Fortnight - Song Analysis

I love you, it's ruining my life

On April 19th, 2024, Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. The lead single from the album is a song called Fortnight, which features Post Malone and quickly became a hit. 

Before I start analyzing the song, I just want to clarify I’m not here to make rude assumptions about Taylor’s personal life. I don’t know anything about the real meaning behind the lyrics, and I’m only writing my personal interpretation of the song.

Many people think that Fortnight is a song about a short relationship, lasting for two weeks, AKA a fortnight. I was one of these people. The first time I heard Fortnight, I really thought that the song was about her brief relationship with Matty Healy last year. After reading some theories and digging a little bit, I figured out that this song is not about what (or who) we thought it was.

Taylor explained that the song “exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism - longing, pining away, lost dreams”.

In the song, Taylor is imagining a future where both she and her former lover have “moved on” from each other. It has been a while since they broke up, and she refers to the time they spent together as “a fortnight”.

And for a fortnight there, we were forever

She is depressed, a “functioning alcoholic” and miserable in a relationship with a husband who’s cheating on her. However, her ex is living his life well, married to a loving woman. She and her ex are now “good neighbors”, and she is jealous of his life. 

It is unlikely that “good neighbors” is the literal meaning of this sentence. It is hard for me to imagine anyone living next door to the loss of their life. I think that by “good neighbors” Taylor means that even though they are apart, living in different houses, she can still see a glimpse of his life through the fence between their houses. She can still know how he is doing, stalk him or talk to their acquaintances about him.

Now you’re in my backyard, turned into good neighbors

Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her

His wife is a good normal woman. She works in her garden and waters flowers, and Taylor is jealous of her for living a great life.

My husband is cheating, I wanna kill him

However, Taylor’s own husband is a bad husband. He is cheating and Taylor is not happy with him. These two lines resemble the difference in both of their current relationships: Taylor’s ex has a good wife, while her own husband is cheating on her.

However, Taylor doesn’t have hard feelings towards her ex. At the beginning of the song, she expresses it by telling him she hopes he is doing well and she doesn’t blame him for anything, but her life has been a mess since the end of their relationship.

All of this to say I hope you're okay

But you're the reason

And no one here's to blame

But what about your quiet treason?

She and her ex do not hate each other. They run into each other sometimes and “ask about the weather”. They are “good neighbors”.

It seems like Taylor had a really hard time getting over her ex. She was in a rebound relationship for a while, but it didn’t change the way she felt about her former lover. She was happy for a short time, but the happiness faded quickly.

I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary

The effects of the relationship were temporary. She was happy for a short time, but it all escalated very quickly and she kept yearning for the former relationship. This specific line really reminds me of the whole Joe-Matty situation. Less than a month after ending a 6 year relationship, Taylor found a rebound guy. For a couple of weeks she was happy, but ended up more broken than ever before.

I love you, it’s ruining my life

This sentence became the sentence that resembles the entire TTPD album. I love you, it’s ruining my life. There is a part of Taylor that still loves her ex, that still wishes they could be together. It’s that part of her that wants to kill his good wife and her cheating husband. She loves him, and it’s ruining her life. She can’t get over him, and it’s tearing her apart.

I love you, it's ruining my life

I touched you for only a fortnight

Their relationship now feels so short compared to the time they had spent apart. Just a fortnight, no more than two weeks… and still Taylor has so much regret and is in so much pain.

At the end of the song, we get Post Malone’s part, which is presumably from the ex’s point of view.

Thought of callin' ya, but you won't pick up

'Nother fortnight lost in America

Move to Florida, buy the car you want

But it won't start up 'til you touch, touch, touch me

Thought of calling ya, but you won't pick up

'Nother fortnight lost in America

Move to Florida, buy the car you want

But it won't start up 'til I touch, touch, touch you

It looks like he also wanted to reach her, but he was too scared that she wouldn't answer him, that she wouldn't pick up. He thinks the best is to let her go, to let her move to Florida and buy the car she wants. “But it won't start up ‘til you touch me”. Her car won’t start up without him. Her life would never be the same if he was not in them.

To this very day, I have no idea what the song was actually written about. Some people think that this is another story Taylor came up with, but TTPD is an autobiographical album. Taylor mostly wrote about her own experiences and sometimes channeled them into stories. This is what she probably did with Fortnight.

Taylor wrote most of the album in the middle of 2023, during/shortly after Joever and all of the Matty drama. I tend to think she wrote Fortnight when things started escalating with Matty. He was her “miracle move-on drug” but the effects were indeed temporary. I think she wrote this song with a (false) vision of her life in a couple of years: she is miserable and still hasn’t moved on from Joe, while he is happily married. However, if I am correct, Post’s verse in the song is probably from Joe’s perspective. Maybe his part expresses what she was dreaming of back at the time: that he still wants her, that he cares about her but is afraid that she would turn him down.

Fortnight is not one of the “sad songs” in TTPD. However looking back at the lyrics, you can’t deny that it is, in fact, a very sad song. It’s about a woman who is not able to move on from her former lover, who lives a terrible life while he seems to be living his best life, but actually is too afraid to try and get her back.