In every lifetime there comes a time when we find ourselves on our knees, a time when we are engulfed in something tragic and personal gutting, and our questions seem endless. It’s a time when “the rubber meets the road”, where even believers will wonder if they really believe everything they proclaim and people who say they don’t have faith find themselves throwing pleas to heaven. When a popular artist seems to say they’ve had such a moment, fans take notice.
Ever since the Beatles took the unprecedented step of printing their lyrics on the back cover of their “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the included lyrics have helped a listener quickly get to grips with a new song to pick up their mood. and his message for his. For some, close scrutiny of an artist’s lines has become an effort at intimacy – a hunt for clues and clues that fans believe will help them better connect with what their favorite performers say between the lines, so to speak – what deep life experiences or insights the artist can try to communicate specifically to those who can understand and identify.
Such is the case with a song from Taylor Swift’s recently released album, “Midnights (3am Edition)”. The song “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” almost immediately had fans speculating about its meaning – in particular, whether Ms Swift recently suffered the loss of a child through miscarriage.
Unless the composer bluntly states her purpose, it’s virtually impossible to know if such speculation is true, but the lyrics of “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” – poignant, wistful, distressed and spiritually confusing – seem to confirm the hypothesis.
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than all the sky
You were more than a short time
And I have plenty to yearn for
I have a lot to live without…”
Women who have suffered a miscarriage will tell you that the loss, usually inexplicable, feels like a broken promise, a denial of what seemed like a new force of limitless potential and a new expression of love, taken away before the world has seen its beauty, much like a snowflake, melted before it even hit the ground.
“I will never meet
What could have been, would have been
What should you have been
What could have been, would have been you…”
While the song is, in fact, a painful statement of such private loss, it is also a monologue that inspires online discussion on a topic that society too often greets with tense silence. Hearing of a miscarriage, some seem to believe that the less said to a grieving parent, the better – as if that death were not a real death or, at any rate, that the mourning should not not be more than a token notice. Too often, news of a miscarriage is met with responses that, while perhaps well-meaning, only serve to deepen the hurt (“There must have been something wrong with that baby; nature only saves you from something horrible”), or misses the mark entirely. “You can try again” is a small comfort to a parent who knows that the child who was not met was not interchangeable with another child, any more than a family would believe that a sibling can replace another.
On Reddit and other social media platforms, men and women have taken “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” as permission to mourn their own losses. They share their experiences of miscarriage but also of the lingering pain that accompanies the death of parents, siblings and friends, of regretful abortions and even of relationships that ended without the closure of questions answered.
“Divorcing after 12 years of marriage is me left. Sobbing repeatedly,” one commenter wrote.
“I lost my mum to cancer just 3 weeks before this album came out,” said another. “…The lyrics fit too well with how I feel right now. All the things that should have been but won’t be anymore. She was just too young to be gone already.
While death and loss are topics too rarely discussed in society, or talked about only in whispers, the Reddit thread encouraged some to expand on their first impressions: “I can’t hear this as something else than a song about miscarriage. [but] after hearing this, this interpretation is totally different.
“I had an abortion. … I regret it, and I’m so grieving and this song brings tears to my eyes. Regret for choosing abortion is another thing that isn’t talked about enough.
While Ms. Swift doesn’t claim to be pro-life or a theologian, “Bigger” nonetheless touches on feelings and questions that are common to all of us in the first surge of heartbreaking loss, and that we instinctively direct skyward:
“Did the force take you because I didn’t pray
Everything to come has turned to ashes
‘Cause it’s all over
It’s not meant to be
So I’ll say words I don’t believe in…”
Loss is the great leveler of humanity, the thing that takes us outside of everything we think we know about ourselves. In the bewildering realization of what is gone, those who believe in an all-loving God will sometimes find themselves wondering if their sins, or sins of omission, have somehow invited the actions of an angry, vengeful God they don’t really believe in. Likewise, unbelievers, against all their declared doubts, may find themselves screaming unguarded in surprise prayer, begging that their pain is neither real nor inescapable.
This common sense of disorientation and vast ignorance is worth talking about; it is a theology worth exploring, together. Whatever Taylor Swift indeed writes, she gave us all an interesting conversation.
Elizabeth Scalia is OSV News’ culture editor.
In every lifetime there comes a time when we find ourselves on our knees, a time when we are engulfed in something tragic and personal gutting, and our questions seem endless. It’s a time when “the rubber meets the road”, where even believers will wonder if they really believe everything they proclaim and people who say they don’t have faith find themselves throwing pleas to heaven. When a popular artist seems to say they’ve had such a moment, fans take notice.
Ever since the Beatles took the unprecedented step of printing their lyrics on the back cover of their “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the included lyrics have helped a listener quickly get to grips with a new song to pick up their mood. and his message for his. For some, close scrutiny of an artist’s lines has become an effort at intimacy – a hunt for clues and clues that fans believe will help them better connect with what their favorite performers say between the lines, so to speak – what deep life experiences or insights the artist can try to communicate specifically to those who can understand and identify.
Such is the case with a song from Taylor Swift’s recently released album, “Midnights (3am Edition)”. The song “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” almost immediately had fans speculating about its meaning – in particular, whether Ms Swift recently suffered the loss of a child through miscarriage.
Unless the composer bluntly states her purpose, it’s virtually impossible to know if such speculation is true, but the lyrics of “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” – poignant, wistful, distressed and spiritually confusing – seem to confirm the hypothesis.
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than all the sky
You were more than a short time
And I have plenty to yearn for
I have a lot to live without…”
Women who have suffered a miscarriage will tell you that the loss, usually inexplicable, feels like a broken promise, a denial of what seemed like a new force of limitless potential and a new expression of love, taken away before the world has seen its beauty, much like a snowflake, melted before it even hit the ground.
“I will never meet
What could have been, would have been
What should you have been
What could have been, would have been you…”
While the song is, in fact, a painful statement of such private loss, it is also a monologue that inspires online discussion on a topic that society too often greets with tense silence. Hearing of a miscarriage, some seem to believe that the less said to a grieving parent, the better – as if that death were not a real death or, at any rate, that the mourning should not not be more than a token notice. Too often, news of a miscarriage is met with responses that, while perhaps well-meaning, only serve to deepen the hurt (“There must have been something wrong with that baby; nature only saves you from something horrible”), or misses the mark entirely. “You can try again” is a small comfort to a parent who knows that the child who was not met was not interchangeable with another child, any more than a family would believe that a sibling can replace another.
On Reddit and other social media platforms, men and women have taken “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” as permission to mourn their own losses. They share their experiences of miscarriage but also of the lingering pain that accompanies the death of parents, siblings and friends, of regretful abortions and even of relationships that ended without the closure of questions answered.
“Divorcing after 12 years of marriage is me left. Sobbing repeatedly,” one commenter wrote.
“I lost my mum to cancer just 3 weeks before this album came out,” said another. “…The lyrics fit too well with how I feel right now. All the things that should have been but won’t be anymore. She was just too young to be gone already.
While death and loss are topics too rarely discussed in society, or talked about only in whispers, the Reddit thread encouraged some to expand on their first impressions: “I can’t hear this as something else than a song about miscarriage. [but] after hearing this, this interpretation is totally different.
“I had an abortion. … I regret it, and I’m so grieving and this song brings tears to my eyes. Regret for choosing abortion is another thing that isn’t talked about enough.
While Ms. Swift doesn’t claim to be pro-life or a theologian, “Bigger” nonetheless touches on feelings and questions that are common to all of us in the first surge of heartbreaking loss, and that we instinctively direct skyward:
“Did the force take you because I didn’t pray
Everything to come has turned to ashes
‘Cause it’s all over
It’s not meant to be
So I’ll say words I don’t believe in…”
Loss is the great leveler of humanity, the thing that takes us outside of everything we think we know about ourselves. In the bewildering realization of what is gone, those who believe in an all-loving God will sometimes find themselves wondering if their sins, or sins of omission, have somehow invited the actions of an angry, vengeful God they don’t really believe in. Likewise, unbelievers, against all their declared doubts, may find themselves screaming unguarded in surprise prayer, begging that their pain is neither real nor inescapable.
This common sense of disorientation and vast ignorance is worth talking about; it is a theology worth exploring, together. Whatever Taylor Swift indeed writes, she gave us all an interesting conversation.
Elizabeth Scalia is OSV News’ culture editor.