Taylor Swift’s new album, Midnights, streamed at midnight on Friday, October 21st. A group of friends and I stayed up patiently waiting to listen to the album about Swift’s midnight thoughts. As the first track, Lavender Haze, began to play, we knew Midnights would become an instant classic. We got through all thirteen tracks and had lists of our favorite songs when we were reminded that a surprise would be coming later that morning at 3am. My friends and I, all overworked college students, decided it would be best to go to bed and wait to see what the surprise was in the morning. I woke up at 8:25 that morning to streams of text messages telling me that seven new tracks had been released. I rushed to grab my headphones and started playing the 3am edition of Midnights. The vibe was similar to Midnights with the first track, The Great War. The next track was Bigger Than The Whole Sky and suddenly, my morning came to a halt.
I consider myself an emotional person. My friends and family members would concur with that statement. However, I have only rarely been moved to tears by a song. One of my favorite songs is The Chick’s cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. I’ve listened to it for as long as I can remember and it’s a somber telling of growing up. When I was younger, and would listen to it on the way to school with my mom, it didn’t make me emotional. The words were just poetry for me at that point; their tellings about uncontrollable changes meant nothing to me. It wasn’t until I was in high school that the lyrics made me think about the future and how my life would be rapidly changing. The song also makes me emotional because it’s nostalgic of my childhood and tied to many comforting memories. Before listening to Bigger Than The Whole Sky, I would have confidently said that Landslide would have been the only song to make me cry.
The lyrics to Bigger Than The Whole Sky are incredibly universal, but they all center around loss. The chorus sings: “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye / You were bigger than the whole sky / You were more than just a short time / And I’ve got a lot to pine about / I’ve got a lot to live without / I’m never gonna meet / What could’ve been, would have been / What should’ve been you”. The song is about losing someone before you’ve gotten the chance to know them or before you’ve gotten the chance to have a different type of relationship with them. For me, I have always been jealous of my older cousins because they had a relationship with our grandparents from infancy into their thirties. My brother and I were robbed of that relationship with the death of our grandfather while we were still teenagers. We’ll never be able to relate to him on the same level that our older cousins were. We’re grateful for the time that we had with him, however, it’s only natural to think about what our relationship would be like today. I was nineteen when he died and on my next birthday I will be twenty-two. It may not seem like that long of a time but I am such a different person than I was freshman year of college. I miss him and his wisdom as well.
It’s hard to not think about what could have been if life was different. I’ve known tragic loss and seen what it has done to those left behind. Life moves on and it is extremely difficult at first, but it gets easier with time.