When Lightning Strikes...Rainbows [Opalite 2]

 

Now that we looked at why Taylor might have chosen that 1982 tune as inspiration, let’s turn to the lyrics of Opalite. 

→ Note: I tried to color the text of each ‘voice’ in the song. Taylor’s is only a short snippet at the beginning. Most of the song is what Taylor’s mom said to her.

[Taylor’s voice]

I had a bad habit

Of missing lovers past

[What Austin told Taylor]

My brother used to call it

'Eating out of the trash'

[I couldn’t decide if this next line was the remainder of what Austen said, or if this goes back to Taylor. I didn’t think it really fit for either very well].

It's never gonna last

[Taylor’s voice]

I thought my house was haunted

I used to live with ghosts

See my other blog post for how she uses haunted/ghost in the rest of her catalog. In that Swiftionary, I decided the preponderance of “ghost” is the following definition:

Ghost is the baggage of being “other”

https://kit10phish.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/swiftionary-part-3/

[Taylor telling us what the “perfect couples” said]

And all the perfect couples

Said, "When you know you know."

And, "When you don't you don't."

[Taylor’s voice]

And all of the foes and all of the friends

Have seen it before, they'll see it again

Life is a song, it ends when it ends

I was wrong

[The following is everything Andrea told Taylor. I put it in black highlight, because in most pics I found of her mom, she’s in black.]

But my Mama told me

It's alright

You were dancing through the lightning strikes

Lightning is significant, because the whole ‘This is What You Came for’ video features it.

 Kinda like camera flashes on a runway. Remember how Taylor first used a pseudonym to disguise her song writing. Then she got mad at Calvin Harris and took her credit. The point is, Taylor wrote a song about a woman.

Sleepless in the onyx night

But now the sky is opalite

https://www.kreisjewellery.com/news/stones/mythology-origin-opal/

We have THUNDERstone, which goes with our lightning in both ‘This is What You Came for’ and ‘Opalite’ nicely.

The Bedouins believed lightning was trapped inside opals. And during the thunderstorm, they would fall from the sky and acquire their dazzling colors.

The storm freed the lightning from the opals, and the stones became RAINBOW.

Oh oh oh oh, oh my Lord

Never made no one like you before

This text is still in black, so you know it’s Andrea. But she confirms it by saying Never MADE no one like you before. Because Taylor came from her mom’s body. This part is still in Taylor’s mom’s voice.