Another day we can dive into why Speak Now is my least favorite Taylor Swift album - and I know that saying this out loud will incite much controversy and strife, but it’s my truth! She wrote this whole album at 19 with no other songwriters, a decision made based on criticism she received from her first two albums. Certain critics were saying that TS doesn’t write her own songs, so she very publicly said, yeah? You want to bet? And thus, Speak Now was brought into the world.
But we can revisit this truth another day - today, I want to talk about an underrated gem on the album - Never Grow Up. If you listen to this song after a particularly bad day at your 9-5, it’s sure to bring out the waterworks. Taylor Swift is a master of writing about nostalgia, and this song was her first real dive into the topic of growing older. She starts the song from the perspective of a parent watching their child, and she herself grows up as we move through the song. By the end, she’s an adult being moved into her first city apartment by her parents, lamenting on where the time went.
This part always gets me super emo:
So here I am in my new apartment
In a big city, they just dropped me off
It's so much colder than I thought it would be
So I tuck myself in and turn my nightlight on
Wish I'd never grown up
My parents moved me out to Boston in July of 2017. I was kind of mortified to be having my parents help with this (And you can't wait to move out someday and call your own shots) since I was 22 and felt ready to manage things like this on my own. It wasn’t an easy move - there was a torrential rain downpour and a lot of emotions. I was moving out of state, the farthest away from home I’d ever been. I didn’t know anyone in Boston and I was really starting over in a brand new place. I was more nervous than I wanted to let on. My parents and I fought, which was undoubtably more about the emotions of the moment than it was the actual process of moving.
I remember coming back from dinner with my parents and saying goodbye to them. I walked into my very empty, undecorated apartment full of moving bins and grabbed my headphones. I put this song on and cried for probably a full two hours. I had a hard time sleeping that night, I wasn’t used to living right in the middle of a city and my apartment sat right next to a green line aboveground stop, so the T would come roaring through every 8 minutes until late at night. My friend Steph happened to be coming to town the next day and we met up for the day. I remember telling her how weird it was not to know anyone in this area, not to know who to call if something happened. I did a lot of growing up that year.
I’ve done a lot of growing up lately too, but in the opposite way. I’ve become super hyper-independent, and lately I’ve needed to ask for help. I think I’ve called my parents for advice more in the last month than the last 6 years combined. I’ve made some decisions that were difficult for me to make, I’ve felt burned and screwed over and frankly, incredibly angry about it. But part of growing up is also taking stock of how you’ve handled the hard moments, and one of the things I’ve been most proud of was that I did pick up the phone and tell my friends and family what was going on.
When I moved to Boston in 2017, I didn’t want to admit how hard it was. It felt like a weakness - I wanted everyone to think I had it on lock, but now I’m learning that it’s braver to just admit that you’re not okay. Shit has been hard, and everyone has moments in their lives where they have to step back and re-evaluate. There’s a vulnerability in Never Grow Up where the narrator admits to herself that she will always need that help and support. I’m learning to be okay with needing that, too.
What I love about the moment in time when Swift wrote this song is that she was just beginning to be independent, the song reads so much like someone realizing the drawbacks of adulthood - I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone. It’s about the moment when you realize how good you had it, how someone else always had your back and had a stake in your decision making, but somehow you woke up one day and that’s all up to you. Is anyone really prepared for that? Swift certainly didn’t think so when she wrote this song.
Part of the beauty in this song also lies in the message that you shouldn’t take a single moment for granted, and to stop and take a moment to appreciate where you’re at -Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room; Memorize what it sounded like when your dad gets home; Remember the footsteps, remember the words said. You don’t think in these little moments that you’re going to miss these days, but we all know as we get older how much you actually do.
There is a simplicity in Never Grow Up that Swift utilizes whenever she is writing about something particularly serious or morose. She’ll bring this out later for tunes like Nothing New (Red: Taylor’s Version) and Soon You’ll Get Better (Lover) where low production and instrumental allows the lyrics to shine. It’s not an overly dramatic song like most of the others on this record that feature really loud and in your face instrumentals. There’s a clear message she wants to send, and she makes it easy to find:
Even though you want to, just try to never grow up.