Getaway Car

Album: Reputation (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Taylor Swift uses a Bonnie and Clyde-esqe image of two criminals attempting to flee cops in a getaway car to illustrate a doomed relationship.

    I'm in a getaway car
    I left you in a motel bar
    Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys
    That was the last time you ever saw me


    The metaphors pile up as Taylor sings about driving the getaway car away from a lover in order to escape their relationship.
  • Vehicles in Taylor Swift songs often have an enormous amount a huge significance. Later on in Reputation, for instance, on the track "King of My Heart," she throws some shade at her exes with the line "all the boys with their expensive cars". Also, in the video for the album's lead single "Look What You Made Me Do," we see the songstress crash a sports car.
  • There are several clues that the subject of the song is Tom Hiddleston, with whom Taylor hooked up with immediately after breaking up with Calvin Harris. The couple went public about their romance with a seaside make-out session on June 15, 2016.

    The ties were black, the lies were white

    Taylor met and danced with Hiddleston at the 2016, black-tie Met Gala when she was still dating Harris.

    I wanted to leave him
    I needed a reason


    It could be Taylor is referencing her desire to end her long-term relationship with Harris. The songstress needed an excuse as she was having a hard time shedding him on her own.
  • X marks the spot where we fell apart

    Interestingly, the same lyric appears on Hilary Duff's track "Breathe In. Breathe Out." Swift publicly cited the song as a favourite of hers in a 2015 Tumblr post.
  • Taylor Swift wrote and produced "Getaway Car" with her go-to collaborator Jack Antonoff. Swift's documentary, Miss Americana, includes a scene where the two of them working on the song.

    "That video is popular for the perfect reason - that is the only time in my life, from the million hours I've spent in studios that a camera was ever on... when magic actually happened," Antonoff recalled on Today's Sunday Sitdown. "And she just had her iPhone on for whatever reason. And I think that's why that video became so popular because it was real."

    "I've had all these experiences where this crazy kinetic energy is happening and you're writing on the fly and you're getting it," he continued. "It was just a real moment and I don't why her phone was on but thank god it was. And I've never had anything like that."

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