So Long, London

"So Long, London" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024).

Taylor Swift started working on The Tortured Poets Department immediately after she submitted her tenth studio album, Midnights, to Republic Records for release in 2022.

[1] The album's conception took place around the time the media reported that Swift's six-year relationship with the English actor Joe Alwyn had ended.

[12] The track opens with Swift's multitracked vocals singing the title that, according to the Financial Times' Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, evoke "the ringing bells of London";[13] Cosmopolitan's Samantha Olson commented that they were reminiscent of a church choir.

[16] Jason Lipshutz of Billboard wrote that the "elastic synths sound like a shaking tightrope", while there are occasional "understated" piano and "ghostly" harmonies.

[24] The narrator eventually abandons the relationship with the lyric, "I stopped CPR, after all it's no use/ The spirit was gone, we would never come to"; Alyssa Bailey of Elle[25] and Mehera Bonner of Cosmopolitan contended that it was a reference to "You're Losing Me".

"[20] Neil McCormick from The Daily Telegraph described the track as a "sumptuously sad and gorgeous, lyrically forensic dissection of a fading romance".

[33] Lipshutz ranked "So Long, London" fourth out of the 31 tracks on the double album edition, describing the lyrics as "raw honesty".

[36] Mary Kate from The A. V. Club opined that the "CPR" imagery was repetitive from "You're Losing Me", but arguing that "this wouldn't be a detriment" had Swift allowed for more time between her "hyperproductivity" with successive album releases.

[39] When the album was released, nine of its tracks occupied the top 10 of the Billboard Global 200; "So Long, London" debuted and peaked at number four on the chart, where it extended Swift's top-10 entries to 33.