Taylor Swift Has Fans Losing It With the Revealing Lyrics of New Song ‘You’re Losing Me’

UPDATED: Sad songs say so much, as the man said. And in the case of a brand new Taylor Swift song, Youre Losing Me, some of her fans believe the lyrics say plenty about her relationship status over the last year or so.

If her material is nothing if not almost always immediately quotable, Youre Losing Me has some lulus, starting with: I wouldnt marry me either / A pathological people pleaser / Who only wanted you to see her. The overall tone, though, is less sad than weary, bordering on fatalistic: Do I throw out everything we built or keep it? / Im getting tired even for a phoenix / Always rising from the ashes / Mending all her gashes / You might just have dealt the final blow.

Late Friday, Swift made the track widely available in a digital release at her webstore. Earlier in the day, though, the new track was not widely available, as it was first released exclusively on a CD edition that currently is only available to fans patronizing her merchandise stands at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Fans were so eager to get their hands on the disc, because she had advertised it as the only way to get the new song, that lines began forming in earnest at the stadium on Thursday, well in advance of the merch stands opening up for the day at 12:30 p.m. Friday. Inevitably, some of the first attendees to get their hands on it went back to their cars and uploaded the ravenously anticipated new track for the rest of the world to hear and to scour for perceived personal details.

The song is not a letdown in that regard. Its being billed as a Vault Track, written during the same writing sessions that produced the smash Midnights album. It would hardly have fit, stylistically or thematically, on that record, as the album tended toward upbeat, sensual fare, while this is the first song Swift has put out in years that appears to describe a present-day relationship in unhappy terms and is likely to be perceived as personal, not fictional. Naturally, first reactions were that it might describe cracks in a years-long relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, which seemed to be characterized in much happier terms on the rest of Midnights as well as four albums preceding it.

The mention of marriage, or the lack of it, will be particularly provocative to fans. Swift had sounded almost dismissive of matrimony in a recent song, Lavender Haze, the leadoff song of Midnights, which included the verse, All they keep askin me is if Im gonna be your bride / The only kind of girl they see s a one-night or a wife, while eschewing the idea of the 1950s shit they want from me.

The overall lyric of the song is a play on the were losing him/her often heard in emergency room situations in medical shows. A kind of deathliness is at play throughout the number, as Swift sings, I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick / My face was gray, but you wouldnt admit that we were sick.

The downbeat tone of the song is in contrast to two other new songs that Swift released late Thursday night, both of them more widely available as part of a digital deluxe version of Midnights subtitled The Till Dawn Edition. Neither was an all-new song, but both were enthusiastically embraced a remix of Karma with rapper Ice Spice and a fresh version of Snow on the Beach with new, extensive lead vocals from co-writer and featured artist Lana Del Rey.

The expanded version of the album known as Midnights (The Late Night Edition) the one that includes Youre Losing Me as a bonus track was initially pegged by Swift as being available only at the MetLife Stadium merch booths, in CD form. Later on Friday, her webstore put up a digital version of the album, advertising that it would only be available for 24 hours, ending at 8 p.m. ET Saturday. Between the two slightly different versions of the deluxe edition that went on sale Friday, Swift stands a strong chance of having Midnights move back up into the No. 1 position on the Billboard 200, since all the separate editions of the album count as one for charting purposes.

Swift still has not made Youre Losing Me available for streaming on DSPs, and fan uploads have been the subject of takedown notices from Universal Music. The other new tracks she released this weekend are all on the usual digital sites including Hits Different, a song that until now was only available on a Target-exclusive CD that was part of the initial rollout for Midnights last fall.

Lyrics for the new song, as transcribed by fans with a rare instance of a Swift bridge being longer than any of the tracks verses or choruses:

VERSE 1

You say I dont understand and I say I know you dont

We thought a cure would come through in time, now I fear it wont

Remember looking at this room, we loved it cause of the light

Now, I just sit in the dark and wonder if its time

PRE-CHORUS

Do I throw out everything we built or keep it?

Im getting tired even for a phoenix

Always rising from the ashes

Mending all her gashes

You might just have dealt the final blow

CHORUS

Stop, youre losing me

Stop, youre losing me

Stop, youre losing me

I cant find a pulse

My heart wont start anymore, for you

Cause youre losing me

VERSE 2

Every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes

How can you say that you love someone you cant tell is dying?

I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick

My face was gray but you wouldnt admit that we were sick

PRE-CHORUS

And the air is thick with lies and indecision

I know my pain is such an imposition

Now youre running down the hallway

And you know what they all say

You dont know what you got until its gone

CHORUS

Stop, youre losing me

Stop, youre losing me

Stop, youre losing me

I cant find a pulse

My heart wont start anymore, for you

Cause youre losing me

Cause youre losing me

Stop, cause youre losing me

POST-CHORUS

My heart wont start anymore (Stop, cause youre losing me)

My heart wont start anymore (Stop, cause youre losing me)

BRIDGE

How long could we be a sad song

Till we were too far gone to bring back to life?

I gave you all my best mes, my endless empathy

And all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier

Fighting in only your army, frontlines, dont you ignore me

Im the best thing at this party (Youre losing me)

And I wouldnt marry me either

A pathological people pleaser

Who only wanted you to see her

And Im fading thinking

Do something, baby, say something (Say something)

Lose something, baby, risk something (Youre losing me)

Choose something, baby, I got nothing (I got nothing)

To believe, unless youre choosing me