Taylor Swift’s 1989 - Who Are The Songs About?

Taylor Swift’s 1989 - Who are the songs about?

I’ve seen some debate about this matter so I’m posting some of the things I’ve noticed from Taylor’s interviews / Listening Sessions just to clarify this matter. Reposting from my old post with some added quotes.

GLAMOUR UK, NOV 2013 INTERVIEW

Interviewer: So “Harry Styles: The Truth” album is on its way? Taylor: “Well, an album is supposed to be a chapter in a musician’s life…And sometimes you have to wait for the book to be written.”

1. Blank Space:  

“I was on a boat once and I came up with the line ‘so its going to be forever, or its going to go down in flames’ and I didn’t use it for about a year until I was writing Blank Space and I was like ‘OH!” - She was talking about that time she broke up with Harry on a cruise in British Virgin Islands.

2. Wish You Would:

“There’s “I Wish You Would,” about an ex who bought a house two blocks from hers (whom she implies was Styles)” - Rolling Stones interview, 2014.

“Okay so this is an idea called “I Wish You Would”. It’s kind of about this guy who’s like, he’s driving down the street at the middle of the night and he passes his ex-girlfriend’s house and it’s like, he thinks she hate him, but she’s still in love with him, very dramatic. This track is sick, hope you like this.” - Taylor’s voice memo in the 1989 Deluxe album

“oh, some extra info on IWYW. cant remember if ive already shared this, if i have im sorry, if i havent then here. taylor wrote that after a couple of months after her and harry broke up, and they decided to become friends again, and she said this was the first time she had become friends with an ex to the point where they were comfortable enough to talk about why the relationship didnt work out. and he said how, after they broke up, he bought a house literally one road adjacent to hers. and every day he would drive home, and accidentally turn into her street, and told her how he just wanted to stop at her house and see her, but he never did. and she said this song is about while he was in the car making the decision to get out the car and see her, she was sitting in her bedroom, wishing he would make the move and go back to her and just pitch up at her house. she compared it to a classic movie where both parties want the same thing but neither has the guts to say anything. and that’s why the song has the lyrics of “driving straight ahead”, opposed to taking the left turn to see her.“ -  Taylor’s 1989 listening party

Harry bought an LA mansion in March 2014, which is near Taylor’s house (about 7 minutes away). However, he was already staying in LA in 2013 with Jeff Azoff.

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Taylor once said this about Style, a song she definitely wrote about Harry: “I talk about in another song on the record a crooked love, which is kind of like never quite synced up right.”

The other song that she meant was ‘I Wish You Would’ in which one part of the lyrics of the song says: “We’re a crooked love in a straight line down.”

Therefore both ‘Style’ and ‘I Wish You Would’ are about the same person, which is about Harry Styles.

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Harry has also referenced IWYW lyrics in his song ‘Perfect’, written about Taylor:

“And if you like midnight driving with the windows down” to Taylor’s “Windows down, you pass my street, the memories start”.

3. All You Have to Do Was Stay:  

She tweeted ‘Back In the studio’ days after she broke up with Harry. Taylor then later confirmed on tumblr that she wrote ‘All You Had To Do Was Stay’ at that studio session.

4. How You Get The Girl:

It is hinted that she wrote it when she was still with Harry.

“about how a guy broke up with his girlfriend because he is afraid of how in love he is and he wants to experience the world and date around but then he realizes what he lost and came back for it six months too late; also she said her friends’ boyfriends come and ask her from help when they do this kind of thing, and she says to follow the steps of this song” - Taylor’s 1989 secret sessions, hints at Harry.

“’How You Get The Girl’ is a song about how, you know, when we’re young, which most of my friends and most of my peers are, a lot of the time you’ll take for granted a really good relationship and let go of it and go out into the world and then realise you want it back, and this song is kind of an instruction manual for a guy who has broken up with his girlfriend and let six months go by and the lengths he’ll need to go to to get her back, and it’s not gonna be as simple as just sending a text message. It’s like, ‘S’up?’ ‘Miss you.’ That’s not gonna work (laughs). You need to do all the things in this song.” - GLAM interview, 2015, hints at Harry

5. This Love:

This song is the oldest song on the track, and the linear notes described the song with the words “Timing is a funny thing”.

Harry wrote a song about Taylor called ‘I Love You’ around the same time, where he also wrote “Maybe if I got my timing right, I wouldn’t end up alone”. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

“this is the oldest song on the record and is co-produced I believe with Nathan Chapman, and is about how she was kinda with someone who wasn’t ready so they split up but they ended up back together” - Taylor’s 1989 secret sessions, hints at Harry.

“’This Love’ is a song that I wrote fairly early on in this process, and it was the first time I started experimenting with different vocal recording styles. In this case I wanted it to sound kind of haunting, and so I sang this song differently than I’ve sung most of my other songs. I recorded it differently. You have multiple vocals going throughout the entire song. It’s about kind an experience I had where if you truly care about someone and you know they’re not ready to be in a relationship you will let them go, and it sucks to be the one has to let something go and cut someone loose when you don’t want to, but I think you have to be selfless in relationships when you know that it’s not the right time, and if you make that decision and that person is supposed to be in your life they’ll come back, and this was the way that I felt when that came back around.” - GLAM magazine, 2015. This is the only song she wrote alone and it also hints at Harry 

6. Clean:  

“Shake It Off” and “Clean” were the last two things we wrote for the record, so it shows you where I ended up mentally. “Clean” I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date—it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, Oh, I hope he’s doing well.” - Taylor in Elle magazine interview, 2015

“co-written with Imogen Heap (written when she was in London for the Red Tour and she went to her house which is two hours outside of London and is a single castle turret in the middle of this town with lots of horses and small town) and anyways it is about when she was in London and realized her ex was also there but she didn’t feel the usual sense of uneasiness and instead she felt fine and this is what this song is about” - Taylor’s 1989 secret sessions.

Harry is British, he lives in London.

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Harry has also referenced ‘Clean’ lyrics in ‘Olivia’, a song he wrote about Taylor: 

“This isn’t the stain of a red wine, I’m bleeding love” to Taylor’s “You’re all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore”

“The summertime and the butterflies all belong to your creation” to Taylor’s “When the flowers that we’d grown together died of thirst, when the butterflies turned to dust that covered my whole room.”

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