"Breathe" Tone Analysis

Depicting the difficulty of a break up in “Breathe”, Taylor Swift utilizes fleeting passion, common analogies, and depressing hyperbole to convey an intimately solemn tone, revealing the struggle of letting one’s love go.

Illustrating a challenging break up in “Breathe” results in a consistent passion within the song. The speaker’s obvious infatuation with their previous partner reveals an underlying depressing tone. The couple was clearly very close, which enhances the difficulty in leaving each other “after all this time”. Swift uses this terminating passion to expose the fact that break ups are “never simple, never easy”. The speaker’s attachment to their partner makes it very difficult to break away from their old habits of being with them.

Alluding to analogies throughout the song build a sense of commonality by creating familiarities within the song that the audience with also relate to. Swift utilizes an analogy to describe the partner’s relevance in the speaker’s life, saying “you’re the only think I know like the back of my hand”, revealing the heavy importance the partner has in the speaker’s life. Further on, Swift mentions, “it’s two a.m., feelin’ like I just lost a friend”, uncovering the speaker’s deep sadness because of the situation. The analogies consistently within the song add to the speaker’s solemn tone due to the nature of the break up.

By over emphasizing certain aspects of the nature of the couple’s relationship, Swift enhances the intimate feeling of the song. The couple clearly had a very intimate relationship, relying on one another to achieve happiness. When the speaker says, “never wanted this, never want to see you hurt, every little bump in the road I tried to swerve”, it gives the listener a sense of overwhelming affection that only a highly committed couple can achieve. This creates an intimacy beyond most relationships in that even while the couple is in the process of breaking up, the two are so closely bonded that they couldn’t possibly survive without each other; “I can’t breathe without you, but I have to”.

Taylor Swift’s development of such a personal relationship reveals an intimately solemn tone which conveys the struggles of leaving behind unforgettable memories and unequivocal passion in the form of a dying relationship.