further orders—down onto the closing harmonies, or the frankness of the problem and its resolution making for an empathetic chorus, or the different uses of Swift’s voice as spatial constructor. It’s an inviting, quick-footed place to stay generally: that you so happen to use it for your own gains is happenstance. I think I’ll harp once more on the contrast between prominence and promise: ostensibly about rupture, it resounds into golden yearn.