Aaron Dessner, who collaborated on the production of folklore, said this is me trying “… relates to the entire album. Maybe I’m reading into it too much from my own perspective, but [I think of] the whole album as an exercise and working through these stories, whether personal or old through someone else’s perspective. It’s connecting a lot of things. But I love the feeling in it and the production that Jack did. It has this lazy swagger.”

On a conversation with Jack Antonoff for folklore: the long pond studio sessions, they said this:

Taylor:

I’d been thinking about addiction and I’d been thinking about people who, if they’re either suffering through mental ilness, addiction or they have an everyday struggle. No one pats them on the back every day but every day they’re actively fighting something. There are so many days that nobody gives them credit for that, so how often somebody who is going through that kind of struggle must wanna say to everyone in the room, “you have no idea how close I am to going back to a dark place.”

Jack:

Or “you have no idea how hard it is to get to the point where you guys think is still shitty.” I think about that a lot. The idea of doing your best, or trying, is one that only a person knows, and you know when you’re doing it. And it’s so hard, which is what I get from that song, when you’re doing your damn best and it’s not good enough, and it rarely is. But it’s a very isolating feeling, which I think is funny ‘cause it’s actually the thing that binds all of us 'cause we’re all doing our best and feeling like it’s not even close to good enough.

Taylor:

I had this idea that the first verse would be about someone who is in sort of a life crisis and has just been trying and failing in their relationship, has been messing things up with people they love, has been letting everyone down, and has driven to this overlook, this cliff, and is just in the car going “I could do whatever I want in this moment and it could affect everything forever”, but this person backs up and drives home.

Jack:

I love that, the idea that not driving off the cliff is an act of trying, which is almost the ultimate act of trying.

Taylor:

And the second verse is about someone who felt like they had a lot of potential in their life. I think there are a lot of mechanisms for us in our school days, in high school or collage, to excel and to be patted on the back for something and I think a lot of people get out of school and there are less abilities for them to get gold stars. Then, you have to make all these decisions and you have to pave your own way, there’s no set class course you can take and I think a lot of people feel swept up in that. So I was thinking about this person who is really lost in life and then starts drinking and every second is trying not to.

By the time we get to This Is Me Trying, with an almost frantic slam poetry conclusion, we’re back in the gentle groove.

–Emma Kelly for Metro

Swift seems off her metaphor game in the ungainly “Cardigan,” but she’s utterly on point in this mournful orchestral-pop dirge: “You’re a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town,” she sings — as sharp a rendering of regret as any we’ve heard from her.

–Mikael Wood for LA Times

Ahlgrim: “This Is Me Trying” quickly strikes a more sinister tone than its predecessors — still nostalgic and wistful, but carrying an edge, like a threatening secret.
Larocca: I’m glad she was strategic about her use of echo and also finally paid attention to the tracklisting from a sonic standpoint. This haunting soundscape is reminiscent of 2014’s “This Love” and comes in right when you need it after the yearning daydream of “August.”

–Callie Ahlgrim and Courteney Larocca for Insider

Though the sounds may be different on folklore, Taylor’s concise couplets are in signature form. “They told me all of my cages were mental/So I got wasted like all my potential,” she sings on the “this is me trying,” a cinematically ‘80s anthem for doing the best you f*cking can.

– P. Claire Dodson for Teen Vogue