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Taylor Swift · S3 E2
Love Story
Written in twenty minutes in the back of a car on the way to a high school football game. Her first #1 on the Hot 100.
A seventeen-year-old sits on her bedroom floor, angry about a boy her parents disapprove of, and writes a song that borrows from Romeo and Juliet but changes the ending so nobody dies. It becomes the first country song to top the pop radio chart.
"Wildest Dreams" -- Taylor Swift, official music video (2015). Taylor as a 1950s Hollywood actress in an on-location romance. Both this video and the "Love Story" video share the same instinct: Taylor telling love stories as cinema, with period costumes and a scale that matches the size of the emotion.
Wildest Dreams
Produced by Max Martin and Shellback, "Wildest Dreams" is the most cinematic pop production Taylor has ever recorded. The track opens with a heartbeat-like kick drum and a breathy vocal that sounds like a whisper in a dark theater. The chorus explodes into a wall of synthesizers that are the polar opposite of "Love Story's" acoustic simplicity, yet the songwriting instinct is identical: tell a love story so vividly the listener can see it. Listen for how Taylor delivers "say you'll remember me." It is the same emotional request as "Love Story's" core plea: don't forget this, don't forget us. The production evolves from Nashville acoustic to LA synth-pop, but the emotional engine never changes.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why did Taylor Swift change the ending of Romeo and Juliet?
The Crossover
"Love Story" is written entirely by Taylor, no co-writer, in roughly twenty minutes. Released as the lead single from Fearless on September 12, 2008, it peaks at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Hot Country Songs. The music video is filmed at Castle Gwynn in Arrington, Tennessee, and Taylor wears a Renaissance-era dress in a production that looks like a period film. The song sells over six million digital copies and crosses to pop radio without any remix. Country radio and pop radio play the exact same version.
“I wrote it in about twenty minutes. I just sat on my bedroom floor with my guitar and the whole thing came out. I think the best songs happen when you don't overthink them.”
— Taylor Swift, CMT interview, November 2008
Bonus Listening
"Hey Stephen" -- a lighter, more playful love song from the same album about flirting with a boy named Stephen. Where "Love Story" is epic and Shakespearean, "Hey Stephen" is small and specific: a girl in class who can't stop looking at someone. It proves Taylor can write romance at any scale.
"Love Story" made chart history for country music. What did it achieve that no country song had done before?
"Love Story" crosses from country to pop, but the next single crosses even further. A girl with glasses watches the popular boy through her bedroom window, and the video becomes the most-viewed country music video on YouTube. Next: "You Belong With Me," the video that turns Taylor Swift into a pop culture force.
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