Like most other college-aged girls, I have been non-stop listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, Midnights for the past few weeks. Although I love the entire album, I have been obsessed with track #5, a song entitled “You’re on Your Own, Kid”. Even though I like the actual tune of the song, I truly fell in love with the track because of the broader message that it sends to Taylor’s fan-base, which primarily consists of young women like myself. After incessantly listening to this song on repeat for about 2 days straight (whoops), I have reached the conclusion that Taylor wrote it with the intention of sharing some of the life lessons that she learned as a young woman in the simultaneous pursuit of love and happiness.
Anyone who is a fan of Taylor Swift knows, nothing this woman does is by accident, and the self-proclaimed “Mastermind” (which is the title of track #13) has a strategic purpose with every song she writes. Therefore, in true Taylor fashion, she seems to be reminiscing on her past throughout the entirety of the album, specifically the various “eras” in her life, as the title of her upcoming tour suggests. In relation to the overarching theme of the new album, I believe that Taylor is actually attempting to retroactively speak to her younger self through the lyrics of “You’re on Your Own, Kid”.
The main message that I think Taylor is trying to convey to her younger self through this song is the importance of independently finding happiness and love within yourself as a young woman. Throughout the first portion of the song, Taylor is narrating the story of her own life from the perspective of her younger self. In this narration, the younger Taylor is speaking to an unknown man, who she always seems to be waiting for to show up and make her happy. However, this man never comes into her life, and she is constantly disappointed when he doesn’t show up and is generally upset by his absence.
Although this unknown man may seem like one individual on the surface level, as younger Taylor only refers to him as “you” in the lyrics of the song, I believe that this male figure is not one specific person. Rather, he is representative of the “knight in shining armor” archetype, in which a woman feels that she needs a man to come into her life and save her in order to find true happiness. This overarching idea of linking happiness and male validation can be noted in the lyric “I hosted parties and starved my body like I’d saved the perfect kiss.” This line, which is from the bridge of the song, is actually now from the perspective of an older Taylor talking to a younger Taylor, as she changes the song’s narrator and who she is speaking to in the transition from the second to last chorus and the bridge.
In the bridge, the now older Taylor has accepted that a man was never going to show up and save her, having realized that she needed to save herself. Older Taylor even exposes the lengths that she went to in her desperate search for a man’s love. She does this by referencing her past eating disorder and explaining how she “hosted parties and starved her body” in an attempt for male attention and approval. Ultimately, I believe that this line from the bridge of the song is an older Taylor trying to explain to both her younger self, and her broader fan base of young women, that they need to find love and happiness within themselves at the end of the day. While there are so many other important messages in this song, which I could write a whole other article on, I really thought that Taylor’s theme in this song of finding happiness within yourself is one that all young women need to learn. After all, you must truly love and be happy with yourself before you can ever share this love with someone else.