Recently, Taylor has been using the phrase “dear diary” to describe her music on the Eras tour. Prior to the release of TTPD, she was using language like “excruciatingly autobiographical” and “live-streamed public autopsy” - which, in retrospect, seems like a hint towards the concept of TTPD as a “post-mortem.” In changing this language, it stands to reason that she may be hinting at something new.
I started to wonder if she might be pointing us back towards the Lover diaries. She’s also been mentioning the number 4 - “Dear Diary, I felt a feeling for 4 seconds” - and how many Lover diaries are there? 4! Taylor Nation also recently posted about the Lover diaries. (Credit to u/Different_Hedgehog16 for sharing the screen shot in the megathread!)
https://preview.redd.it/5hoae7tyrg5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc428aa24495806db3c12dc5b53b0878c25f10a7
There have also been theories swirling that we might get a redo of the Miss Americana documentary, like this post. I’d argue that the diaries and documentary, as longer story-telling mediums, were essential to the fabric of the Lover era as a vehicle for a coming out. And if she were to re-do that coming out, she might also revisit those same story-telling mediums she attempted to use during Lover.
So, I decided to take a look back at the Lover diaries in a post-TTPD world to see what we can glean. There are quite a few interesting things, but what struck me first and foremost were connections to ME! and how those connections intersect with our current position on the road to "meet me at midnight." So, that is what I am going to largely focus on in this post.

Intro: Significance of the Lover Diaries

Taylor’s music has long been branded “diaristic.” But it’s one thing to write diaristic music; it’s another thing to release your diary. Sharing your diary signals a new level of confession, unveiling something that is typically kept private under lock and key.
Of course, the diaries she released are not her literal diary. They are a curated selection of entries she chose to release and potentially edited for public consumption. These diaries are art pieces, packaged together as an accompaniment to the album. And as art, it doesn’t matter how literally “true” the diaries are. What matters is the meaning they convey. I’d argue that these diaries can tell us a lot about the Lover era.
As a concept, the first and most obvious thing the very existence of the diaries tells us is that the Lover era was intended as an era of authenticity and confession. This won’t shock anyone in this corner of the internet, but I think the very fact that she included her diaries to accompany the album lends credence to the failed coming out theory.

Opening the Diary Drawer in the Lover Era

Taylor has never used the word “diary” in a published song, but she did use the word in her poem for reputation, If You’re Anything Like Me:

If you’re anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn’t want to face the you you don’t know anymore
For fear she was much better before…
But Darling, now you have to.

Here, she describes how she never wanted to lock her diary drawer - never wanted to have to hide parts of herself from the world behind a locked (closet?) door, behind a gate in a secret garden. It’s telling, then, that with her next album release, she unlocks the diary drawer. This signals an intention to step out from behind the door and into the daylight.
The next few lines of the poem are relevant here, too. She describes not knowing herself anymore and not wanting to face herself - a self who she fears was much better “before.” Before what? Before she became estranged from herself, perhaps? But now she must face this self she is estranged from. The implication seems to be that after she locks the door, she is alone with herself - and then she must face herself. This idea of facing herself in isolation is reinforced in the next stanza where she speaks of her “own little golden prison cell” and says, “But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.”
She describes meeting herself behind a shut door on reputation. And Lover, in opening the diary drawer, represents an invitation for the world to meet her, too.
Of course, it doesn’t happen, and she finds herself shutting the door again. In that light, it’s interesting that this conception of what it means to meet yourself seems quite opposite to how she describes it in the Midnights foreword: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve…we’ll meet ourselves.” On Midnights, she isn’t shutting the door to meet herself. She is stepping out with lanterns lit to search for herself. And her hope to meet herself is directly tied to an invitation for the audience to meet her, too: “Meet me at midnight.” This shift might suggest a realization that the isolation of the closet is in fact not a place where one can truly encounter themselves. You don’t meet yourself in a prison cell; you lose yourself. To find yourself, you have to open the door. The diary drawer.

Lover as a Return to Herself, Through the Lens of the Lover Diaries

The diaries are a central part of the Lover foreword, the very first thing she mentions. She seems particularly drawn to the diaries from her childhood and teen years; she writes, “What shocked me the most was how often I wrote about the things that I loved.” This becomes her central inspiration for the concept of the album, as she goes on to explain it: “This album is a love letter to love itself.” And further, it serves as the inspiration for a decision she describes making about how she wants to define herself and her identity: “I’ve decided that in this life, I want to be defined by the things that I love - not the things I hate, the things I’m afraid of, or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. These things may be my struggles, but they’re not my identity.” These words are so central to the thesis of the album that they bookend it: opening the album in the prologue and closing it in the outro of Daylight. And these words are rooted in the spirit of the young Taylor she describes encountering in the pages of these old diaries.
Lover Foreword
This is especially interesting when we think about the death of the “old Taylor” in reputation. Lover was an era of rebirth - not of the Taylor Swift personas she killed off in the reputation era, but of her original self. It was a return to her roots. A return to herself. Consider this quote from Rolling Stone where she says she’s never “leaned into the old version of myself more creatively than I have on this album.” (Credit to u/courtingdisaster for this find!)
https://preview.redd.it/mmn5p2vbug5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb876b96cfa6a1a0734cbdae4882d6a034ff3a2e
This proves out when examining the contents of the diaries. The entries she chose to include are primarily from her youth. There are 51 total entries across the four diaries, spanning 2003-2017. Of these, over half (51%) are from her teenage years. Another 45% are from her early 20s (ages 20-24). Only two entries are from age 25+.

The Lover Diaries and ME!

Looking at the contents of the diaries, the first thing that jumped out at me was the quote she included on the first page of Diary #1 and signed “Me!”
Opening Page of Lover Diary #1
It seems reasonable to think that the concept for ME! was inspired, at least in part, from this process of combing through her old diaries and facing the person she once was. These first pages from age 13 represent a celebration of herself. Her pride in her doodles, branding them “Taylor designs 2002.” Her belief that she would be a big star, that her signature might be worth money someday (hehe). Defiance in the face of anyone who would tell her she “[doesn’t] deserve what [she] want[s].” And a celebration of her words, featured right alongside Kenny Chesney’s. There’s a youthful wisdom in these words that she seems to return to in ME!, a song about celebrating everything that makes her who she is.
There are also visual parallels between the diaries and the ME! lyric video. The ME! lyric video is stylized as handwritten; we actually see her hand writing these words, and she is writing on paper with a Taylor Swift letterhead to boot, leaving no doubt about whose words these are. This in and of itself feels noteworthy, given it’s not a typical style for her lyric videos. The handwritten ME! lyrics tie the song directly to the diaries, also handwritten.
ME! Lyric Video
Additionally, the lyric video is full of sweet childlike doodles that also parallel the diaries - hearts, stars, smiley faces. Some of the imagery from her diary doodles also makes it into the ME! music video.
Left: Young Taylor in the Lover Diaries Right: ME! Lyric Video
If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely understand ME! as deeply meaningful to the Lover rollout. And these ties to the Lover diaries, which Taylor made central to the thesis of the album in the foreword, lend further credence to ME! as one of the most important touchstones of this era. ME! as a self-love anthem inspired by and dedicated to her younger self, who once wrote: “The world is as big as you make it, never be shameful to fly.”
\"Never be shameful to fly.\" - Taylor Swift in the Lover Diaries, age 13

Connections to TTPD

The Lover era was characterized by a handwritten aesthetic - in the diaries and beyond, most notably in the ME! lyric video. This handwritten aesthetic is not typical for Taylor's work, but where do we see it pop up again? On TTPD, of course. The summary poem is specifically printed to look handwritten, but with none of the flourish of the Lover era. The color has been drained out.
TTPD Summary Poem
We also have a call-back to the Taylor Swift letterhead from the ME! lyric video in the TTPD era's "From the Desk of Taylor Swift." The fonts are not identical, but similar enough to suggest a connection. Both albums come directly from the desk of Taylor Swift.
Left: ME! Lyric Video Letterhead: \"Taylor Swift, Born in 1989, Loves Cats\" Right: Letterhead from TTPD Journal (Merch): \"From the Desk of Taylor Swift\"
These are of course not the first call-backs to ME! and Lover that this community has noticed on TTPD. This is an addition to a long and growing list of connections. I'd argue this is a noteworthy connection because, fundamentally, the excavation of the Lover Diaries - a central part of the fabric of the album and especially of ME! - represented a return to her most authentic self, before she learned civility, and an invitation for the public to encounter that authentic self emerging from her unlocked diary drawer. The Midnights foreword suggests we might now be on a mirrored journey towards "meet me at midnight," and TTPD might represent a pit stop on that journey. (If you're interested in more thoughts on this journey and how it connects to diaristic confession, I wrote this post about it!)
And if that's the case, if Taylor is coming back for herself, it just might mean coming back for the Lover Diaries and the 13-year-old girl found in their pages, who once wisely said, "May you never be scared of goodbye." Judging by a recent mash-up, perhaps Taylor is preparing to take her advice: You're on your own, kid, you always have been. So, take a deep breath as you walk through the doors.