State Of Grace (Commentary)

[Spoken: Becca Walls]

This is Big Machine Radio and Taylor Swift's fourth album Red is celebrating it's 6th anniversary. And back when Taylor released the album, she described the title, she said, "All the different emotions that are written about on this album are all pretty much about the kind of tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I've experienced in the last two years." Taylor says, "All those emotions spanning from intense love intense frustration, jealousy, confusion, all of that in my mind, all those emotions are red, you know, there's nothing in between. There's nothing beige about any of those feelings." And I remember hearing Taylor say that the song "State Of Grace" in some ways summed up her entire Red album

[Spoken: Taylor Swift]

"State Of Grace" is a song that I wrote at the beginning process of making this album. And I think it helps to define what the rest of the record was about just with one line. There's a line in that song that says, "Love is a ruthless game, unless you play it good and right." And that's kind of like a warning, you know, for the rest of the record. Like, this is what's going to happen if you don't play this right, and this is what could happen if you do. So it almost serves as the perfect kind of warning label for the rest of the record. As soon as you hear that song, you know, it's like there's two ways this could go: you could be good to people or you could not play fair. And both the outcomes are reflected on the record

[Spoken: Becca Walls]

I like that. The warning label for Red, this is State Of Grace on Big Machine Radio