From Taylor Swift to Lana Del Rey—the Musicians Nodding to Art History in Song

You’d be forgiven not having yet made your way through all 31 tracks of the new Taylor Swift album The Tortured Poets Department, even if hardcore Swifties have already decoded exactly which songs are about Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, or Travis Kelce.

They may also have noticed an art-inspired metaphor on the sultry-turned-sulky track 12, “loml,” a common internet acronym for “love of my life.” In this case, sadly, it more likely means “loss of my life.” Rumored to be about Alwyn, Swift’s long time beau between 2016 and 2023, the song reminisces on a relationship that went from love at first sight to frequent fights and fading feelings.

Or, in one tortured poet’s words, “your Impressionist paintings of heaven turned out to be fakes.”

Online commentators have speculated that this line may refer to an old lyric “you paint dreamscapes on the wall,” from “peace” on folklore (2020). Either way, it seems, Alwyn’s en plein air efforts failed to convince Swift. Perhaps she’s more of an AbEx girl.
Nobody likes to find a forgery on their hands but the likes of Monet, Cassatt, Degas, and Renoir weren’t exactly known for their painterly depictions of the celestial city. In fact, their work represented a break from such religious or historical epics in favor of more down to earth, everyday subjects like bathers by a lake or Paris’s seedy nightlife.

Taylor Swift may have missed art history class, but she is hardly the first singer to search a gallery for her next romantic metaphor. Artnet News takes a look at some other attempts.
Nobody writes a wistful refrain quite like Lana del Rey, celebrated for her blend of nostalgic references. Who can forget her magnum opus Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019), in which she name checks the illustrator behind the archetypal images of midcentury American life. On “Venice Bitch,” she croons: “Give me Hallmark, one dream, one life, one lover, paint me happy in blue, Norman Rockwell, no hype under our covers.”

It was not the first time she’d imbued a ballad with allusions to the visual arts. Over the soft synths of “Art Deco,” from the 2015 album Honeymoon, Lana admires the effortless cool of a “club queen” spotted “on the downtown scene, prowling around at night.”