“The Archer” is a beautiful classic Taylor Swift ballad, that is both violent and exquisite—an extension of the shadow-pop Swift began to explore on Reputation. The goth-epigrams and glossier production paint a vivid landscape, one that feels like silver glitter-glue beaming from inside your brain.

The song is full of heart-stabbers including the moment, where she admits ”I never grew up, it’s getting so old” , this is a haunting confessional, in which “The Archer” reclaims the fact that Taylor Swift knows we are all wondering about the anxieties we imagine she feels in her love life, being a high-profile celebrity but also someone who has been crucified in her very normal, very human process of looking for romance with a childlike innocence on planet Earth. 

Aside from the song’s cupid-bursting chorus and finale that will go down as memorable Swift moments,  “then hate my reflection for years and years…” is the sharp, adult-alternative highlight from this Lover preview; an attest to the songwriting skills and poetics chops that reminds us, that Swift is a writer before she is anything else. The image of “The Archer”  in astrology represents the spaces between earth and heaven, and the archetype of Sagittarius, Taylor’s sun-sign.  The track is full of mutable-Fire energy, perfectly full of indecisiveness, existentialism, and regret over volatile & reactive emotional states.

Romance may be more difficult than ever to find in the modern world, especially in our 20s.  There is a voice to the collective pain of loneliness in 2019 on “The Archer”, that can be a reminder—that a record won’t ever judge you for what you are going through, it’ll make you feel better about it.

You can watch the lyric video for Taylor Swift’s “The Archer” below.