My personal thoughts as to how and why Red has developed such a hold on people is because Taylor Swift has been able to comfortably capture and unpack all the fractured, vibrant multitudes of a person’s early twenties through the idea of the colour ‘red’. Swift created an album that has become reflective of and embedded into millions of people’s memories, emotions, and experiences, granting Red a remarkable staying power. The colour ‘red’ is more than just the album’s title. Red is at once a symbol of the romanticism contained within the intense elements of the human experience; a marker to signpost key moments throughout the expansive album and a warning flag waved at the listener to signal moments of danger. The concept of ‘red’ and everything the idea symbolises functions as the perfect (red) thread for Swift to artistically stich together an album that is both cohesive and intensely bursting with life.

The continuous weaving of ‘red’ throughout the tapestry of this album begins in the powerful opener, ‘State of Grace’. The dramatic and powerful ‘red’ of it all begins in the warning “twin fire signs… I loved in shades of wrong”. The electrically addictive and dangerous energy colours this opener, allowing the second song ‘Red’ to establish the concept of ‘red’ for the rest of the album in lyrics such as “Loving him was re-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-d…burning re-e-e-e-e-d”. This title track sets up intensity, the vibrancy, the danger, the pain, the love, and the ‘self’ that Swift ultimately explores. This allows ‘red’ to be used as a motif throughout the rest of the album to organise the clues left for the listener.

For the rest of the album, the colour ‘red’ works in the same way brightly coloured strings and pushpins work on a corkboard. The colour ‘red’ connects all the ideas, feelings and experiences explored in this album, allowing Swift to map out all the evidence like a zany investigative detective gone rouge. ‘Red’ as an idea becomes so important for keeping alive the understanding and continued relevance, of this album. This can be especially seen in the development of how the public connected to the infamous track five, ‘All Too Well’.

‘All Too Well’ relies on the concept of ‘red’ to cycle through the complex start, middle and end of an emotionally devasting yet loving time for Swift. “You almost ran the red cause you were looking over at me… Photo album on the counter, your cheeks were turning red”.

Her memories and perceptions of other people’s emotions are coloured in this ‘redness’ as she looks back on the relationship to try to understand her feelings in the evidence left behind by the ‘red’ emotions. Swift unpacks her pain, her fear, her love, her anger, her nostalgia, and her loss through the colour ‘red’ to sort through the fallout of ‘All Too Well’. The potency of Swift’s exploration hinges on the ‘red’ intensity of ‘All Too Well’’s subject matter. The concept of ‘red’ that ‘All Too Well’ relies on gave the song such an unwavering hold on the public that Swift ended up releasing the full ten-minute version of the song and a short film years later.

Beyond ‘All Too Well’, Red allows Swift the ability to retain the complexity of her experience whilst simplifying it into digestible songs across the album. For example, the title track ‘Red’ uses the colours ‘red’, ‘blue’ and ‘grey’ to understand and situate the array of ideas contained with the album. In tracks like I Knew You Were Trouble, Treacherous and Girl at Home, the danger of such intense ‘red’ feelings are explored, and this redness carries on to equally explore love and the self. In tracks like ‘Begin Again’, ‘Stay, Stay, Stay’ and ‘Come Back Be Here’, the “burning red” sets Swift’s romanticism alight. In the same way, the burning red-hot pain of tracks like ‘Ronan’, ‘Better Man’, ‘All Too Well’, ‘Nothing New’ and ‘Sad, Beautiful, Tragic’ use ‘red’ to illustrate the confusing intensity and emotional whiplash that occurs because of the extreme oscillating feelings that a person in their early twenties’ experiences. And I – as a recent graduate in their early twenties- concur with Swift’s messaging.

The unrivalled success of Swift’s 2021 re-release of Red was predicated on how Swift structured this album around the ideas of ‘red’ emotions. This allowed the album – in its re-released state- to become synonymous with the human experience of feeling of being in a terrifying, yet exhilarating, free-fall. In short, the conceptual organisation of Red gave the original album a longevity and allowed Swift’s additional vault tracks the space and interest to become a part of the album seamlessly.

In her celebration of reddening leaves, cosiness, and tragic volatility through a romantic perspective, Swift takes mainstream control of autumn. By playing into and adding to the associations of this colour, Swift didn’t just create an album but an artefact of the human experience being -ultimately- painfully romantic.