dpTaylor Swift has spent the past few days tantalising her fan base, scattering a trail of breadcrumbs that ultimately led to the reveal of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, an expanded edition of the glitzy album she unveiled last October.
The encore brings four new songs into the Showgirl fold: “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon.” And for anyone well-versed in Swiftie lore, you’ll know this isn’t her first dalliance with Babylon, the lush, long-lost jewel of the ancient world.
On evermore, Taylor conjured the Gardens of Babylon in “cowboy like me,” using the fabled wonder as a metaphor for an elusive romance: “Now you hang from my lips / Like the Gardens of Babylon.”
She again returned to the reference a few years later, co-writing and appearing on Gracie Abrams’ 2024 song “us.,” which name-checks Babylon, describing lovers and a relationship seemingly destined to crumble: “And if history’s clear, someone always ends up in ruins / And what seemed like fate becomes “What the hell was I doin’?” / Babylon lovers hangin’ lifetimes on a vine.”
So, what is up with Swift’s fascination with this ancient city? Historically, it has been imagined as a shimmering mirage of beauty, excess and grandeur that is inherently fragile and ultimately doomed.
In the hands of T. Swift, this is seemingly the perfect analogy for many of her past relationships, and we suspect this new track will be less focused on ancient ruins and more an intoxicating paradise tempered by its inevitable demise.
What Is Babylon?
Long before it became synonymous with decadence and fallen empires (or the title of Boney M’s hit song “Rivers of Babylon”), Babylon was a real city rising from the banks of the Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq.
In its heyday, it was reportedly one of the ancient world’s mecca of power, culture and innovation. Many know Babylon from its most elusive legend, the Hanging Gardens which are traditionally counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. However, unlike the Great Pyramids or the Statue of Zeus, no archaeological remains have been found, and its definitive physical location is still unknown.
The Gardens’ existence is only known through accounts which were written centuries later, their elusive history only adding to the mystery and allure, and leaving many to question whether they ever existed at all.
The most famous account places their creation under King Nebuchadnezzar II, the powerful Neo-Babylonian king who ruled from 605 to 562 BC. According to the romantic legend, the gardens were built for his wife, Queen Amytis, who yearned for the verdant landscape of her homeland. For context, Babylon was a vast and relatively arid city on the Mesopotamian plain.
So, the story goes, Nebuchadnezzar attempted to recreate the lush hills and greenery she pined for, building an extraordinary garden known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Regardless of whether the gardens were real, the legend has endured because of its fairytale-like extravagance, whereby a king transforms an arid landscape into a suspended paradise for the woman he loved.
The fall of Babylon in 539 BC was allegedly swift (get it?), when the city was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. However, its dramatic downfall only deepened the mythology surrounding the ancient city. In religious texts, Babylon is portrayed as a civilisation ultimately doomed to destruction and ruin, its fate attributed to its pride, cruelty and defiance of God.
The Meaning Of Taylor Swift’s Use Of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens have naturally become an analogy for a variety of themes, including fated relationships.
As Babylon has become known for its dazzling excess that ultimately collapsed, it’s a felicitous metaphor for relationships, fame or even an era of Swift’s life that felt magnificent to her in the moment, but ultimately couldn’t last forever.
