Everybody knows 의해 now that the riveting "Dear John," on Taylor Swift's new album, Speak Now, is about John Mayer. But did 당신 know there's also one other song on the album we can now say with certainty is also about Mayer? .
The 초 Mayer number of which we speak, "The Story of Us," is the song everybody thought was about Joe Jonas. Which is not to be confused with the one that really is about Joe Jonas, "Last Kiss." 또는 the numbers about Taylor Lautner 또는 Owl City's Adam Young..
A lot of these little confusions and mysteries are cleared up 의해 the lyric booklet for Speak Now. As usual, 빠른, 스위프트 has capitalized seemingly 랜덤 letters in the printed lyrics for each song, and as usual, the capitalizations aren't 랜덤 at all. They spell out sometimes cryptic, sometimes obvious "secret" messages, usually about who 또는 what inspired the tune. .
빠른, 스위프트 is notoriously coy about outrightly confirming any of these song subjects in interviews. She claims it's because she's shy about discussing personal issues in person and can only do it in song. But given her tendency toward transparency, I suspect it's less about reticence and really 더 많이 about the kid in her playfully coming out
One of the bigger revelations comes in the secret message that comes with "The Story of Us," a song about awkwardly avoiding an ex at an awards telecast. String together the capital letters and 당신 get: C-M-T-A-W-A-R-D-S. Which says a lot in just nine letters..
When 팬 first got wind of this song, most assumed it was about seeing Joe Jonas at the Grammys 또는 AMAs 또는 one of the other awards telecasts they've both attended since breaking up in 2008. But 빠른, 스위프트 told me that it was the last song written for Speak Now, and that she penned it right after getting 집 from the show in question. Knowing that it involved a reasonably fresh wound, I mistakenly assumed that it was really written about her and Taylor Lautner, since news accounts of the People's Choice Awards this past January described how the two managed to avoid running into one other, just weeks after their December 2009 breakup..
Turns out 당신 we all guessed wrong on this one. Per the hidden message, the "Story of Us" setting is the CMT Awards, held in Nashville just four months ago—where, 당신 may have forgotten, Mayer turned up to do a number with Keith Urban. Since the rumors about Mayer and 빠른, 스위프트 having been in a romance had been strictly speculative, he hadn't really been on anyone's minds as a likely song subject until the crashing confirmation that came in the form of "Dear John.".
Just in case there was a shadow of a doubt as to who "The Story of Us" is about, USA Today writer Brian Mansfield— trickster that he is—got 빠른, 스위프트 to confess that "Dear John" and "The Story of Us" were both inspired 의해 the same person. .
If so, what can we glean from the lyrics about her feelings? For one thing, that whenever they split, she was not at all over it 의해 June. The chorus has them on different sides of "a crowded room, and we're not speaking/And I'm dying to know/Is it killing you/Like it's killing me?" Later, she sings of "losing my mind when I saw 당신 here/But 당신 held your pride like 당신 should have held me.../Why are we pretending this is nothing?" From the sound of it, she held out the faintest of hopes for a reconciliation: "This is looking like a contest/Of who can act like they care less.../The battle's in your hands now/But I would lay my armor down/If you'd say you'd rather 사랑 than fight.".
In "Dear John," meanwhile, her armor is definitely on when she sings of the subject's "dark, twisted games" and "sick need to give 사랑 then take it away," before she triumphantly describes "shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town." But the hidden message for "Dear John" underscores the ballad's vulnerability: LOVED 당신 FROM THE VERY FIRST DAY, it says. .
So "Story of Us" is not the story of Joe and Taylor after all... but "Last Kiss" apparently is. The all-caps hidden message for that one: FOREVER AND ALWAYS.
As any 팬 knows, "Forever and Always" was the 제목 of the not-so-complimentary song 빠른, 스위프트 wrote for Jonas on her 이전 album, so there's no escaping the meaning of seeing that phrase repeated here. It may seem like a bit of a mixed message, since that 이전 Joe-themed song was 쓴, 쓰라린 and vituperative, whereas "Last Kiss" is tender, regretful, and unabashedly owns up to deeply missing that certain someone. But it would appear that maybe time has lent a gentler perspective than she perhaps had when that first deeply angry song was written. .
If the embedding of FOREVER AND ALWAYS in the "Last Kiss" is not clue enough, there are other hints in the actual details of the song. She sings about remembering how "I ran off the plane that July 9th" for a happy reunion. Hardcore archivists of Swift/Jonas lore will point out that she flew to Dallas on July 9, 2008 to sit in the audience for a Jonas Brothers show..
How does 빠른, 스위프트 still miss Jonas, if indeed that's who the song is about? Let her count the ways: "I loved how 당신 walked with your hands in your pockets/How 당신 kissed me when I was in the middle of saying something/There's not a 일 when I don't miss those rude interruptions.../All I know is that I don't know how to be something 당신 miss." .
If "Last Kiss" takes an unexpectedly sweet tone toward matters Jonas, there is nothing the slightest bit gentle about another song that tangentially involves Joe. That would be "Better Than Revenge," a wildly caustic song virtually all 팬 believe is directed at Camilla Belle, whom Jonas reportedly broke up with 빠른, 스위프트 to be with in '08. The hidden message in this raging rocker about a boyfriend-pilferer: 당신 THOUGHT I WOULD FORGET..
The rea giveaway hints here are in the lyrics. The line "She's an actress" could be taken figuratively... 또는 could be taken literally. The aside about "vintage dresses" could refer to Belle's known style sense. But the kicker is the coda, where 빠른, 스위프트 sings "C'mon, show me how much better 당신 are." This has a special resonance in Jonas/Swift lore, because the Jonas Brothers recorded a song called "Much Better" in 2009 that was widely read as being a mean-spirited dig at how superior Belle was in comparison Swift. ("Now I'm done with superstars/And all the teardrops on her guitar," Joe sang at the time. "Now I see everything I need/Is the girl in front of me/She's much better.") When 빠른, 스위프트 sings that she "always gets the last word," she means it..
Given how "Last Kiss" establishes that 빠른, 스위프트 may not have gotten completely over Jonas after all, it may not be a stretch to imagine that "Haunted" was inspired 의해 him, too. The secret message for that one doesn't give much away, except that the relationship that haunts her was a ways back in her past. STILL TO THIS DAY, it reads..
The jury is out on the not-so-specific "Haunted," though. Let's 옮기기 on to one that is 더 많이 easily and conclusively deciphered, then—namely, "Enchanted." Lyric booklet clue: ADAM. .
This is the big, glorious, sweeping crush song of the album. When I interviewed 빠른, 스위프트 last month, she strongly suggested that this was about an infatuation that never came to any fruition in the end. .
"That song is sort of about pining away for if you’re ever going to see someone again, walking away too early," she told me. "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on 이메일 before, but I had never met him. And meeting him, it was just this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you’re not inlove with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I just remember the glittery New York City buildings passing 의해 and then just sitting there thinking, am I ever gonna talk to this person again? It was that feeling of pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all 당신 have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will.".
Critically for our decoding mission, she also mentioned that she used the word "wonderstruck" in the lyrics deliberately, because this was a word that the guy the song was intended for used, which she found striking..
Googling reveals that Adam Young, the young man behind Owl City, is a 팬 of the word "wonderstruck," having used it at least twice in his blogs. It also just so happens that 빠른, 스위프트 danced and cheered through Young's 음악회, 콘서트 at the Bowery Ballroom last September and tweeted her enthusiasm before and after the show. .
(If only Young had picked up on Swift's hints at the time, she might have been spared getting in too deep with Mr. "Your Body is a Wonderland." Then again, we would have been denied "Dear John," so never mind.).
Let's go back to "Mine," the first single. The clue there is TOBY. We know who that almost certainly refers to—British actor Toby Hemingway, who was the male lead in her video for "Mine," and a rumored dating companion when it was being filmed—but we don't know how it could be about him, since they didn't meet until shooting the video, unless there is some sort of time travel/"I'm My Own Grandpa" scenario at work here. Most likely, 빠른, 스위프트 prefers to keep the guy who really did put his arm around her at a lake (Cory Monteith? some anonymous small-town beachgoer?) under wraps, and/or it simply became associated most with Hemingway in her mind well after it had been written. .
The hidden message for "Sparks Fly" is 더 많이 elusive: PORTLAND OREGON. That may simply refer to the first time the song was performed publicly, which, according to 팬 lore, was at a Portland show in 2008. The electrically charged boy in question? Anyone's guess. But, thanks to the song's dated lineage, we can at least rule out Mayer, Lautner, Young, and Kanye West..
Speaking of whom: "Innocent," her rumination on the guy who 스톨, 훔친 her thunder at the 2009 엠티비 Awards, comes with this message: LIFE IS FULL OF LITTLE INTERRUPTIONS..
Kanye isn't the only critic she addresses. "Mean" initially seems to be written as a kids' anti-bullying chant ("Someday I'll be big enough that 당신 can't hit me"), before it playfully reveals itself as 더 많이 autobiographical when 빠른, 스위프트 imagines the subject of the song "years from now in a bar... washed up and ranging about the same old 쓴, 쓰라린 things/Drunk and grumbling on about how I can't sing.".
Certainly there was no shortage of naysayers criticizing Swift's vocal ability after her duet with Stevie Nicks on the Grammys this year, so "Mean" could be seen as directed at any number of critical suspects. But the hidden clue makes it clearer: I THOUGHT 당신 GOT ME. This reinforces a hint in the lyrics, when 빠른, 스위프트 says "You, with your switching sides..." Those phrases in particular are seen as pointing to widely read industry blogger Bob Lefsetz, who once praised 빠른, 스위프트 through the roof. After the Grammys, he turned on her in a big way, writing: "Now, everybody knows that Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 can't sing... Did Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 kill her career overnight? I'll argue that she did... In one fell swoop, Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 consigned herself to the dustbin of teen phenoms." (Naturally, Lefsetz has already addressed the idea that "Mean" is about him in his blog.) .
Not every song is about a guy. "Speak Now," which 빠른, 스위프트 says was inspired 의해 worry over the pending nuptials of a friend, carries this aphoristic warning: 당신 ALWAYS REGRET WHAT 당신 DON'T SAY. For the plaintive "Never Grow Up," which turns from a lullaby into a clearly autobiographical song about 빠른, 스위프트 feeling alone as she spends her first night in her first apartment of her own, the message is simply: MOVED OUT IN JULY. .
"Long Live," the album capper, is a bit 더 많이 mysterious, But the line "a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world" does suggest that maybe she's celebrating the group of musicians she's taken out on the road. Also, each spread in the lyric booklet has a photograph that corresponds to one of the songs, and this particular spread includes a two-page band photo, which might indicate that the secret message FOR 당신 refers to those pictured..
Of course, The Other Taylor does not go uncelebrated on the album, as 빠른, 스위프트 uses the hidden message in "Back to December" to 확인 that it addressed... TAY. .
What's your take on the subjects of these songs? Who do 당신 think the still-mysterious "Haunted" and "Mine" were really inspired by? Do 당신 believe that "For You" is actually for you?.
The 초 Mayer number of which we speak, "The Story of Us," is the song everybody thought was about Joe Jonas. Which is not to be confused with the one that really is about Joe Jonas, "Last Kiss." 또는 the numbers about Taylor Lautner 또는 Owl City's Adam Young..
A lot of these little confusions and mysteries are cleared up 의해 the lyric booklet for Speak Now. As usual, 빠른, 스위프트 has capitalized seemingly 랜덤 letters in the printed lyrics for each song, and as usual, the capitalizations aren't 랜덤 at all. They spell out sometimes cryptic, sometimes obvious "secret" messages, usually about who 또는 what inspired the tune. .
빠른, 스위프트 is notoriously coy about outrightly confirming any of these song subjects in interviews. She claims it's because she's shy about discussing personal issues in person and can only do it in song. But given her tendency toward transparency, I suspect it's less about reticence and really 더 많이 about the kid in her playfully coming out
One of the bigger revelations comes in the secret message that comes with "The Story of Us," a song about awkwardly avoiding an ex at an awards telecast. String together the capital letters and 당신 get: C-M-T-A-W-A-R-D-S. Which says a lot in just nine letters..
When 팬 first got wind of this song, most assumed it was about seeing Joe Jonas at the Grammys 또는 AMAs 또는 one of the other awards telecasts they've both attended since breaking up in 2008. But 빠른, 스위프트 told me that it was the last song written for Speak Now, and that she penned it right after getting 집 from the show in question. Knowing that it involved a reasonably fresh wound, I mistakenly assumed that it was really written about her and Taylor Lautner, since news accounts of the People's Choice Awards this past January described how the two managed to avoid running into one other, just weeks after their December 2009 breakup..
Turns out 당신 we all guessed wrong on this one. Per the hidden message, the "Story of Us" setting is the CMT Awards, held in Nashville just four months ago—where, 당신 may have forgotten, Mayer turned up to do a number with Keith Urban. Since the rumors about Mayer and 빠른, 스위프트 having been in a romance had been strictly speculative, he hadn't really been on anyone's minds as a likely song subject until the crashing confirmation that came in the form of "Dear John.".
Just in case there was a shadow of a doubt as to who "The Story of Us" is about, USA Today writer Brian Mansfield— trickster that he is—got 빠른, 스위프트 to confess that "Dear John" and "The Story of Us" were both inspired 의해 the same person. .
If so, what can we glean from the lyrics about her feelings? For one thing, that whenever they split, she was not at all over it 의해 June. The chorus has them on different sides of "a crowded room, and we're not speaking/And I'm dying to know/Is it killing you/Like it's killing me?" Later, she sings of "losing my mind when I saw 당신 here/But 당신 held your pride like 당신 should have held me.../Why are we pretending this is nothing?" From the sound of it, she held out the faintest of hopes for a reconciliation: "This is looking like a contest/Of who can act like they care less.../The battle's in your hands now/But I would lay my armor down/If you'd say you'd rather 사랑 than fight.".
In "Dear John," meanwhile, her armor is definitely on when she sings of the subject's "dark, twisted games" and "sick need to give 사랑 then take it away," before she triumphantly describes "shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town." But the hidden message for "Dear John" underscores the ballad's vulnerability: LOVED 당신 FROM THE VERY FIRST DAY, it says. .
So "Story of Us" is not the story of Joe and Taylor after all... but "Last Kiss" apparently is. The all-caps hidden message for that one: FOREVER AND ALWAYS.
As any 팬 knows, "Forever and Always" was the 제목 of the not-so-complimentary song 빠른, 스위프트 wrote for Jonas on her 이전 album, so there's no escaping the meaning of seeing that phrase repeated here. It may seem like a bit of a mixed message, since that 이전 Joe-themed song was 쓴, 쓰라린 and vituperative, whereas "Last Kiss" is tender, regretful, and unabashedly owns up to deeply missing that certain someone. But it would appear that maybe time has lent a gentler perspective than she perhaps had when that first deeply angry song was written. .
If the embedding of FOREVER AND ALWAYS in the "Last Kiss" is not clue enough, there are other hints in the actual details of the song. She sings about remembering how "I ran off the plane that July 9th" for a happy reunion. Hardcore archivists of Swift/Jonas lore will point out that she flew to Dallas on July 9, 2008 to sit in the audience for a Jonas Brothers show..
How does 빠른, 스위프트 still miss Jonas, if indeed that's who the song is about? Let her count the ways: "I loved how 당신 walked with your hands in your pockets/How 당신 kissed me when I was in the middle of saying something/There's not a 일 when I don't miss those rude interruptions.../All I know is that I don't know how to be something 당신 miss." .
If "Last Kiss" takes an unexpectedly sweet tone toward matters Jonas, there is nothing the slightest bit gentle about another song that tangentially involves Joe. That would be "Better Than Revenge," a wildly caustic song virtually all 팬 believe is directed at Camilla Belle, whom Jonas reportedly broke up with 빠른, 스위프트 to be with in '08. The hidden message in this raging rocker about a boyfriend-pilferer: 당신 THOUGHT I WOULD FORGET..
The rea giveaway hints here are in the lyrics. The line "She's an actress" could be taken figuratively... 또는 could be taken literally. The aside about "vintage dresses" could refer to Belle's known style sense. But the kicker is the coda, where 빠른, 스위프트 sings "C'mon, show me how much better 당신 are." This has a special resonance in Jonas/Swift lore, because the Jonas Brothers recorded a song called "Much Better" in 2009 that was widely read as being a mean-spirited dig at how superior Belle was in comparison Swift. ("Now I'm done with superstars/And all the teardrops on her guitar," Joe sang at the time. "Now I see everything I need/Is the girl in front of me/She's much better.") When 빠른, 스위프트 sings that she "always gets the last word," she means it..
Given how "Last Kiss" establishes that 빠른, 스위프트 may not have gotten completely over Jonas after all, it may not be a stretch to imagine that "Haunted" was inspired 의해 him, too. The secret message for that one doesn't give much away, except that the relationship that haunts her was a ways back in her past. STILL TO THIS DAY, it reads..
The jury is out on the not-so-specific "Haunted," though. Let's 옮기기 on to one that is 더 많이 easily and conclusively deciphered, then—namely, "Enchanted." Lyric booklet clue: ADAM. .
This is the big, glorious, sweeping crush song of the album. When I interviewed 빠른, 스위프트 last month, she strongly suggested that this was about an infatuation that never came to any fruition in the end. .
"That song is sort of about pining away for if you’re ever going to see someone again, walking away too early," she told me. "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on 이메일 before, but I had never met him. And meeting him, it was just this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you’re not inlove with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I just remember the glittery New York City buildings passing 의해 and then just sitting there thinking, am I ever gonna talk to this person again? It was that feeling of pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all 당신 have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will.".
Critically for our decoding mission, she also mentioned that she used the word "wonderstruck" in the lyrics deliberately, because this was a word that the guy the song was intended for used, which she found striking..
Googling reveals that Adam Young, the young man behind Owl City, is a 팬 of the word "wonderstruck," having used it at least twice in his blogs. It also just so happens that 빠른, 스위프트 danced and cheered through Young's 음악회, 콘서트 at the Bowery Ballroom last September and tweeted her enthusiasm before and after the show. .
(If only Young had picked up on Swift's hints at the time, she might have been spared getting in too deep with Mr. "Your Body is a Wonderland." Then again, we would have been denied "Dear John," so never mind.).
Let's go back to "Mine," the first single. The clue there is TOBY. We know who that almost certainly refers to—British actor Toby Hemingway, who was the male lead in her video for "Mine," and a rumored dating companion when it was being filmed—but we don't know how it could be about him, since they didn't meet until shooting the video, unless there is some sort of time travel/"I'm My Own Grandpa" scenario at work here. Most likely, 빠른, 스위프트 prefers to keep the guy who really did put his arm around her at a lake (Cory Monteith? some anonymous small-town beachgoer?) under wraps, and/or it simply became associated most with Hemingway in her mind well after it had been written. .
The hidden message for "Sparks Fly" is 더 많이 elusive: PORTLAND OREGON. That may simply refer to the first time the song was performed publicly, which, according to 팬 lore, was at a Portland show in 2008. The electrically charged boy in question? Anyone's guess. But, thanks to the song's dated lineage, we can at least rule out Mayer, Lautner, Young, and Kanye West..
Speaking of whom: "Innocent," her rumination on the guy who 스톨, 훔친 her thunder at the 2009 엠티비 Awards, comes with this message: LIFE IS FULL OF LITTLE INTERRUPTIONS..
Kanye isn't the only critic she addresses. "Mean" initially seems to be written as a kids' anti-bullying chant ("Someday I'll be big enough that 당신 can't hit me"), before it playfully reveals itself as 더 많이 autobiographical when 빠른, 스위프트 imagines the subject of the song "years from now in a bar... washed up and ranging about the same old 쓴, 쓰라린 things/Drunk and grumbling on about how I can't sing.".
Certainly there was no shortage of naysayers criticizing Swift's vocal ability after her duet with Stevie Nicks on the Grammys this year, so "Mean" could be seen as directed at any number of critical suspects. But the hidden clue makes it clearer: I THOUGHT 당신 GOT ME. This reinforces a hint in the lyrics, when 빠른, 스위프트 says "You, with your switching sides..." Those phrases in particular are seen as pointing to widely read industry blogger Bob Lefsetz, who once praised 빠른, 스위프트 through the roof. After the Grammys, he turned on her in a big way, writing: "Now, everybody knows that Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 can't sing... Did Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 kill her career overnight? I'll argue that she did... In one fell swoop, Taylor 빠른, 스위프트 consigned herself to the dustbin of teen phenoms." (Naturally, Lefsetz has already addressed the idea that "Mean" is about him in his blog.) .
Not every song is about a guy. "Speak Now," which 빠른, 스위프트 says was inspired 의해 worry over the pending nuptials of a friend, carries this aphoristic warning: 당신 ALWAYS REGRET WHAT 당신 DON'T SAY. For the plaintive "Never Grow Up," which turns from a lullaby into a clearly autobiographical song about 빠른, 스위프트 feeling alone as she spends her first night in her first apartment of her own, the message is simply: MOVED OUT IN JULY. .
"Long Live," the album capper, is a bit 더 많이 mysterious, But the line "a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world" does suggest that maybe she's celebrating the group of musicians she's taken out on the road. Also, each spread in the lyric booklet has a photograph that corresponds to one of the songs, and this particular spread includes a two-page band photo, which might indicate that the secret message FOR 당신 refers to those pictured..
Of course, The Other Taylor does not go uncelebrated on the album, as 빠른, 스위프트 uses the hidden message in "Back to December" to 확인 that it addressed... TAY. .
What's your take on the subjects of these songs? Who do 당신 think the still-mysterious "Haunted" and "Mine" were really inspired by? Do 당신 believe that "For You" is actually for you?.