Taylor Swift's "Florida!!!" is a gothy ode to Sunshine State escapism
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Taylor Swift's pop-up at The Grove in Los Angeles. Photo: Octavio Jones/TAS23/Getty Images
Taylor and Florence, you did us right.
State of slay: Taylor Swift's much-anticipated new album, "The Tortured Poets Department," dropped at midnight.
- Among its 17 angsty tracks is "Florida!!!" featuring the ethereal Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine.
Catch up quick: Upon release of the tracklist in February, Axios Tampa Bay and Miami joined the crush of theories about what Swift's take on the Sunshine State would sound like.
- The prevailing opinion — that it would cover her breakup with Joe Alwyn, which reportedly happened not long before last year's three-night The Eras Tour run in Tampa — turns out to be mostly incorrect.
Yes, but: The real thing is so much better.
The big picture: It's a gothy ode to escapism and Florida's swampy allure to folks on the run: from grief, bad memories, crime — "you can beat the heat if you beat the charges, too" — and how your home is "really only a town you're just a guest in."
- "So you work your life away just to pay for a timeshare in Destin," Swift sings, before launching into the drum-heavy hype machine of a chorus: "Florida! It's one hell of a drug. Florida! Can I use you up?"
Then, Welch enters the chat, lending her powerful vocals to another Sunshine State theme:
- "Hurricane with my name when it came/I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away/barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine/well me and my ghosts we had a hell of a time."
- The thought of Florence Welch throwing her ghosts a little hurricane party is so delightful that we're not even mad that, technically, 2018's Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina.
Our favorite part is the bridge. Swift and Welch trade lines and layer their voices in a way that departs from the song's dark tone:
- "I need to forget so take me to Florida/I got some regrets I'll bury them in Florida/tell me I'm despicable say it's unforgivable/what a crash what a rush f*** me up Florida."
Caveat: Here's the part where we pander to the haters and say, yes, Florida is more than just an escapist fever dream to the 22 million of us who live here.
The bottom line: What a beautiful thing that the world's biggest pop star, a billionaire who could go anywhere in the world, finds comfort here in our home.