On her 2022 album
Midnights
, Taylor Swift addressed fan speculation over why she and her then-boyfriend and British actor Joe Alwyn had not yet tied the knot: “All they keep asking me / Is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kinda girl they see / Is a one-night or a wife” (“Lavender Haze”). Her relationship with Alwyn, she suggests, should not have to follow rigid social conventions, “the 1950s shit they want from me.” The “lavender haze,” the dreamy in-between state of being in love, is good enough. But on
The Tortured Poets Department
, her eleventh studio album, and its extended version
The Anthology
, Swift changes her tune. Despite its increasing fragility and lack of permanence in the modern West, Swift still desires marriage, which she invokes as the ultimate symbol of enduring love and commitment.