It’s that time of year again. You feel the first chills in the air, the leaves start to change, and you miraculously find yourself with a pumpkin spice latte in your hand three days in a row. You know that this can only mean one thing: it’s Red season.

If Taylor Swift’s success can partially be attributed to her expert strategy of marketing her albums as eras that embody unique aesthetics, then her branding of the album Red represents the pinnacle of her achievement. From the acoustic instrumentals on the record to the autumn-themed lyrics, she claims the entire season as her own and centers the album’s visuals around the fall color palette.

While Red is often considered to be Swift’s heartbreak album or the soundtrack to “sad girl autumn,” it contains themes far more nuanced than simply melancholia. It begins with the reverent love song ‘“State of Grace” and introduces the motif of “twin fire signs,” acknowledging from the start that “love is a ruthless game / unless you play it good and right.” Red debuts a shift in perspective from Swift, who in her early records maintained an optimistic outlook on love; in her fourth album, she establishes that she will continue to search for it, but understands the risk of getting hurt. In fact, while she spends the first three songs of the record, including the title track and the accurately titled “Treacherous,”’ romanticizing the obstacles and red flags of her love, by the fourth song and radio hit, “I Knew You Were Trouble,” she is able to reflect upon a failed relationship with the awareness that she knew that it would never work.

Where the album lacks in cohesion, and I have to admit that it does, it makes up for with its range of moods. For instance, several of her most popular songs, like “22” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” are joined in the rerecordings by upbeat pop tracks like “Message in a Bottle,” and “The Very First Night.” While 1989 is typically considered her first venture into pop music, Swift was arguably experimenting with genres long before.

On the other hand, however, I would be remiss if I analyzed Red without discussing the truly gut-wrenching stand-outs on the album. “Sad, Beautiful, Tragic” reminisces on a love that left them mutually wounded, where Swift confesses that he has “[his] demons, and darling they all [her].” Similarly, “Better Man” more scathingly reflects on a relationship with someone who did not deserve her love, and she strays from her romantic themes on “Nothing New” and “The Lucky One,” divulging her insecurities about her success being fleeting and fantasizing about running away from the spotlight.

She ties all of her heartbreak together with the closing track on the re-recorded album and one of her most acclaimed and impressive works ever: “All Too Well (10 Minute Version).” With lyrics so articulate and interconnected which tell a story that touched the hearts of enough people to land this song at #1 on the Billboard Top 100, “All Too Well” is a songwriting (and short film directing) highlight in Swift’s career. While it would take an entire blog post to even begin analyzing the lyricism on this track, I’ll leave you with one that I think is relevant to the album is a whole; during the outro of the song, she demands to know if “the twin flame bruise [painted him] blue / just between [them] did the love affair maim [him] too?” As perfect parallel with the opening of the album, this line is poignant, poetic, and loyal to the theme of the album.

Once again returning to the allusions to the fall, Taylor closes the original album on a very different note with the song “Begin Again.” It’s a song about learning to heal, trust, and love yourself and others again. If Red as a whole is the fall, “Begin Again” is the moment where the leaves, in the peak of their vibrance leave the tree and fall to the ground again. “Begin Again” is the reminder at the end of a heartbreak, once all of your feelings are processed, that things are forever changing and you can always start fresh.