"So High School" Thoughts & Discussion

"So High School" is so far my slowest burn on TTPD, and I currently think this song is indicative of much more than what it was and is at first listen. When the album came out, I think people saw this as a counterpart to "Alchemy" and was inexorably tied into her relationship with 87 (his name is off limits, apparently), which I think is fair, and it probably is related, but one line that I can't get away from is:

"I'm Hearing Voices Like A Madman" because I am of the belief that like Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, and other rather prolific songwriters, she's a bit "touched in the head" and I don't mean that as a negative, rather, that's just why she's constantly writing and releasing, but it did get me to thinking about the different side of the coin that this song represents vs "You Belong With Me," because it feels like it is born of a similar emotional space where she's caught up in the same emotions (and she references going back to high school before YBWM in the Eras Tour before she plays it, and well... everything is seemingly related - here's a song called so high school), but instead of pining or being desperate for affection, this time she's operating, lyrically, from a point of desire as opposed to yearning.

YBWM is her saying "figure it out, I'm what you're really after (which some how became this 'pick me' internet nonsense that people complain about, apparently they forgot what it was like to be young and crushing on someone)," whereas SHS is her saying that this romance is making her feel all those same feelings again but she's hit with an extreme twinge of anxiety that was never expressed in YBWM, which is why she says:

I feel like laughing in the middle of practice
Do that impression you did of your dad again
I'm hearing voices like a madman

...and that's a complete departure from almost every other emotion expressed in the song, which makes me wonder if she's actually saying "Oh shit, this feels like it did when I became what I am today" which is the "voices like a madman" aspect, and the song is then followed by "I hate it here" which is an expression of her getting lost in her own head (or at least thats how I hear it) because of the realities she is facing. If i could re do the tracklist, I would've then had this lead into The Prophecy, because I think those three songs are inexorably intertwined, and SHS is her saying "this is great - oh shit when does the other shoe drop," and then IHIH and The Prophecy are her essentially explaining the other shoe dropping.

I may be way off on this, but the more I listen to this song the more I feel it is so much deeper and darker than it initially comes off as. Brilliant song, though.