When The Tortured Poets Department dropped, the song ‘Guilty as Sin?’ immediately divided listeners. Some disliked the suggestions of emotional cheating, and some Christian listeners disliked the sexual imagery they felt mocked their values. However, after re-listening to this song, it is clear that this track is doing something specific lyrically that cannot be ignored.
Therefore, I decided to write a close analysis of this song, specifically the rich allusions she makes to mythology, biblical imagery, pop culture and even her own discography.
The point of this article isn’t to answer the question ‘Do I like this song?’, it’s to ask ‘Is the songwriting deliberate, intelligent work?’.
The answer is yes, and here’s the proof.
A close reading of ‘Guilty as Sin’ reveals Taylor Swift’s adept use of allusions, which enhance its themes of social scrutiny, passion, and guilt. Her lyrics reveal the narrator fantasising about someone else whilst knowing this is immoral and the ensuing tension between desire and judgement.
In the opening lines, Swift uses literary and cultural allusions to deepen the narrative. These lyrics establish important context about the song’s themes, utilising double entendre and metaphor. The lyric ‘Drowning’ in the Blue Nile/ He sent me ‘Downtown lights’ refers to ‘The Blue Nile’ a Scottish band, and their song ‘Downtown Lights’. This allusion foreshadows the emotions explored in later verses as ‘Downtown Lights’ is also a song that processes the idea of yearning and isolation. This allusion also serves as a metaphor, as the phrase ‘Downtown lights’ holds sexual connotations of igniting passion. The fact the narrator ‘hadn’t heard it in a while’ creates meaning as it appears Swift is hinting that this is a welcome re-ignition. This image of rekindled passion is made potent by Swift’s further use of allusions in this song.
For example, this occurs in the lyric: ‘One slip and falling back into the hedge maze/ Oh what a way to die’. This can be read as an allusion to the French phrase ‘La petite mort’, which translates to ‘little death’ and is widely understood as a euphemism for an orgasm. This allusion to poetic metaphor, which the Romantics utilised in their poetry with astounding natural imagery, is again touched on in the lyrics: ‘Building up like waves/ Crashing over my grave’. This holds more explicit sexual connotations with the idea of waves of pleasure building and crashing, again ending in the speaker’s ‘death’. This meaning is further echoed in the semantic field of death created throughout the song, using macabre imagery such as ‘grave’, ‘crucify’ and ‘haunted’. Further, the line ‘falling back into the hedge maze’ adds another layer of meaning to this passion by insinuating that this attraction is unavoidable. ‘The hedge maze’ serves as an allusion to the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, with the Minotaur read as a metaphor for primal desire, being half-man and half-beast. He lurked at the centre of the labyrinth, just as Swift paints desire to centre her emotional struggle, which akin to a hedge maze is extremely difficult to navigate. Interestingly, this also serves as an intertextual allusion to Swift’s song ‘Labyrinth’, which brings greater attention to their shared themes of unexpected and rapid emotions. This allusion also exacerbates the darker themes in ‘Guilty as Sin’. While ‘Labyrinth’ explores the anxiety of falling in love quickly, it ultimately delivers a tone of hopefulness; ‘Guilty as Sin’ contrasts anxious hesitation with a self-aware sexual struggle. This explains the following biblical allusions, as Swift is aware that this song could receive greater moral scrutiny than more innocent songs such as ‘Labyrinth’.
Swift uses allusions to biblical imagery to invite the reader to consider the song’s portrayal of guilt and reveal awareness of the social scrutiny these lyrics could produce. The title introduces a religious motif, repeated as a rhetorical question, ‘How can I be guilty as sin?’ in the chorus. This allusion to biblical morality establishes an inextricable relationship between guilt and passion, demonstrated in the metaphor ‘My bed sheets are ablaze’. This lyric signifies the sexual passion created from these fantasies; however, upon a second reading, it could also signify an allusion to hell, considering the title. The title allows listeners to identify such allusions and, in turn, establishes that these two emotions exist inseparably in tandem throughout the song. Swift again utilises Christian allusions in the lyric, ‘What if I roll the stone away?/ they’re gonna crucify me anyway’, a reference to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Here the rhetorical question functions to express in a resigned tone that even if the speaker takes action, such as stating their reasoning as Swift appears to be doing in this song, they are condemned to inevitable social scrutiny as Jesus was. The subsequent phrase echoes the idea of predetermined guilt and allows the lyrics increased emotional weight, to the effect of asking audiences to consider if ‘they’ participate in such judgement.
This idea of public scrutiny is also present in the lyrics, ‘Throwing my life to the wolves/
Or the ocean rocks’. The first line serves as a metaphor for the public, alluding to the idiom ‘thrown to the wolves’, which means allowing someone to be criticised without extending help. In this case, Swift is considering condemning herself to this fate because of the aforementioned inevitability of public judgement. The second line ties into a prevalent theme in this song: madness. It is clear that the line alludes to suicide, and ideas of mental illness are present throughout the song in lyrics such as ‘I’m seeing visions, am I bad?/ Or mad?’ and the repetition of ‘Only in my mind.’ The emotional weight and realism of this line are heightened by the fact that ‘ocean rocks’ appears to refer to Swift’s Rhode Island house, an allusion to her song ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’. Not only does awareness of this intertextual reference create a new concerning meaning as perhaps Swift could in fact throw her life to the ocean rocks, but it again amplifies the theme of judgement in this song. ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’ satires the vilification of a woman called Rebekah Harkness, who was scorned as the ‘maddest’ and ‘most shameless woman’ Rhode Island had ever seen. Swift resonates with the vast criticism Harkness endured, and this allusion functions to echo the idea of inevitable and unjust public scrutiny previously explored.
Therefore, Swift alludes to pop culture, including her discography, to create meanings that heighten the themes of desire and judgement in this song. She also utilises biblical and mythological allusions to deepen the imagery and emotional weight of her lyrics, causing listeners to emotionally resonate with her guilt-ridden admission of passion.
Whether or not readers take issue with the themes explored, especially those of guilt and unloyalty, it is undeniable that this song masterfully utilises allusion. It cannot be denied that the lyricism is well-thought out and relevant to the song’s content, whether you like that content or not.