This song starts off like a Grimm Brothers fairytale, linking into Evermore's woodland aesthetic.
How's one to know?
I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones
In a faith-forgotten land
By the chorus it becomes clear Taylor Swift is singing of a married woman's clandestine affair.
My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand
Taking mine, but it's been promised to another
Ivy is an evergreen plant that can climb on masonry to about 100 feet above the ground. Here, Swift is alluding to how her love for her extramarital beau has grown to where she is now "covered in" him.
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
Now Swift finds herself completely enamored with her lover, but she fears what would happen if her husband finds out about their affair.
So tell me to run
Or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
And drink my husband's wine
This is the 10th track on
Evermore. "
Illicit Affairs," the tenth track of
Evermore's sister album,
Folklore, also tackles the topic of infidelity.
Folklore saw Swift leap away from autobiography into songs that come from her imagination; she carries on with this new fictional type of writing on Evermore. Speaking to Zane Lowe, the singer discussed how her old confessional writing style affected her life.
"There was a point that I got to as a writer who only wrote very diaristic songs that I felt it was unsustainable for my future moving forward," she said. "It felt too hot of a microscope. On my bad days, I would feel like I was loading a canon of clickbait, when that's not what I want for my life."
Justin Vernon of Bon Iver contributes backing vocals, triangle, drums, banjo and electric guitar to the track.
Swift co-wrote the song with her Folklore collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff. Dessner also produced the jaunty track, incorporating plenty of ticking instrumentation in the background to portray the possibility of dire consequences to Swift's affair.
Emily Dickinson was very close to her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, and many scholars interpret their relationship as a romantic one. A mythology developed around "Ivy" that one of Swift's influences for the track was the alleged affair between the poet and her brother's wife. Among the clues:
Swift released Evermore on December 10, Dickinson's birthday.
Dickinson ends one of her poems addressed to Gilbert with "forevermore."
"Ivy" documents a married woman's infidelity, much like Gilbert's supposed cheating on her husband with Dickinson.
Dickinson, the Apple TV+ series about the famous poet, depicts Emily and Susan as sexually imitate; this song plays over the closing credits following a lovemaking scene between the two in season 3.
Swift cites "Ivy" as an example of her "quill lyrics," written as if they were from the Victorian era, written with a quill pen. It's one of her three lyrical styles, along with "fountain pen" (confessional) and glitter gel pen (fun).
Taylor Swift performed "Ivy"
live for the first time during her second Eras tour gig in Cincinnati on July 1, 2023. Aaron Dessner, who was born and raised in Cincinnati along with the rest of The National, joined Swift on stage. "I never thought I'd be standing up here with the greatest living songwriter playing songs that we wrote, but here I am," Dessner told the crowd.
