mirrorball

On “mirrorball,” the sixth track off of Taylor Swift’s eighth studio album folklore, she compares herself to a reflective disco ball: she sees herself as reflecting all the personalities around her, she entertains others, and she shatters like glass when her heart is broken.

Swift discussed this song in folklore: the long pond studio sessions:

“In folklore, there are a lot of songs that reference each other, or lyrical parallels, and one of the ones I like is the entire song ‘this is me trying’ then being referenced again in ‘mirrorball.’ It also is the first time, and one of the only times, that the time that we’re living through is actually lyrically addressed. I think that, you know, the pandemic and lockdown, and all that, runs through this album like a thread because it’s an album that allows you to feel your feelings, and it’s a product of isolation. This is the first time, in the bridge saying, ‘they called off the circus, burned the disco down. When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns.’ I wrote this song right after I found out all my shows were canceled. So it’s like I realize, here I am writing all this music, still trying.“

“mirrorball” debuted at #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the chart week of August 8, 2020.