Is It Over Now? (From The Vault)

In the reviews of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), “Is It Over Now?” received standout compliments from music critics. Insider Inc.’s Callie Ahlgrim, Ed Power of i and The Line of Best Fit‘s Kelsey Barnes ranked it as the best vault track. Ahlgrim praised the rhetorical and existential tone of the lyrics, Taylor’s fast-paced and “urgent” vocals, and Antonoff’s production, and opined that Taylor’s lyric on suicidal ideation (“I think about jumping off of very tall somethings”) was “real”. Power felt the song is a “spiritual sequel” to “I Knew You Were Trouble.” (2012). Jeff Nelson of People dubbed “Is It Over Now?” a cross between “Out of the Woods” (2014) and “Labyrinth” (2022), musically. Barnes wrote, the song “truly is a paragon of Swift’s knack for narrative building—perfectly encapsulating the essence of the original 1989 and weaving it through its rerecorded twin.”

To Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph, “Is It Over Now?” is the vault track that can compete with the original 1989 singles. He called the song’s chorus “masterful” and Taylor a “world class lyricist” for her knack in writing “snappy couplets [that] never come at the expense of emotional truth”. Alex Berry of Clash called the song one of Taylor’s most introspective works to-date, featuring an “evocative and engaging” music production. Billboard executive Jason Lipshutz described the song as a soaring “storytelling exercise” with “instantly relatable” characters and circumstances. NME critic Hollie Geraghty said that the song “stings” with resentment and confessions to Taylor’s “toxic impulses”.

Shaad D’Souza of Pitchfork wrote that lyrics such as “You dream of my mouth before it called you a lying traitor” are “an instant addition to Swift’s already-heaving canon of perfect last words.” Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, in the Financial Times, noted that “Is It Over Now?” has the heavy 1980s drums and synthesizers characteristic of 1989 and interpreted the final lyrics of the song (“But no”) as an indication that the “misbegotten relationship” ultimately failed. Lauren Huff at Entertainment Weekly and Dylan Kickham of Elite Daily saw the track as the answer to the questions asked in “Out of the Woods”, “providing insight” into the “ill-fated” romance.