wandering james taylor meaning

Meaning of Wandering by James Taylor

In "Wandering" by James Taylor, the lyrics portray a restless and nomadic lifestyle. The song expresses a sense of constant movement and an inability to settle down. Let's break down key lyrics and their meanings to understand the song's message:

"I've been wandering Early late From New York City To the Golden Gate"

These lines suggest that the narrator has been roaming and traveling extensively, ranging from New York City to the Golden Gate (a reference to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco). The use of "early late" indicates that this wandering has been ongoing for a long time, possibly implying a sense of aimlessness or searching for something.

"My daddy was an engineer My brother drives a hack My sister takes in laundry While the baby balls the jack"

These lyrics highlight the narrator's family background, revealing that their father was an engineer, their brother drives a cab ("hack"), their sister takes in laundry for a living, and their younger sibling engages in dubious activities ("balls the jack" refers to gambling or engaging in illicit behavior). These lines imply a working-class upbringing and perhaps suggest a heritage of instability or struggle.

"I've been in the army I've worked on a farm And all I've got to show Is the muscle in my arm"

These lines indicate that the narrator has experienced various jobs and lifestyles, including serving in the army and working on a farm. However, the narrator feels that despite their efforts, the only thing they have to show for their endeavors is physical strength ("muscle in my arm"). This could reflect a sense of disillusionment or dissatisfaction with the results of their labor.

"My ma she died When I was young My daddy took to stealing And he got hung"

These lyrics reveal a tragic family history, where the narrator's mother died when they were young, and their father turned to criminal activity ("took to stealing") and ultimately met a grim fate ("got hung"). This personal background adds another layer of hardship and loss to the narrator's life story.

"Snakes in the ocean Eels in the sea I let a redheaded woman Make a fool out of me"

These lines utilize symbolism and metaphor to express the narrator's experiences with betrayal or manipulation. The mention of "snakes in the ocean" and "eels in the sea" suggests treacherous or deceitful situations. The reference to a "redheaded woman" could represent a particular person who deceived or led the narrator astray. This imagery reinforces the theme of the narrator being caught in a never-ending cycle of disappointment and poor choices.

Overall, "Wandering" portrays a sense of restlessness, discontentment, and an inability to find stability or purpose. The lyrics draw upon themes of family, work, betrayal, and personal struggles. The song reflects the feelings of being adrift in life, constantly moving from place to place without finding a true sense of home or fulfillment. The significance lies in the exploration of how difficult circumstances and personal choices can lead to a perpetual state of wandering, both physically and metaphorically.

This meaning interpretation was written by AI. Help improve it with your feedback

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I wish this song has some comments for us to read. Love this song so much, the music behind the lyrics soothes my soul, and somehow makes me want to cry. I guess the lyrics speaks for myself too...

'coz I am too might never stop wandering my whole life.

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James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. more »

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James Taylor - Wandering Lyrics

Artist: James Taylor

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I've been wandering early and late From New York City to the Golden Gate, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. My daddy was an engineer, My brother drives a hack, My sister takes in laundry While the baby balls the jack, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. I've been in the army, I've worked on a farm And all I've got to show Is the muscle in my arm, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. My ma, she died when I was young, My daddy took to stealing and he got hung, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. Snakes in the ocean, Eels in the sea, I let a redheaded woman Make a fool out of me, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. I've been wandering early and late From the New York City to the Golden Gate, And it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering. No, it don't look like I'll ever stop my wandering.

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Why Does Taylor Swift See Herself as an Albatross?

She can’t help identifying with the notorious bird from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem.

How do you get the albatross off your neck? You know, your albatross. Your own dank collar of bird carcass, bespoke feathery deadweight of shame/rage/neurosis/solipsism/the past/whatever, the price of being you as it feels on a bad day … How do you let it drop?

In Taylor Swift’s “The Albatross”—a bonus track on her new double album, The Tortured Poets Department —the albatross is a person. A woman, to be precise. “She’s the albatross / She is here to destroy you.” Which could be a trope from some slab of 1970s misogynist boogie, Bad Company or Nazareth howling about a faithless woman and her evil ways, etc., etc., but—because this is Taylor Swift—it isn’t.

Let me quickly locate myself in the Taylorverse. I’m a “Bad Blood”/“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” guy. I like the bangers, the big tunes. Midnights was not my cup of tea: overdetermined as to lyrics (too many words), underpowered as to melodies (not enough tunes). For me, it was as if she’d taken the DNA of a maundering, heavy-breathing, medium-Swift song like Reputation ’s “Dress” and unraveled it over a whole album, abetted by the soupy skills of Jack Antonoff . But what do I know? Midnights was one of the biggest albums of all time. And now, less than two years later: The Tortured Poets Department . And: “The Albatross.”

Read: Taylor Swift is having quality-control issues

Sonically, musically, we’re in Folklore territory with this song: the strings; the wending, woodwindy vocal line; the tender electronica; the muted mood; the pewter wash of tastefulness. Chamber music, if the chamber in question has been decorated by Bed Bath & Beyond. Is there a tune? I mean, kind of. Not one you’re going to be bellowing in a toneless rapture at the wheel of your car, but it’s there.

Lyrically, however, things are more lively. There’s this woman, the albatross: a bad habit, a bad relationship, a self-ensnaring situation, a bundle of familiar negatives (“Devils that you know / Raise worse hell than a stranger”). People have warned you about this person. She’s bad news! And Swift, ever-alert to the opprobrium of the herd, cannot help identifying with her. The voice shifts to the first person: “Locked me up in towers / But I’d visit in your dreams.” Reputation -style vibes of slander and persecution are felt: “Wise men once read fake news / And they believed it / Jackals raised their hackles …” As always, the Swifties are speculating: Who’s this song for ? Who is it about? Joe Alwyn? Travis Kelce—and the warnings he got when he started dating Swift? Is she his own stubborn albatross?

By the end of the song, the singer herself has assumed the form of the albatross, and is flapping in to perform a “rescue.” “The devil that you know / Looks now more like an angel.” Embrace your shadow? Embrace your albatross? Embrace your partner with your own long-feathered and doom-laden albatross wings?

This is not how it usually goes with albatrosses.

Read: Travis Kelce is another puzzle for Taylor Swift fans to crack

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the source, the fons et origo, of the albatross metaphor. In the Rime , a sailor shoots an albatross, and brings a curse upon his ship. Why does he shoot the albatross? No reason, or none given in the poem. Maybe it’s the old existentialist acte gratuit , more than a century early: Maybe he does it because the sun is in his eyes, like Meursault in Camus’s L’Étranger . He shoots it, anyway, prangs it with his crossbow, and the wind drops, and the ship slides into a hell-sea, and the dead bird, as punishment and emblem of shame , is hung around his neck.

Back, then, to our question: How do you get rid of the albatross?

Coleridge, fortunately for us, was very clear on this: You bless the water snakes. It’s all in Part IV of the Rime . The ship is becalmed, the sea is rancid, the crew are dead, and the Mariner—albatross slung Björk-ishly around his neck—is sitting on the deck in a state of nightmare. Meaning, purpose, a following wind: all gone. Perished with his shipmates. Now he’s in a scummy realm, a realm of mere biological outlasting. “And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did I …”

But. However. And yet. With nothing else to do, with no phone to look at, he watches the slimy things as they writhe and flare in the water, super-white in the moonlight, darker and more luxuriously hued when in the shadow cast by the ship itself. And something happens. His heart opens. Or perhaps it breaks. He is mutely, selflessly stirred and awakened. With his core, from his core, he spontaneously exalts what is before him: He blesses the water snakes.

And with a complicated downy loosening, and maybe a glancing clang from its beak, the albatross—fatal baggage of a bird—falls off into the sea.

Taylor Swift is not the first musician to engage with albatrossness. There’s Fleetwood Mac’s beautiful instrumental “Albatross” from 1968—slow celestial wingbeats, bluesy exhalations over a dazzling sea. There’s Public Image Ltd’s trudging, splintering “Albatross” from 1979, interpersonal, more in the Swift vein: “I know you very well / You are unbearable.” Corrosion of Conformity’s “Albatross” is a kind of sludge-rocking, negatively charged “Free Bird”: “You can call me lazy / You can call me wrong … Albatross, fly on, fly on.”

But for the full Coleridgean thing, the full voyage, nothing beats Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The live version, preferably. This is a straight-up workingman’s adaptation of the poem, 14 minutes of galumphing rock opera, Coleridge’s words doggedly paraphrased by Maiden bassist–vision guy Steve Harris, and it succeeds spectacularly. Especially at the water-snakes moment, which the band orchestrates to perfection: a flicked and rushing pattern on the hi-hat, a trebly-warbly melodic figure on the bass, palm-muted chug-a-chug of one, then two (then three?) guitars, the tension blissfully building until Bruce Dickinson, with soaring all-gobbling theatricality, sings it out. “Then the spell starts to BREAK / The albatross falls from his NECK / Sinks down like LEAD / Into the SEA / Then down in falls comes the” [King Diamond–style infernal androgynous scream] “RAAAAAAIIN!!”

So what are the water snakes? Coleridge’s Rime is not, for me, an allegory, so the water snakes are not representing or symbolizing something. They are something. A coiling and uncoiling beautiful-terrible, playful-awful force that breaks the surface in snaky loops and flashes. Wonderfully indifferent to us, horrifyingly indifferent to us. But mysteriously in relationship with us, because it is in our eyes that these water snakes, these incandescent reptiles, these limbless creatures of the deep, are made holy. We are the ones who can bless them.

And you can’t decide to bless the water snakes, that’s the point. It’s not about gratitude. It’s not about improving your mental health. No squint of effort, no knotting or unknotting of the frontal lobes will get you there. The blessing arises by itself, or it doesn’t arise at all. Total brain bypass: a love so simple and helpless it barely even knows what it’s loving.

Read: James Parker on the Rick Rubin guide to creativity

So it becomes a question of orienting oneself to the possibility of this love. How to do it? I’m out of my depth here—which is just as it should be, for here we are in the zone of the mystics and the mega-meditators . We are full fathom five, where your feet don’t touch anything, because there’s nothing to touch. If you’re the Ancient Mariner—or perhaps if you’re addicted to opiates, as Coleridge was—you’ll have to go through it, all of it. You’ll have to be carried to the end of yourself. The blessing of the water snakes happens at the Mariner’s clinical bottoming-out: when he’s utterly isolated, on a suppurating sea, besieged by the forces of death.

The rest of us, maybe we don’t have to go—or be taken—that far. Maybe there are other, less drastic, more everyday opportunities and invitations for us to be broken down and opened up. For our grip on the albatross to be unclenched. For the love to pour through us like Iron Maiden. For the albatross itself to wrap its angelic Taylor Swift wings around your inner Travis Kelce.

One way or another, though, sooner or later, gently or with loud sunderings and burstings, it’s going to happen. Life, thank God—it’ll get you and get you again.

This article has been adapted from James Parker’s upcoming book, Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive .

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.