What's The Real Meaning Of Castles Crumbling By Taylor Swift? Here's What We Think

Taylor Swift is back to re-releasing her earlier albums (following THAT unpleasantness Swift experienced with her former label Big Machine), and July 7's "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" drop brought Swifties one of the songs they've been waiting all too long for — "Castles Crumbling." The track is a duet with Swift's longtime friend and Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, and is classed as being what Swift calls "From The Vault," as it was written in the "Speak Now" album era but didn't make the release's final cut.

"It's here. It's yours, it's mine, it's ours. It's an album I wrote alone about the whims, fantasies, heartaches, dramas and tragedies I lived out as a young woman between 18 and 20," Taylor tweeted amid the re-release dropping. "I remember making tracklist after tracklist, obsessing over the right way to tell the story. I had to be ruthless with my choices, and I left behind some songs I am still unfailingly proud of now," Swift continued, explaining that's why she made the choice to put a whopping six "From The Vault" songs to the re-release. "I recorded this album when I was 32 (and still growing up, now) and the memories it brought back filled me with nostalgia and appreciation," she added.

But what the heck is the song "Castles Crumbling" actually all about? Well, we and our fellow Swifties have a theory.

Of course, Taylor Swift is famously coy when it comes to ever confirming exactly what her songs are about, but it seems like she's left more than a few clues in "Castles Crumbling." The song's lyrics tell a story of a once-great dynasty that now appears to be, you guessed it, crumbling to the ground. "Once, I had an empire in a golden age / I was held up so high, I used to be great / They used to cheer when they saw my face / Now, I fear I have fallen from grace," she sings. In another part of the song, Swift croons, "Once, I was the great hope for a dynasty / Crowds would hang on my words and they trusted me / Their faith was strong, but I pushed it too far / I held that grudge 'til it tore me apart."

While a lot of Swift's songs can be connected to a romance, in this case, we think the star is singing about the rocky time she was having in the months that preceded "Speak Now"'s release in 2010. The star released the album in the wake of her notorious 2009 MTV VMAs incident with Kanye West, a time in which she was crossing over from a successful country star to a full-blown pop star featured on every magazine cover. As she became more visible in the public eye, she became more open to criticism.

A lot of Taylor Swift fans have speculated the VMAs incident may have inspired "Castles Crumbling," with one fan tweeting, "I am not one to really speculate about who/what Taylor's songs are about, but if 'Castles Crumbling' is in fact about the 2009 VMAs incident when she thought everyone was booing her, it says a lot she left off that track and added 'Innocent' to the original tracklist instead." Others speculated the song could have a more general theme of the dark side and pressures of fame and haters. "Oh god castles crumbling is about not being good enough and disappointing people," one person tweeted.

Though Swift has been tight-lipped about the duet, her duet partner Hayley Williams has been more vocal. She told Coup De Main that the song was not only personal to Swift, but to her too. "I heard the song and was super impressed by the storytelling in it. Which is no surprise because it's a Taylor Swift song, but it's about an experience that both of us have shared growing up in the public eye, and I just felt very honored to sing about that feeling," she shared. The star also seemingly added of the song's meaning, "[Swift] has so many experiences that I can't even fathom. I mean, her life has been... there's been so much added pressure that I know nothing about, and the scale of it is something that's so much grander than Paramore has experienced even."