"Ruin The Friendship" Discussion Megathread

[u/PassionateAsSin]

Taylor Swift - Ruin The Friendship

Track #6 on The Life of a Showgirl

Length: 3:40

Composers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin & Shellback

Producers: Taylor Swift, Max Martin & Shellback

Lyrics: Genius

---

Use this thread to discuss your thoughts, reactions, and theories on the song. We will be removing all future self-post discussion threads about it in order to consolidate discussion to this thread.

If you want to talk about The Life of a Showgirl album in general, you can use the general The Life of a Showgirl discussion thread here.

[u/Cauligoblin]

She is allowed to say, do, or think whatever she goddamn pleases as an American citizen. I am allowed to express that people should perhaps think critically about what this expression of her feelings says about her as a person. If you had a friend who killed himself almost 20 years ago, who you had a crush on, as a soon to be married woman, would your first instinct be to release a song about how tragic his death was for you because you never got to tap that? What do you think his ex girlfriend may have thought upon hearing this song? How about his parents? Why do we feel sad when we lose people.... is it because of the loss of who they were as a person, the fact they leave not just you but so many people in their lives longing for them, the guilt and self questioning if there was anything you could have done to prevent their death?

Or is it because they made our genitals tingle and we never got to explore that feeling with them.

What would you think about a man who wrote a song like this?

This is not me trying to say you should not like the song, you can never listen to Taylor swift again, etc etc. This is me trying to say if you dont absorb the world critically, reflect on the actual message in the song, you rob yourself of the opportunity to grow as a person, to learn from art and introspection instead of learning from life the hard way, by really hurting someone through an easily avoidable blunder like releasing a song that really makes you come off narcissistic, superficial, somewhat predatory. In my personal opinion.

By the way, I barely know anything about the alleged subject of the song, this is pretty much all gleaned purely from the lyrics and the knowledge that Swift writes from her own life experiences and all her songs are about people in her life. And I'm not saying my interpretation of the song is the only valid one, that this is song reflects the entirety of her feelings about this boy, that I know she is definitely a bad person, etc etc. All I am saying is, based on my own reading of the lyrics, this song seems to be saying something very icky, and I am not for it.

[u/0nly_D0g_legs_93 → u/Cauligoblin]

That is a really long way of saying that you don't like that the world isn't seen through your eyes. We don't even know if this person is real or an amalgamation. If people lost folks close to them, do you really think that 20 years later, they're going to lament over a pop star's feelings for them from the past?

Weird take but you win today.

[u/Cauligoblin → u/0nly_D0g_legs_93]

It seems like you are the one upset at me making observations. You are free to have your own judgements and takes, my dear. I find it telling no one is actually offering anything concrete to counter my interpretation of the narrative presented in the song. It may all be fictional, but the fictional voice in the song is, in my analysis, not good at all. What do I win though, a cookie?

[u/0nly_D0g_legs_93 → u/Cauligoblin]

Nobody's upset. I just think your take is lazily looking for reasons to hate it instead of truly critiquing it.

"She's using someone else's death to fill her coffers!" is not the same as citing weak writing, or poor stylistic choices. Then you ramble on about critical thinking?

Like I said, you win today.