Hi! Today I’m going to be explaining the unhappily ever after trio! These are three songs from Evermore, all about a regretted marriage. They are Ivy, Tolerate It, and No Body, No Crime. Ivy is about a woman who is married, but loves another. “My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand, taking mine but it’s been promised to another.” Ivy isn’t directly related to the other two, but still represents a crumbling marriage. The speaker feels as if the love is lifeless and dead. “And the old widow goes to the stone every day.” The song begins in the wintertime but then transitions into spring during the bridge. Winter is often resembles death and sorrow, such as the narrator’s current marriage while spring is associated with life and new beginnings, which can be tied to the storyteller’s love with the other man. The stakes are high and urgent and the song ends with the narrator making her choice to try to end up with the lover. Tay Tay’s next Evermore song in the Un-Happily Ever After Trio is Tolerate It, iconically preformed in the Eras Tour. The meaning of this song is pretty self-explanatory. The narrator does all she can to love and care for her husband but all he gives her in return is toleration. He doesn’t treat her how she should and it’s a one-sided marriage with only one loving partner. The woman sets the table perfectly, cleans the house until it’s spotless, and waits for her husband to come home, only getting unfaithfulness in return. Towards the end of the song she threatens to leave him, representing another marriage gone wrong. This leads us into the second half of the story and last song in the trio; No Body, No Crime. Taylor teams up with Haim and tells the story of Este, a woman who suspects her husband of cheating, just like in Tolerate It! Este can’t prove it though and eventually disappears. The husband moves in with his mistress, and the narrator, Este’s friend is certain the husband killed Este, but she has no way to prove it. The narrator avenges Este by getting revenge and killing the husband! She covers up the crime with help from Este’s sister, and the mistress just took out a huge life insurance policy, and everyone thinks she did it! But with no body, there’s no crime, and the rest remains a mystery.
