Being the dedicated Swiftie I am, I was naturally keeping a close eye on last month’s Nashville Songwriter Awards (which I’d honestly never heard of), where Taylor Swift was receiving the “Songwriter-Artist of the Decade” honor. For all I knew, she could be dishing some important, can’t-miss information about her then-upcoming album Midnights!

Alas, she revealed nothing about Midnights in her acceptance speech. However, what *was* in the speech was much more interesting­. In the speech, Swift detailed three “genres” of songwriting that she categorizes her music into: “Quill Lyrics,” “Fountain Pen Lyrics,” and “Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics.” My personal favorite is the Quill genre, which is honestly best described in one word: cottagecore. Lyrics for the Quill genre include “antiquated” words and phrases, inspired by old writings and cottagecore imagery; it’s as if they were written with a quill hundreds of years ago. Swift’s folklore and evermore albums heavily incorporate songs of the Quill genre. She listed the song “ivy” from evermore as a key example of Quill:

How’s one to know
I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones
In a faith forgotten land
In from the snow, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow
Tarnished but so grand

Another exemplar of this category is a bonus track from folklore called “the lakes”:

Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die
I don’t belong, and my beloved, neither do you
Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry
…
I want auroras and sad prose
I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet

Quill is my favorite category of Swift’s songwriting because the imagery is just so mesmerizing. I listen to “ivy” and I imagine a Victorian oil painting of an 18th-century stone house, slowly being enveloped in vines of ivy as two hands reach for each other, so close yet unable to touch. I’m wrapped up in this imaginary world; I want to gaze upon it with my own eyes. Listening to Quill lyrics is like reading a *really* good classic book and becoming so engrossed in the storyline that you forget where you are while you’re reading it.

The Fountain Pen genre takes a more modern turn while retaining the poetic tendencies of Quill. It’s more narrative-driven, detailing specific events that may (or may not!) have happened throughout Swift’s life. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s basically her songwriting hallmark. You can find examples of Fountain Pen on every album of hers, from her self-titled debut album to Red to reputation. The songs in this category “sound like confessions scribbled and sealed in an envelope, but too brutally honest to ever send.” The pinnacle of Swift’s Fountain Pen lyricism can be found in the iconic “All Too Well” (and the 10-minute version) from Red:

Cause there we are again in the middle of the night
We’re dancing ’round the kitchen in the refrigerator light
Down the stairs, I was there
I remember it all too well
And there we are again when nobody had to know
You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath
Sacred prayer, and we’d swear to remember it all too well

It’s when you hear lyrics like this that you realize just how cathartic writing songs is for Taylor Swift. She’s able to recount the most subtle details and her most raw emotions in songs like “All Too Well” and “New Year’s Day” (reputation), yet keep them relatable to the listener. If you’re really going through it, there’s probably a Taylor Swift lyric you can connect with. This is further magnified by the fact that a majority of her fan base has grown up with her and “unlocks” these songs as they experience new situations/milestones. It’s a powerful feeling, unlocking yet another song in her discography that matches a situation you’re going through in real time. I know that I could *not* listen to “Never Grow Up” (Speak Now) at all during my freshman year unless I wanted to be debilitatingly homesick for at least 2 days. And don’t even get me started on “White Horse” (Fearless)…

The Glitter Gel Pen genre, as the name suggests, is colorful, buoyant, silly fun. These are the pop-friendly bangers that everyone knows—think “22” (Red), “You Belong with Me” (Fearless), and “Shake It Off” (1989). Taylor highlighted lyrics from the bridge of “Shake It Off” in her speech:

Hey, hey, hey!
Just think, while you’ve been getting down and out about the liars
And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
You could’ve been getting down to this sick beat

My ex-man brought his new girlfriend
She’s like “Oh my God!”
But I’m just gonna shake
And to the fella over there, with the hella good hair
Won’t you come on over, baby?
We can shake, shake, shake…

It’s not a lyrical masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. But let me ask you something: did the bridge start playing in your head as you read the lyrics? Did you feel the sudden urge to “get down” to that sick beat? Because that’s what Glitter Gel Pen lyrics are all about—not taking yourself too seriously; letting yourself simply have fun—which is something that a lot of us could take to heart.

Now that Midnights is out, which of these three genres would you categorize each track into?