‘Blame it on the New Year’s champagne’: A literary analysis of the similarities between Taylor Swift’s New Year’s Day and Champagne Problems

Ever since I heard champagne problems for the first time at 2 AM on the 11th of december and realized that the piano intro of this song was similar — and I daresay almost identical — to the piano intro of Taylor Swift’s 2017 song New Year’s Day, I could not stop finding similarities between the two songs, be it in the lyrics or in the melody. Quickly they had established themselves in my head as two individuals which are part of the same universe — something that happened quite easily considering Taylor had been molding my brain to embrace this new way of exploring her lyrics since the release of her 8th studio album, folklore, back in July of this year. While Taylor is known for her brilliant personal storytelling skills, this time, as she said it herself in her Disney Plus documentary folklore: the long pond studio sessions, she experimented with writing stories that were not about her own life but about the stories and characters she made up. Champagne problems, being a song in her latest album, evermore — which is described by Taylor as folklore’s sister album — , follows this pattern of a fictional narrative. Even though Reputation’s New Year’s Day was written before this shift in Taylor’s storytelling choices, it does not mean that she could not go back to her old work and write a sequel to one of her previous songs.

It is clear that New Year’s Day, as many other Reputation songs, was written about Taylor’s relationship with her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Interestingly, champagne problems was written with her boyfriend Joe Alwyn, under the pseudonym William Bowery, of course. (Taylor’s fans even joked online that Taylor and Joe sat together by the piano and jokingly wrote a song about what it would be like if they broke up). And, adding to those pieces of information and as mentioned in the beginning of this text, the similar piano intros of these two songs made the strong impression on me that they are part of the same narrative. Of course, with this I feel like it is my duty to point out that everything from this point on is based solely on my interpretation of the two songs.

New Year’s Day is a song about being afraid you are going to lose the person you love. Champagne problems is a song about leaving the person you thought you loved. I see the stories in these songs being told by two different poetic personas who were in a relationship with each other. For clearer understanding, from now on we shall refer to them as P1 and P2, for the NYD and CP personas respectively.

From the general idea of NYD’s lyrics I get the feeling that it is a confession from P1 to P2 in which they express their concern that P2 might leave them. My interpretation comes from this part of the song “But I stay when you’re lost and I’m scared and you’re turning away”. It is clear to me that in this case there might be the possibility of P1 being aware that P2 is not as invested in the relationship as they are, and P1 is trying to reinforce their feelings by saying that they want to be there in their good and bad moments; a promise that they will not give up on their love. It also seems to me that in “Don’t read the last page / But I stay when it’s hard or it’s wrong or we’re making mistakes” P1 is trying to ease P2’s worries about their future by telling them not to think whether they will have a happy ending or not, because they should focus on where they are now instead of worrying if they are going to stay together until the end. Furthermore, P1 pleads P2 in “Please don’t ever become a stranger / Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere” and this shows me how scared P1 is of losing P2. It seems almost like P1 is trying to hold on to this relationship on their own; to make sure it does not slip through their fingers.

Champagne problems comes to prove P1’s concerns were true. The opening lyrics of the song now told from the point of view of P2 are “You booked the night train for a reason / So you could sit there in this hurt”, which show us that something grand was going to happen that day and that P1 already had a backup plan in case things did not go according to the original plan. The grand event we later discover in the song was that P1 was going to ask P2 to marry them. So we know P1 already knew P2 was going to turn down their proposal, which happened as described in “Because I dropped your hand while dancing/ Left you out there standing / Crestfallen on the landing / Champagne problems / Your mom’s ring in your pocket / My picture in your wallet / Your heart was glass, I dropped it / Champagne problems”. I mentioned before in my analysis of NYD that P1 was trying to hold on to this relationship so hard and we found out in CP that it was not enough, no matter how hard their grip was. “You had a speech, you’re speechless / Love slipped beyond your reaches”; in these lyrics we can see P2 acknowledging that P1 was the one holding them together. Perhaps this is the moment they both realized that force of will was not enough to keep their relationship going. P2 says “One for the money, two for the show / I never was ready so I watch you go / Sometimes you just don’t know the answer / ’Til someone’s on their knees and asks you” and this tells us that P2 did not spend all their time together thinking this love was not going to last, but that in the moment P1 popped the question, they suddenly knew. P2 was not ready to be the person P1 needed. I must add that it is never mentioned that they did not love each other. Maybe it is about the timing, or maybe it is about the fact that P2 had mental health issues that they needed to deal with first (and we know this by the fact that it is mentioned in the lyrics of CP that P2 was “fucked in the head” or when they joke that the dorm which was one a madhouse was made for them). The song ends with P2 wishing P1 will find someone one day who will be able to give them what they could not.

Now, after that story analysis, I would like to point out two elements from both songs that I believe complement each other and support the idea that these two exist in the same timeline. The first one is, of course, champagne. It is known that champagne is the prefered alcoholic beverage in New Year’s parties and I believe it is champagne bottles that P1 and P2 clean up on New Year’s day, as stated in the lyrics of the first chorus. I believe the connection between that and CP derives from the idea that perhaps they are called champagne problems because on New Year’s day was the first time the couple voiced out their worries about their relationship while cleaning up after the party. In my opinion, the additions of “champagne problems” in the middle of the verses is not a direct continuation of the lines, because it sounds more like a reminder, for example “Because I dropped your hand while dancing / Left you out there standing / Crestfallen on the landing / Champagne problems”; I see this as a way of P2 confirming that P1’s worries which they brought up in NYD were true and the continued mention of “champagne problems” is P2’s way of admitting that.

The second element is this verse of CP “And soon they’ll have the nerve to deck the halls / That we once walked through”. ‘Decking the halls’ is a phrase we often hear during the holiday season. So in this case the connection is clearly made between Christmas and subsequently New Year’s. And “the nerve to deck the halls” I interpret as P2’s selfish but understandable way of saying “how dare they celebrate this season when our relationship started falling apart back then”. But of course, as I feel I should reinforce once again, this is all my own interpretation of the songs.

To conclude, I feel like their story teaches us that no matter how much you try to hold on to a relationship, if you and the other person are not right for each other, it will not last. But that does not mean you will never find your one true love. Now, I could wrap this up nicely and say that this was a sad beautiful tragic — wink wink -, but my brain is like a perpetual motion machine and I would like to invite you, who has reached the end of this text, to think with me about the possibilities of linking folklore’s the 1 and evermore’s closure to this story’s timeline, too. The 1 being told from the point of view of a now mentally healthy P2 trying to make amends with P1, who has moved on but never stopped hurting, as we hear in closure.

Let me know what you think!