Hopefully you all are not tired of all of the Taylor Swift references because I am back with another one this week. Last post was about a song off of her “evermore” album…well we are taking it back to “reputation” for this week’s post. Like I have previously stated, this album is a comeback album where Taylor is feeling all of the emotions of love, sadness, and revenge. This song that I am writing about today encompasses how I interpret Daisy and Gatsby’s love affair. The song is called “King of My Heart” and when I listen to the song I picture it as an internal conversation between the two “lovebirds” as the verses convey the different emotions of the two characters. The verse that I read as Gatsby’s thoughts goes,
“I’m perfectly fine, I live on my own
I’ve made up my mind, I’m better off being alone”
This almost comes across to me as a self-persuasion, like Gatsby is trying to convince himself that he is fine and is better alone. I compared this line to him because Gatsby had lived a pretty lonely life for five years, and he is starting to realize that the life he dreamt of and waited for with Daisy is ultimately out of reach. Now for Daisy’s line… it reads,
“Salute to me, I’m your American queen
And you move to me like I’m and Motown beat
And we rule the kingdom inside my room
Cause all the boys and their expensive cars
With their Range Rovers and their Jaguars
Never took me quite where you do”
This line is full of The Great Gatsby references so let’s start by unpacking the first line from Daisy’s point of view. She refers to herself as his “American queen” which can easily be compared to the American Dream in which we all know what Gatsby’s dream was…Daisy. Then she makes a comment about boys and expensive cars. This is important to note because she is admitting here that she has the desire to seek out wealthy men. But if you remember from the novel Fitzgerald writes that “It excited him (Gatsby), too, that men had already loved Daisy-it increased her value in his eyes.” So we know that these men Daisy had been with previously did not bother Gatsby because she became a prized possession to him. One of these wealthy men she speaks about is obviously Tom Buchanan. In the next line where she writes, “never quite took me where you do,” I think she is insinuating that her relationship with Tom does not compare to her true love for Gatsby.
The last line I want to point out goes back to Gatsby’s point of view as the song says,
“Your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep
Change my priorities
The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury”
This is another mention of that “dream” Gatsby has been waiting on, but kept quiet about for five years. He considers Daisy’s lips as his “luxury” which is another example of how Gatsby pictured Daisy as a trophy of wealth to him. Gatsby even says in the novel that “her voice is like money” to him. This is important to write about because I think that Gatsby’s dream evolved into a combination of Daisy’s love and the wealthy lifestyle, even though he sought after the wealth to gain Daisy’s attention. And the irony of this line, “dying to keep,” is that he does end up dying shortly after realizing this dream is not going to become a reality.
Here is a cute little poster I found to end the blog post! Thank you for reading!
Comments by Kynli Jones