What every Taylor Swift song in The Summer I Turned Pretty says about the show's love triangle

Now that season two has wrapped, let's dig into how Swift's tracks in the series (all 13 of them!) shed light on this coming-of-age story

By Lauren Chval | August 18, 2023 | 7:05am

TV Features The Summer I Turned Pretty

What every Taylor Swift song in The Summer I Turned Pretty says about the show's love triangle

Lola Tung (Photo: John Merrick/Prime Video), Taylor Swift (Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management), and Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno (Photo: Erika Doss/Prime Video) Graphic: Rebecca Fassola

[Editor’s note: This piece contains spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty.]

What music would you use to score a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl caught in a love triangle between two brothers? You know the right answer: Taylor Swift. Longing, angst, love, heartbreak, romanticism … Swift is uniquely gifted at tapping into the universal experiences that have made her Eras Tour a record-breaking phenomenon.

The Summer I Turned Pretty traverses all those feelings, too, as its heroine Belly Conklin (Lola Tung) comes of age and finds herself torn between the affections of Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). Conrad has the edge as Belly’s longtime crush, but Jeremiah gets his foot in the door by being more emotionally available than his brooding older brother.

The show has used a whopping 13 Swift songs over its run, with two of them featured prominently in the season-two finale that dropped on August 18. When you add that the series’ most recent trailer boasted both “august” and “Back to December (Taylor’s Version),” it’s clear that the Swift and TSITP brands (and fandoms) are closely linked. And that’s not by accident. TSITP creator and showrunner Jenny Han may be the biggest Swiftie out there, and the connection between her story and Swift goes back more than a decade.

See, when Han was working on The Summer I Turned Pretty novel trilogy in the late aughts, Fearless was the soundtrack of her writing process. “When I write books, I like to listen to music to help me see the emotional vein of the story and her music really did that with me for the series,” she told E!.

Now, Swift’s songs are the soundtrack of some of Belly’s biggest moments. Every time the opening notes begin to play over a scene, you can feel the emotional stakes being raised. But as I watched the second season, I began to notice a pattern. Were all these emotional moments with Conrad? Was Han tipping her hand to the end game of the story by pairing her favorite love interest with her favorite artist? I decided to embark on a deep dive analysis to find out. (Please note: I have not read the books, so all of the arguments I make here are based purely in the world of the show. )

“Cruel Summer” (season 1, episode 1, “Summer House”)

Taylor Swift - Cruel Summer (Official Audio)

How could we kick off a summer show without Swift’s summer anthem? Just two minutes into the series premiere, Belly is packing for her summer in Cousins while her best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer—not Swift) lounges on her bed. Playing ever-so-softly on the radio is “Cruel Summer.” It’s hard to catch the lyrics under Belly and Taylor’s conversation, which turns from clothes to Conrad when Taylor asks Belly to share her summer wish. “You want a hot makeout with Conrad Fisher!” she teases. “It doesn’t matter what I do, he doesn’t see me that way,” Belly replies, as the iconic bridge to the song begins: “I’m drunk in the back of the car / And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar / Said, ‘I’m fine,’ but it wasn’t true / I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you!” But Taylor pushes back. “Oh, he’ll see you, whether he wants to or not. You look a lot different than last summer.” She turned pretty!Already, Taylor Swift is connected to Conrad. And those lyrics, which pack an emotional and dizzying punch, foreshadow all the drama that’s to come between Belly and Conrad.

“Lover” (season 1, episode 1, “Summer House”)

This is a big one. The notes to “Lover” begin to play before Conrad is even on screen. Belly has turned to see something, someone, and we can see from her face that this someone is important. We cut to Conrad, and as he looks up and meets Belly’s gaze, the motion slows. He smiles. The lyrics: “And there’s a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear / Have I known you 20 seconds, or 20 years?” Conrad is familiar but unknowable, all she wants and yet constantly confusing to her. He walks to Belly, the music still playing under them, and says, “I liked you better with glasses.” The music cuts instantly, his harsh words shattering Belly’s fantasy. She recovers. “Too bad. I like me better without them.”

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“False God” (season 1, episode 4, “Summer Heat”)

Taylor Swift - False God (Official Audio)

Swift’s music doesn’t return for a few episodes as Belly begins a relationship with Cam (David Iacono) while still finding Conrad’s new brooding personality frustrating. In episode four, she gets drunk on the Fourth of July and confronts Conrad about the infinity necklace she found in his drawer, which flusters him. She recovers from her day-drinking in record time and finds him out on the dock watching the fireworks that night. They joke a bit, but when a silence falls between them, “False God” begins to play. Conrad admits the necklace was for Belly but he was embarrassed to give it to her. “Belly, you don’t know the effect you have on people.” “Yeah, you do,” he says softly, and then the lyrics come in: “And you can’t talk to me when I’m like this / Daring you to leave me just so I can try and scare you / You’re the West Village / You still do it for me, babe / They all warned us about times like this / They say the road gets hard and you get lost when you’re led by blind faith / Blind faith.”They lean in to kiss, but Jeremiah, watching from the deck, sees what’s about to happen and shoots a firework in their direction, scaring them apart. Belly looks at Conrad, but he won’t meet her gaze. Once she’s turned away, he looks at her, opens his mouth to say something, but stops. They both look upset, unsure of what’s between them, unsure of how to return to the moment they just shared. The rest of the song plays as the episode fades to black and the credits roll. “But we might just get away with it … We’d still worship this love, even if it’s a false god.”Is their love the real deal? Communication is Belly and Conrad’s big issue. Even when they’re on the same page, they’re rarely honest with each other. “Daring you to leave me just so I can try to scare you” is pretty much the exact way they break up in season two.

“The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)” (season 1, episode 7, “Summer Love”)

After the near-miss kiss, Conrad freaks out about what a bad place he’s in (his mother is dying of cancer) and determines he can’t start something with Belly because he would mess it up. This is mature decision-making, but unfortunately, he carries it out in the shittiest way possible by blowing off Belly with no real explanation. When Jeremiah confesses his feelings for her, she gives in to how good it feels to have someone actually pursue her, and the two end up going to the debutante ball together.Only, at the ball, Jeremiah is just now finding out about Susannah’s (Rachel Blanchard) cancer, and he’s nowhere to be found when the big waltz number is due to happen. Belly, who has been freezing Conrad out, is standing alone on the dance floor. He sees what’s happening, rises from his seat, and we get a shot of them staring at each other, coming together in slow motion, recreating the same shot from the “Lover” scene in episode one.Immediately, “The Way I Loved You” begins playing: “I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain / It’s 2 a.m. and I’m cursing your name / I’m so in love that I acted insane / And that’s the way I loved you / Breaking down and coming undone / It’s a roller coaster kind of rush / And I never knew I could feel that much / And that’s the way I loved you.”I mean, who among us has not screamed that song in the car while thinking about an old toxic-but-hot relationship? It’s a song that might not be about something healthy or stable, but it’s paying tribute to unrestrained feeling, which is what brings Belly and Conrad together despite all the very legitimate reasons to stay apart.

“This Love” (season 1, episode 7, “Summer Love”; season 2, episode 1, “Love Lost”)

In the aftermath of everyone finding out about Susannah’s cancer (a truly devastating scene), Belly and Conrad find themselves on the beach. “Belly, I’m sorry for being so shitty all summer,” he says as “This Love” fades in. She wishes he had told her what he was going through, and he says he tried. Swift sings: “Tossing, turning / Struggled through the night with someone new … Flickered in the night, only you / But you were still gone, gone, gone.” Conrad is on the verge of a confession, but Belly says she doesn’t want to hear it. He tells her he needs her, he wants her. The song: “You showed up just in time.”As they finally share their first kiss (after her first kiss with his brother!): “This love is good / This love is bad / This love is alive and back from the dead.” Jenny Han, you mastermind! A perfect soundtrack to the moment they finally admitted their feelings and Belly tried and failed to stomp hers out.This song also quietly plays again in the premiere of season two. In a flashback, Conrad and Belly walk back from this conversation on the beach to the house, agreeing to be together in spite of Belly’s confession that she had kissed Jeremiah. By the end of season one, for those keeping score at home, Taylor Swift has scored the first time Conrad comes up in conversation, the first time Belly sees him that summer, the first time they almost kissed, their dance at the ball, and their actual first kiss. Not a single Jeremiah scene to speak of.

“Last Kiss (Taylor’s Version)” (season 2, episode 1, “Love Lost”)

One thing about Jenny Han is that she’s going to get access to Taylor Swift’s rerecords before any of the rest of us. (This song wasn’t even in critic screeners before the show aired.) Belly is laying in bed, scrolling through old photos on her phone. First of her and Susannah, then Susannah with her boys. In voiceover, she laments how she has somehow lost all of them. Then she settles on pictures of just her and Conrad in moments we haven’t seen on screen yet—at Thanksgiving, on the snowy beach.Swift’s voice comes in once she gets to the Conrad pictures: “I still remember the look on your face / Lit through the darkness at 1:58 / The words that you whispered for just us to know / You told me you loved me / So why did you go away?”Belly puts the phone down and lays in the dark before grabbing it again. On her face, you can see uncertainty and then decisiveness as she takes the leap and calls someone. Conrad?We see the phone buzzing but not its owner. “Just like our last …” Swift sings, and the song cuts out sharply as Jeremiah comes onscreen and picks up the phone. It feels like a message: This song was for Conrad, not Jeremiah.

“Hey Stephen (Taylor’s Version)” (season 2, episode 2, “Love Scene”)

Steven (Sean Kaufman) tries to call Belly twice in this episode, and her ringtone for him is, of course, “Hey Stephen.” There’s not a lot to say about this except that Steven is a loyal member of Team Conrad.

“Invisible String” (season 2, episode 2, “Love Scene”)

If you were expecting “Snow On The Beach” to play while Conrad and Belly frolicked in, well, snow on the beach, you aren’t alone. After seeing the snowy beach in the trailer, lots of fans thought that would be the case. Han told she understood the expectation, but that “Invisible String” matched the moment better. “If you really listen to those words, it just fits because we’re going back and forth in the present and the past, and it fits in both timelines,” Han said. “There’s something about the lyrics of, ‘Time, mystical time, cutting me open then healing me fine / Were there clues I didn’t see?’ about looking back on that moment. It’s a really wonderful memory.”Reader, when the first notes of the song began to play as Belly and Conrad rushed out of the beach house and into the snow, I gasped. “Cold was the steel of my ax to grind for the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents” is one of the most potent lyrics about what it means to grow up. The song is nostalgic, simultaneously joyful and devastating, heavy and light. The scene cuts between that memory, and Belly and Jeremiah coming into the beach house in the present to find Conrad. “Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven.” Belly’s journey with Conrad has been hell and it will continue to be hell. Season two is very focused on her returning to and growing her connection with Jeremiah, but how could you use this song without explicitly saying that Conrad and Belly will always be tied together?

“Sweet Nothing” (season 2, episode 4, “Love Game”)

One of Swift’s sweetest and least complicated songs scores another Belly-Conrad flashback. After Belly beats him at the boardwalk basketball game, we go back in time to when he won her Junior Mint when she was 13. Belly calls it “the first time I ever had my heart broken,” because he invited her to the boardwalk but he wanted to talk to another girl.“They say the end is coming / Everyone’s up to something / I find myself running home to your sweet nothings.” The memory is tinged with innocence and sadness, seeping into the present. In both scenes, Belly acts like she prefers the giraffe toy to Junior Mint. But ultimately, we know how much Junior Mint meant to Belly. In the pilot, when she first enters her room at the summer house, she greets the stuffed animal affectionately. Jeremiah comes in, flops on her bed, and says, “I can’t believe you still have that bear.” “Duh,” Belly replies. “I could never throw away Junior Mint.”

“Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” (season 2, episode 6, “Love Fest”)

Okay, here’s where we get into it. You may have noticed that up until now, no Swift song has applied to a Jeremiah scene. But here, in the sixth episode of season two, Han breaks her rule in a big way. As Jeremiah muses this might be their last day in the beach house before it’s sold, Belly puts her arms around him and brings them both down into the pool, the site of their first kiss in season one.“Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” plays as soon as they hit the water. First of all, Swift’s rerecording of Reputation hadn’t even been announced yet, and somehow Han managed to get her version of the song into the show. Secondly, “Delicate” is Han’s absolute favorite Swift song, as she shares . What does this mean?! Taylor Swift purely applied to Conrad until this point, and now she drops her absolute favorite song into a Belly and Jeremiah moment?“Sometimes I wonder, when you sleep / Are you ever dreaming of me? … ’Cause I like you / Is it cool that I said all that? / Is it chill that you’re in my head? / ’Cause I know that it’s delicate.”The subject matter applies; the situation between Belly and Jeremiah is delicate, considering she hurt him badly before and she’s still processing her breakup with his brother. But I get caught on the lyric “’Cause I like you.” Crucially, it’s not “I love you.” Even before they got together, all of Belly’s songs for Conrad were about love (“Lover,” “The Way I Loved You,” “This Love”). Han is giving Jeremiah just enough weight to feel important while still keeping him a rung below Conrad.

“Snow On The Beach” (season 2, episode 6, “Love Fest”)

Taylor Swift - Snow On The Beach (Lyric Video) ft. Lana Del Rey

We got “Snow On The Beach” eventually. Belly and Conrad have their most emotional, desperate conversation yet. Belly says if she had known Conrad had pleaded with Jeremiah so they could be together, she would have known how much he cared and she would have fought for their relationship. Conrad’s anguished, “I thought you knew, I thought you knew! From the moment we kissed on the beach, I thought you knew!” hurts my soul. This poor boy is just doing his best.“I thought we loved each other,” Belly says tearfully. “We did,” Conrad replies. (The answer is “We do.” You clearly still do!) The opening notes of the song come in as Belly says, “I guess not enough.” The beginning of the song plays over Steven and Taylor finally getting together after flirt-fighting all season, but the chorus comes back in earnest when Belly stumbles back up from the beach to the house and sees the havoc their party is causing. Even as she moves through the crowd toward Jeremiah, she can’t help but look back at Conrad, and then they both turn away from her. “It’s coming down, it’s coming down, it’s coming down.”

“Bigger Than The Whole Sky” (season 2, episode 8, “Love Triangle”)

Taylor Swift - Bigger Than The Whole Sky (Lyric Video)

In the season-two finale, Belly and the boys find themselves stuck in a motel during a storm, and shit is tense after Conrad walks out of his exam to find Belly and Jeremiah making out against his car. Belly lays in the motel bed, Jeremiah and Conrad sleeping on the floor to either side of her, wracked by the impossibility of her situation. Conrad has just told her he still wants her, and Jeremiah is expecting her to let him down again.In this moment, we flash back to the last time Belly saw Susannah alive. Wearing a pretty dress and Susannah’s pearls, Belly visits her in the Boston house following her breakup with Conrad. She’s clearly terrified to see Susannah so weak and tired, to face the inevitability of her death.Together on Susannah’s bed, they talk about her breakup with Conrad, which Belly dismisses as not important. “It is important. It’s the most important, because you’re important,” Susannah corrects her. She asks Belly not to let Conrad push her away. “He needs you. He loves you, you know.” Belly shakes her head. “No, he doesn’t.” And as Susannah whispers, “He does,” Swift’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky” comes in.It’s a heartbreaking song about loss, and it plays quietly over their conversation until Susannah asks Belly to look after Conrad. “You won’t need me to look after him. You’ll be here to do it.” The lyrics come in more loudly: “’Cause it’s all over, it’s not meant to be / So I’ll say words I don’t believe / Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye / You were bigger than the whole sky / You were more than just a short time…”Jeremiah enters, sees Belly with his mom, and retreats, saying he’ll be back later. Conrad was the subject of the beginning of the scene, but Jeremiah comes in at the end, technically making this the second Swift scene he’s featured in. “You’ll come back to each other, I promise,” Susannah says after he leaves. “Me and Jere, or me and Conrad?” Belly asks her. “All of you. To each other.”Susannah’s predicted ending is the only happy one: a future in which Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah are all in each other’s lives. Only one person can be the final choice, but the other has to be there too.