Taylor Swift’s “Labyrinth” unfolds like its namesake, starting out easy with the high-pitched trills of her last two albums, folklore and evermore, before turning a corner into a groovy synth-pop special. “I thought the plane was going down / how’d you turn it right around,” Swift sings on the track off her new album, Midnights, as she muses on the electricity of newfound love—and all its associated confusions.
While certain lyrics point to past breakups (“You know how much I hate /
That everybody just expects me to bounce back” and “I’ll be getting over you my whole life”), “Labyrinth” doesn’t appear to be about any one person or relationship from the singer’s past. Instead, the track serves as a retrospective addressing her many painful brushes with love. But at the 2:55 mark in “Labyrinth,” the song dives unexpectedly into a funkier, dance-like beat, perhaps mirroring Swift’s most recent plunge into a relationship with her now long-term partner Joe Alwyn.
Fans were eager to catch onto the message, with one Reddit user commenting, “After coming out of a toxic relationship and feeling like i’d never fall in love when i started to feel things again with someone new, that was what i said to myself: ‘oh no i am falling in love again.’”
Read the full lyrics to “Labyrinth” below.
It only hurts this much right now
Was what I was thinking the whole time
Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out
I’ll be getting over you my whole life
You know how scared I am of elevators
Never trust it if it rises fast
It can’t last
Uh oh, I’m falling in love
Oh no, I’m falling in love again
Oh, I’m falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How’d you turn it right around?
It only feels this raw right now
Lost in the labyrinth of my mind
Break up, break free, break through, break down
You would break your back to make me break a smile
You know how much I hate
That everybody just expects me to bounce back
Just like that
Uh oh, I’m falling in love
Oh no, I’m falling in love again
Oh, I’m falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How’d you turn it right around?
Uh oh, I’m falling in love
Oh no, I’m falling in love again
Oh, I’m falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How’d you turn it right around?
Uh oh, I’m falling in love (falling in love)
Oh no, I’m falling in love again (falling in love again)
Oh, I’m falling in love (falling in love)
I thought the plane was going down
How’d you turn it right around?
Uh oh, I’m falling in love (falling in love)
Oh no, I’m falling in love again (falling in love again)
Oh, I’m falling in love (falling in love)
I thought the plane was going down
How’d you turn it right around?
(You know how much I hate it)
(You know how much I hate it)
(You know how much I hate it)
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a Culture Writer at ELLE.com, where she primarily covers film, television, and books. She was previously an Associate Editor at ELLE.com.
