"The Outside" was written by Swift about loneliness. She wrote it when just she was 12 years old.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she talked about this song:
It's about what I was going through at the time. I was a complete outcast at school and never fit in, never felt like I belonged. A lot of times back then when I was 12 or 13, I would write songs about relationships, when I wasn't in relationships, because I would look at other people and try to observe what they were going through. But in the case of "The Outside," I was writing exactly what I saw. I was writing from pain. And I've always felt so lucky, because I've never needed an escape like drinking or drugs or anything like that to escape from the bad days. Music has always been that escape for me.
[Verse 1]
I didn't know what I would find
When I went looking for a reason, I know
I didn't read between the lines
And, baby, I've got nowhere to go
> To "read between the lines" is an expression which means finding the real truth behind something, below what it appears to be.
Taylor missed any cues that would've let her know that the girls weren't her real friends, leaving her totally blindsided when they deemed her unworthy and betrayed her. <
[Pre-Chorus]
I tried to take the road less traveled by
But nothing seems to work the first few times
Am I right?
> Here, Swift sings about wanting to be different, but getting cast out by other people because of it. They rejected her because she wasn't doing what was popular — what everybody else was doing. Unfortunately, people tend to "follow the sheep," and if somebody is brave enough to be different, they get flak for it.
Moreover, "the road less traveled by" is a quote from the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, which reads:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The same poem also seems to have been referenced in another track of the same album, "A Place In This World," and more notoriously on Swift's July 2020 track, "illicit affairs," as well as December 2020's "'tis the damn season."<
[Chorus]
So how can I ever try to be better?
Nobody ever lets me in
I can still see you, this ain't the best view
On the outside looking in
I've been a lot of lonely places
I've never been on the outside
> By "on the outside," Taylor suggests that she feels like a pariah and that nobody cares about her enough to talk to her or share secrets. Regardless, she's obviously lonely.
Swift has taken a few opportunities throughout her career to talk about how she felt like an outsider during her school years. In a 2010 interview on TheEllenShow, she even said that this was the reason she started writing music!
I remember when I was in school— the whole reason why I started writing songs was because I was alone a lot of the time. I'd sit there in school and I'd be hearing people like, "Oh my God, this party we're going to is going to be so awesome on Friday, everybody's invited, except for her over there." I just wouldn't be invited to stuff and I'd sit there and be like, "It's okay, because I can write a song about this later."
She revisited the same story later, in her 2022 speech for New York University.
Lastly, Swift also talked about how feeling like an outsider in High School has life-lasting consequences when she revisites the subject in her November 2017 poem, "If You're Anything Like Me":
And no amount of friends at 25
Will fill the empty seats
At the lunch tables of your past
The teams that picked you last...
But Darling, you keep trying.<
[Verse 2]
You saw me there, but never knew
That I would give it all up to be
A part of this, a part of you
And now, it's all too late, so you see
[Pre-Chorus]
You could've helped if you had wanted to
But no one notices until it's too late to do anything
[Chorus]
How can I ever try to be better?
Nobody ever lets me in
I can still see you, this ain't the best view
On the outside looking in
I've been a lot of lonely places
I've never been on the outside
[Post-Chorus]
Oh, yeah
[Chorus/ bridge]
How can I ever try to be better?
Nobody ever lets me in
And I can still see you, this ain't the best view
On the outside looking in
I've been a lot of lonely places
I've never been on the outside
[Outro]
Oh-oh
Oh, oh-oh
Oh-oh
Oh-oh
Score: 6/10
(Lyrics: 7/10, sonically:5/10)
There is not really a bridge so ...
Opinion: it's not her best lyricaly but it's still better written then other artists. Even her least good songs lyrically are good and the score is just relative to her discography. Which have too many songs the blow my mind. This song is still very relatable feeling lonely and kids can be mean and those childhood memories are domino effect in our life, they stay in our brain and become insecurities . Sonically it's also not my cup it tea.
Still good melodies she's so good at creating memorable melodies. Amazing lyrics condemn into good melodies equally to iconic songs.
