Who Are Taylor Swift's “1989” Songs About? What She Has Said About the Inspirations

Taylor Swift has released '1989 (Taylor's Version)' and it has fans buzzing (again!) about the meaning behind the songs' lyrics

Taylor Swift is reentering her 1989 era with the release of her rerecorded version of the album.

Originally released on Oct. 27, 2014, Swift’s fifth studio album was a major transitional moment in the singer’s career. Inspired by her move to New York City and various relationships during that period in her life, the album also marked her first full-fledged pop album as she transitioned from country music.

“The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways,” Swift wrote on Instagram as she announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Additionally, she referred to the new album as her “most FAVORITE re-record” thanks to the “insane” five vault songs. “I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long!” she added.

Over the years, Swift has shared a few details about the inspirations behind her 1989 hits, from “shaking off” the naysayers to parodying the public’s perception of her dating life.

From “Style” to “Bad Blood,” here’s everything Swift has said about the inspirations behind her 1989 songs.

"Welcome to New York"

After moving to New York City in early 2014, Swift was inspired to write a song about the Big Apple for her 1989 album. “I wanted to start the album with this song because New York has been an important landscape and location for the story of my life in the last couple of years,” she told Good Morning America. “I dreamt about moving to New York. I obsessed about moving to New York and then I did it.”

“The inspiration that I found in that city is kind of hard to describe and hard to compare to any other force of inspiration I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she continued. “I approached moving there with such wide-eyed optimism and sort of saw it as a place of endless potential and possibilities. You can kind of hear that reflected in this music and this first song especially.”

"Blank Space"

Swift’s hit song “Blank Space” was written in response to media scrutiny surrounding her dating life at the time. “[From] 2012 to 2013, they thought I was dating too much because I dated two people in a year and a half, but whatever – we’ll leave it there,” Swift told NME. “‘Oh, a serial dater. She only writes songs to get emotional revenge on guys. She’s a man hater. Don’t let her near your boyfriend.’ It was just kind of excessive and, you know, at first it was hurtful and then I kind of found a little comedy in it.”

Though Swift noted that the way “gossip websites” described her was “so opposite my actual life,” she decided to lean into the character for the song’s music video. “Half the people got the joke,” she explained. “Half the people really think that I was really owning the act that I’m a psychopath, which is fine. Either one is fine as long as they know the semblance of the words, even if they’re incorrect.”

"Style"

Swift’s single “Style” is largely rumored to be about her relationship with Harry Styles. Not only does the song’s title seemingly reference the singer’s last name, but the lyrics appear to reference various One Direction projects such as their song "You & I," and their second studio album, Take Me Home.

During an appearance on On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Swift delved deeper into the song's inspiration, noting that it was about “one of those relationships that’s always a bit off.”

“The two people are trying to forget each other and they both [have] been out with other people and they both tried to forget the other,” she explained. “And so it’s like, ‘Alright, I heard you went off with her and you came back and well, I’ve done that too.’”

When Seacrest tried to press further about how she heard about the romantic interest "being with someone else,” Swift played coy, noting that if she answered that question, “we’ll be talking about an individual person and people will write headlines about it.”

She concluded, “This song is about my life … but the song kind of speaks for itself.”

"Out of the Woods"

In addition to “Style,” Swift’s song “Out of the Woods” is rumored to be about Styles and the headlines their relationship made at the time.

“It just kind of conjured up all these feelings of anxiety I had in a relationship where everybody was watching, everybody was commenting on it,” Swift said of the inspiration behind “Out of the Woods.”

“You’re constantly just feeling like, ‘Are we out of the woods yet? What’s the next thing gonna be? What’s the next hurdle we’re gonna have to jump over? Are we gonna make it to next week?’ It was interesting to write about a relationship where you’re just honestly like, ‘This is probably not gonna last, but how long is it gonna last?’”

Swift expanded on the song’s meaning in a video shared on her YouTube channel, saying it was about a relationship where you “never feel like you’re standing on solid ground.” She added that the song is meant to capture “that frantic feeling of anxiety and questioning.”

"All You Had to Do Was Stay"

Though Swift hasn’t revealed who exactly the song is about, she confirmed it was inspired by a dream she had about an ex during an interview with GQ.

"I had a dream that my ex showed up at my door, knocked at my door, and I opened it up, and I was about ready to launch into the perfect thing to say," she explained of the song’s inspiration.

"Instead, all that would come out of my mouth was that high-pitched chorus of people singing, 'Stay!'...and then you go to say something else, and it's just like 'Stay! Stay! Stay!' And I woke up, I was like 'Oh, that was mortifying. But that's kind of a cool vocal part.'"

"Shake It Off"

“Shake It Off” served as the first single from 1989, which Swift debuted during a Yahoo live stream. During a sitdown with ABC News, Swift noted that she wrote the song in response to the media scrutiny she received during her rise to fame.

“We don’t live just in a celebrity takedown culture, we live in takedown culture,” she said. “You have to not only live your life in spite of people who don’t understand you, you have to have more fun than they do.”

"I've had every part of my life dissected ... When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches,” she explained to Rolling Stone in another interview. “And when one lands, you know how to deal with it. And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off."

"I Wish You Would"

In a video shared on her YouTube channel, Swift noted that "I Wish You Would" was the first song she ever wrote with Jack Antonoff and was meant to convey a “John Hughes movie visual” of two people pinning over each other but neither one confessing their feelings for each other.

“I had this happen in my life and so I kind of wanted to narrate it in a very cinematic way where it’s like they’re seeing two scenes play out.” She added that the relationship portrayed is a “dramatic love that’s never quite where it needs to be and that tension that that creates.”

Fans have theorized that the song is also about Styles, because Swift previously compared the lyrics of “Style” to “I Wish You Would,” telling Ryan Seacrest that they were both about relationships that were not "synced up."

"Bad Blood"

During a cover story with Rolling Stone in 2014, Swift teased that the song was about a fellow female pop star who “tried to sabotage an entire arena tour” by hiring “a bunch of people out from under me.”

At the time, fans quickly assumed Katy Perry was the inspiration (the two were touring around the same time, and several dancers had worked for both of them), and the “Hot N Cold” singer seemingly addressed the rumors when she tweeted, “Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing" following the story’s publication.

A year later, Swift reflected on the song’s inspiration even further during a sitdown with Rolling Stone. “You sit there, and you know you’re on good terms with your ex-boyfriend, and you don’t want him — or his family — to think you’re firing shots at him,” she explained. “So you say, ‘That was about losing a friend.’ And that’s basically all you say. But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant.”

Their feud continued until May 2018, when the “Look What You Made Me Do” singer revealed that Perry had extended a literal olive branch along with a handwritten note. In June 2019, the two publicly made up as Perry posted a plate of cookies that read “Peace at last” written in frosting, tagging Swift in the post. The duo later shared a hug in Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video, quashing their beef, once and for all.

"Wildest Dreams"

There has been much speculation about the inspiration behind “Wildest Dreams,” with names from Styles to Swift’s The Giver costar Alexander Skarsgård being mentioned, however, she hasn't weighed in. Instead, she told NPR that the song reflected her new approach to writing about personal heartbreak.

“In the past, I've written mostly about heartbreak or pain that was caused by someone else and felt by me,” she explained. “On this album, I'm writing about more complex relationships, where the blame is kind of split 50-50. I'm writing about looking back on a relationship and feeling a sense of pride even though it didn't work out, reminiscing on something that ended but you still feel good about it, falling in love with a city, falling in love with a feeling rather than a person.”

“If I meet someone who I feel I have a connection with, the first thought I have is: ‘When this ends, I hope it ends well. I hope you remember me well,’” she continued. “Which is not anything close to the way I used to think about relationships. It's that realization that it's the anomaly if something works out; it's not a given.”

"How You Get the Girl"

While many of Swift’s 1989 songs are about her own relationships, she previously insinuated that “How You Get the Girl” was inspired by a close friend’s heartbreak. (Based on the timing of the song’s release, fans have theorized the song could be about Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber’s on-and-off-again relationship.)

“‘How You Get the Girl’ is a song that I wrote about how when we’re young, which most of my friends and most of my peers are, a lot of the time, we take for granted a really good relationship and let go of it and go out into the world and then realize that you want it back,” Swift said during her 1989 Secret Session with iHeartRadio.

“This song is kind of an instruction manual for a guy who has broken up with his girlfriend and lets six months go by and the lengths he will need to go to to get her back. It’s not gonna be as simple as just sending a text message, it’s like ‘Sup? Miss you,’ it’s not gonna work. He will need to do all the things in this song.”

"This Love"

Like many other songs on 1989, Swift explained that “This Love” is about a relationship where the timing isn't quite right. “It’s about an experience I’ve had where, if you truly care about someone and you know they’re not fully ready to be in a relationship, you will let them go,” Swift said during her 1989 Secret Session with iHeartRadio.

She continued: “And it sucks to be the one who 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 that is 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.”

"I Know Places"

During a sitdown with Grammy Pro, Swift talked about her inspiration behind “I Know Places,” noting that it was a similar love to the one featured in “Out of the Woods" (which is rumored to be about Styles).

“I had this idea of like, you know, when you’re in love — along the lines of ‘Out of the Woods’ — it’s very precious, it’s fragile,” she explained, per Billboard. “As soon as the world gets ahold of it, whether it’s your friends or people around town hear about it … it’s kind of like the first thing people want to do when they hear that people are in love is just kind of try to ruin it, if they’re not the greatest human beings.”

“I kind of was in a place where I was like, ‘No one is gonna sign up for [a relationship]. There are just too many cameras pointed at me. There are too many ridiculous elaborations on my life. It’s just not ever gonna work'," she recalled. "But I decided to write a love song, just kind of like, ‘What would I say if I met someone really awesome and they were like, hey, I’m worried about all this attention you get?’ So I wrote this song called ‘I Know Places’ about, like, ‘Hey, I know places we can hide. We could outrun them.’”

"Clean"

Speaking with Elle in 2015, Swift opened up about writing “Clean,” noting it was one of the last songs she wrote for the album. “It shows you where I ended up mentally,” she said of the track.

“‘Clean’ I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London,” she continued. “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. And nothing else.”

She added that the song was meant to capture how, as time passes, your heartbreak slowly fades. “You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was,” she said. “You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day and planning fun dinner parties and going out on adventures with your girlfriends, and then all of a sudden one day you're in London and you realize you've been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you're fine. And you hope he's fine. The first thought that came to my mind was, I'm finally clean.”

"Wonderland"

Swift hasn’t said too much about the inspiration behind “Wonderland,” which served as a bonus track on 1989. However, it’s obvious that she was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books as she makes many literary references to it, comparing a whirlwind romance to falling down a rabbit hole.

"You Are in Love"

Swift’s love song was inspired by her friend Lena Dunham’s relationship at the time with Jack Antonoff (who produced 1989).

“I wrote that song about things that Lena has told me about her and Jack,” Swift told Elle. “That's just basically stuff she's told me. And I think that that kind of relationship — God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful — would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times.”

"New Romantics"

Though the track was featured on the deluxe version of 1989, it has become a fan favorite among Swifties. Like the rest of the songs on the album, this track shows Swift’s new approach to love as she sings about being more carefree with her romantic prospects with lyrics like, “Heartbreak is the national anthem / We sing it proudly.”

"Slut!"

Just as "Blank Space" plays into the narrative surrounding Swift's dating life, "Slut!" takes a similar approach by saying she'll accept the media's branding of her as long as she gets to be with the person she loves. Interestingly enough, in a voice recording shared by Tumblr Music, Swift revealed that when it came to deciding the final track list for 1989, she chose "Blank Space" over "Slut!"

In the chorus, she echoes similar lyrics from "Style" — such as "good girl faith and a tight little skirt" — as she sings, "But if I'm all dressed up / They might as well be lookin' at us / And if they call me a slut / You know it might be worth it for once."

"Say Don't Go"

Just like the "crooked love" Swift sings about in "I Wish You Would," Swift continues that narrative by singing about a relationship that is filled with uncertainty at every turn. As she watches the relationship slowly fade, she pleads with her lover to say, "Don't go."

"Now That We Don't Talk"

Following an intense breakup, "Now That We Don't Talk" sees Swift document changes in her ex's life now that they don't talk anymore. Though it's one of Swift's shortest songs, she said on Tumblr Music that it's one of her favorite vault tracks from the album and "packs a punch." Like many of her songs, Swift hasn't delved into the inspiration too much, however, fans have clued in on various lyrics, namely, the second verse which calls out her ex's longer hair following their breakup, leading many to think the song is also about Styles.

"Suburban Legends"

From the lyrics to the production, many fans have compared "Suburban Legends" to Swift's Midnights track "Mastermind." In the 1989 vault track, Swift sings about two star-crossed lovers who just couldn't make things work in their relationship.

"Is It Over Now?"

In the final vault track of 1989, Swift reflects on a relationship coming to an end, as she constantly asks her lover, "Is it over now?" Swift told Tumblr Music that she always saw the track "as sort of a sister to 'Out of the Woods' and 'I Wish You Would,'" leading many to believe the track is about Styles.

The lyrics also make pointed references to their relationship in the second verse (Whеn you lost control/ Red blood, white snow/ Blue dress on a boat/ Your new girl is my clone), including the reported snowmobile accident referenced in "Out of the Woods," the infamous photo of her wearing a blue dress on a boat after their reported breakup and Styles' relationship with Kimberly Stewart, who bore a resemblance to Swift, shortly after the split.

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