Hey Stephen

Today's Taylor Swift song is "Hey Stephen" from her Fearless album.

Who is this song about?

Well it's not that hard to guess the first name of the guy, it's STEPHEN (which by the way is the first name of my charming husband, except he spells it with a v.)  His full name is Stephen Barker Liles and he plays in a country music band called, Love and Theft.

Taylor tells Philadelphia magazine November 2008, "This is a guy I had a crush on. I wrote about all these reasons he should be with me instead of other girls."  In the song she says, "Hey Stephen I could give you fifty reasons why I should be the one you choose/All those other girls, well they're beautiful but would they write a song for you".  But she is too shy to tell him how she feels, "Hey Stephen, I know looks can be deceiving but I know I saw a light in you/As we walked we were talking and I didn't say half the things I wanted to."  But she can tell him in the song, " 'cause I can't help it if you look like an angel/Can't help I if I wanna kiss you in the rain so/Come feel this magic I've been feeling since I met you/Can't help it if there's no one else/I'm waiting alone now so come on and come out and pull me near."

Click here for lyrics to the song: "Hey Stephen"

Taylor tells New York Times during "Screen Test:Taylor Swift" December 9, 2009, "When I write songs I don't hesitate to put names in the songs because that's how I deal with life. I had an awesome experience with this last record, with this song called 'Hey Stephen'.  This was a guy who opened up a couple shows for me on tour.  It was just you know, talked to him a couple times, we'd hang out at catering or whatever.  It was never anything, like he would ever know that I liked him.  I don't ever confess that sort in real life, but I really do like to confess it in this fantasy music life that I get to live.  So I wrote this song called 'Hey Stephen' and I sent Stephen a text message and I was like 'Hey, track 5'."

Stephen Barker Liles on left, Taylor Swift on right

What was his reaction to the song?

Stephen tells Planet Verge, “Taylor called me up and was like, ‘Hey I wrote a song about you,’  and I got a little nervous because I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, But after hearing the song, it was definitely one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me.” 

That is not the end of the story, it seems Stephen had some reciprocal feelings for Taylor.  "You know what’s funny about that whole thing is that I actually wrote a song for Taylor at the same time that she wrote ‘Hey Stephen’ for me. So when Taylor called me [back in 2008] and told me about the song she wrote for me I actually was like ‘ That’s really funny because I wrote a song about you too,' It was a weird moment because I wasn't expecting her to say she wrote a song for me and I think it was a mutual thing on her end too, but she asked me what the words were so I only told her a little bit. I was like, ‘This world is goin’ crazy, but baby what do you say we try to make it anyway?’ And that was that.”

At first he wasn't going to release the song he wrote. He told Planet Verge, "No, but I probably should make one. It’s really one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. Taylor is such an awesome girl, and I’ve had a lot of family and friends tell me that they think I should put it out for people to hear, so I’ll have to get on that soon.” He finally released it, "Try to Make it Anyway" in 2011, he said, "Planet Verge has been good to us, this whole experience with the song was just fun too. I did the recording in the studio I have in my house and filmed the video in my backyard–in my barn actually, which my buddy Aaron Thomas helped me out with all of that. I really just love songwriting and this song has become one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written.”

Click here to hear his song, "Try to Make it Anyway".

Nothing ever happened between the two, but what a cute story.  They both made songs for each other.

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Breathe

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Breathe" from her "Fearless" album.

Taylor collaborated with Colbie Caillat on this song. Colbie's voice blends perfectly with Taylor's and adds a lot to the song.

Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillat

Who is this song about?

Album art for "Breathe", photo courtesy of taylorswift.com

From the lyrics it would seem like it was a break up song about a boy, but it is not about a boy.

"And we know it's never simple/Never easy./Never a clean break, noone here to save me./You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand/And I can't/Breathe/Without you/But I have to."

It is about a good friend of Taylor's, Emily Poe, "It's two a.m./Feelin' like I just lost a friend./Hope you know it's not easy/Easy for me".   Emily toured with Taylor for two years as her fiddle player.  It is not exactly known why she left the band, but she left it in 2008 and went to law school at the University of Tennessee.  It was hard for Taylor to see her go.

Taylor and Emily Poe

In a conversation with Colbie Caillat in the "Making of Breathe" video Taylor says:

Taylor: "It was total therapy because I came in and I was like look you know one of my best friends, I'm going to not have to see anymore and is not going to be part of what I do and it's like the hardest thing to go through.  It's crazy listening to the song because you'd think it'd be about a relationship, but it's really about losing a friend and having a fallout, just the loss."

Colbie: "It can relate to anyone, anything."

Taylor: "It does, it's never specific as to why, that's my favorite thing about it, it doesn't talk about why or who's fault it was because sometimes the hardest time of when you say goodbye it's nobodies fault. It just has to stop."

While Taylor never says exactly why it didn't work out she says it couldn't be helped, there were too many obstacles. "Never wanted this, never wanna see you hurt./Every little bump in the road I tried to swerve./But people are people/And sometimes it doesn't work out."

I can relate to Taylor. It's a subject I've thought about, but not much is written on, how best friendships are really relationships at times.  When you date a boy you can just break up, but when things don't work out with a best girlfriend, you don't just end it in the same way. I've had some friendships that just turned toxic after a while and you just have to take a breather.  No one is right or wrong, the friendship just needs to "breathe" for a minute to work out the problems. Sometimes you can be friends with the person again and sometimes it just wouldn't work out if you tried again. You just have to say goodbye.

She apologizes at the end of the song in a string of "Sorry's" which also happens to be the hidden message in the song, IM SORRY IM SORRY IM SORRY.  It is hard to say goodbye to a best friend, but sometimes it is the best thing for everyone even though it's no one's fault.

Click here for lyrics to the song, "Breathe".

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Fearless

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Fearless" from her "Fearless" album.

This song is a perfect song for the beginning of a relationship, "Well you stood there with me in the doorway/My hands shake/I'm not usually this way but/You pull me in and I'm a little more brave/It's the first kiss/It's flawless/Really something/It's fearless."  You always want to remember those first moments, "You put your eyes on me/In this moment now capture it, remember it/Cause I don't know how it gets better than this."  This person makes you want to "dance in a storm in my best dress."

Click here for lyrics to the song, "Fearless".

Who is this song about?

The lyric hint in the song is, "I LOVED YOU BEFORE I MET YOU."

Okay that was a trick question, it isn't about anyone, it's a song that Taylor wrote about what it would be like to be that in love.  Taylor says, "This is a song about the fearlessness of falling in love. No matter how many break up songs you write, no matter how many times you get hurt, you will always fall in love again. When I wrote “Fearless,” I wasn’t dating anyone. I wasn’t even in the beginning stages of dating anybody. I really was all by myself out on tour and I got this idea for a song about the best first date. I think sometimes when you’re writing love songs, you don’t write them about what you’re going through at the moment, you write about what you wish you had. So, this song is about the best first date I haven't had yet."

The lyric hint "I LOVED YOU BEFORE I MET YOU" refers to the future love of her life.  Taylor has met a lot of guys and always picks herself up again.  I had to go through a lot of duds before I found my prince charming.  Kudos to her for picking herself up again and being fearless about falling in love.  Some day you will find your prince charming Taylor!

Click here for the music video to the song, "Fearless".

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Fifteen

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Fifteen" from her "Fearless" album.

This is a very touching song, it talks about freshman year of high school, finding your first love and then they use you and don't love you back.  It makes me cry every time I listen to it.

Who is it about?

It's about Taylor and her best friend Abigail Anderson.

"I wrote this around the story line of my best friend from high school, Abigail. I started everything with the line 'Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind' and wrote everything else from that point, almost backwards. I just decided I really wanted to tell that story about our first year of high school because I felt in my freshman year, I grew up more than any year in my life so far."

Taylor Swift and Abigail Anderson

Taylor and Abigail met when she moved to Tennessee and started attending Hendersonville High School. "You sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail/And soon enough you're best friends/Laughing at the other girls who think they're so cool/We'll be out of here as soon as we can."

During the year they both dated older guys.  Taylor realized that she had bigger dreams, "When all you wanted was to be wanted/Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now/Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday/But I realized some bigger dreams of mine." "But Abigail gave everything she had to a boy/Who changed his mind/'cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you/You're gonna believe them."

Click here for the lyrics to the song, "Fifteen". 

This song touches on a very important subject. Girls want to be loved when they are that age. But if a guy is telling you he loves you, but you need prove that you love him by doing things with him, he doesn't really love you. You don't know that when you are fifteen, you only feel the pressure from him and want to be loved so badly.  I had friends who gave things away when they were young because of this reason.  They found someone to love them, felt the pressure, gave in, and regretted it like Abigail.

Taylor and Abigail talk about the personal nature of the song and the hope that it will help other's who are fifteen and going through the same thing in the "On the Set Behind the Scenes 'Fifteen' ".

Taylor: "My song fifteen is about my freshman year in high school, things that I wish had been said to me in a song. I remember when I first played the song for Abigail I was really nervous because I didn't know if she would be okay with me telling her story like that. It's really a personal song especially from her angle."

Abigail "People always ask me, 'Does it bother you that your name is in a song that's so personal?' And it really doesn't just because of the way Taylor and I feel about it. If one girl can kind of learn from it or connect to a song like that, it's totally worth it."

Taylor: "Half of it is reminiscing what I went through, but half of it is really sort of cautionary to people going into their freshman year of high school and walking through the doors."

I hope that young girls will realize that they do not need to give everything to their boyfriends and will learn from Abigail's story.

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Untouchable

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Untouchable" from her Platinum edition of "Fearless".

Taylor performing "Untouchable" at Stripped performance.

Who is this song about?

Well it's not really about anyone, it is a cover from Luna Halo and Taylor did an amazing job with it.  There is a little story behind it though best told by Scott Borchetta at the CMA Festival 2012.

Click here to hear the original song by Luna Halo.

"We were doing somethng to set up the Fearless record, a Clear Channel online (event). The hardcore Taylor fans know what I'm talking about. There was this beautiful acoustic setting, and she was doing a few new songs, but she had to do a cover song... So a couple weeks out, I'm like 'Taylor, I need to know what cover song you're going to do because we need to clear the publishing.' 'All right.' 'You got a title for me?' 'No.' A week before: 'Hey pal!' 'Hi!' 'This Clear Channel thing's coming up next week.' 'I know, it's gonna be great.' 'You know you have to do a cover song, right?' 'Yeah!' 'Any hints?' 'I'm working on it, I'll get back to you.' Click. So the day of... she's getting her hair done and playing around with the guitar, and I'm like 'All right ,what song are you gonna do?' She doesn't say anything, she just flips her computer open. And she knows that I love this rock band, Luna Halo, that I helped to get signed out of Nashville. They're friends of mine. And she starts playing 'Untouchable'—[and] if you've heard the original, it's this crunching rock song, and she turned it into this extraordinarily beautiful, touching piece of music. That's what she gives to me, those kind of moments. She knew that I loved that band and she took that song and said 'I'm doing this one for you.' "

She surprised Scott and played a song for him from a band he loved.  Luna Halo didn't mind either. Nathan Barlowe of Luna Halo told Dave Paulson November 24, 2009 "She could have chosen any cover in the world, but that’s what she chose. And we had heard from other people that she was a fan of Luna Halo, so I think it was a combination of those things. We lucked out, really. She covered the song and it sounded amazing, so from there, there were so many YouTube hits on it, and so many people watching it and doing imitations of it, that’s when the label decided that they should put it on the record."

I like this song a lot, it has a great melody and message.  It is basically about a person that is untouchable, that can't be reached, but the person singing wants to be with them so bad.

Click here for lyrics to the song, "Untouchable".

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Change

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Change" from her "Fearless" album.

I like this song because it has a pop type feel and is fun and makes me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. What is this song about?

It is about the beginning of her music career.  At first she worked with RCA records, but they wanted her to wait until she was 18 to start recording songs herself. "Basically, there were three things that were going to happen. Either they were going to drop me, or shelve me – that's kind of like putting me in cold storage – or give me a record deal. Of course, the only one of those that you want is the record deal. But they announced they were going to shelve me, and "monitor my progress" until I was 18".  She left the label, one of the biggest in the business.

She then caught Scott Borchetta of Dreamworks eye and signed a deal with his record label Big Machine Records.  The only problem was, she was the only artist on board.

"I wrote this song about being on a small record label, being a 16-year-old girl, and having a lot of odds stacked up against all of us, having a bunch of big companies on Music Row that had a lot more room in their buildings and a lot more employees than our 12. A lot of people, if given those odds, would say that’s not going to work."

"When you're at a record label that has 12 employees, you have to work harder to get on major tours. You have to work harder to get presenter slots or performer slots on award shows. There was this moment where I sat there and was like, 'When are we going to get a fighting chance? We're the smallest record label in Nashville, but we want this really bad.' I wrote the beginning to this song, and I thought someday things are going to be different. I finished the song the night that I won the Horizon Award at the CMA Awards and looked over and saw the president of my tiny, little record label crying."

The other labels "They might be bigger/But we’re faster and never scared/You can walk away, say we don’t need this/Because these things will change."  Things did change and Taylor and Big Machine Records succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Later the song was used during the Olympics during the daily highlight broadcast.

Click here for lyrics to the song, "Change."

Click here for the official music video to the song, "Change".

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Forever & Always

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Forever and Always" from her "Fearless" album.

Taylor Swift performing "Forever & Always" at the 2009 CMA awards.
Photo credit: Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Taylor told Rolling Stone magazine, "the two songs that were completely last minute were, on the first record, 'Should Have Said No,' and on the second album, 'Forever and Always.' Both of them had to do with something really, really dramatic and crazy happening to me and me needing to address it in the form of music."

Why did Taylor add "Fearless" last minute to her album and who was it about?

Taylor Swift and Joe Jonas

It is Joe Jonas.  He "broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18. ... I looked at the call log — it was like 27 seconds. That's got to be a record." (Taylor Swift told Ellen DeGeneres).

Taylor told People magazine, "I'd never had that happen to me before that way, with that abruptness. I thought to myself, "This needs to be said." It's a song about watching somebody completely fade away in a relationship and wondering what you did wrong and wondering why things have changed."

It just so happens that Joe met someone while filming his music video "Lovebug", Camilla Belle.

The secret message in the liner notes is "IF YOU PLAY THESE GAME WERE BOTH GOING TO LOSE."  Camilla and Joe broke up eventually and Taylor has moved on.

Taylor told MTV news she felt "like I owed it to my fans to be like, 'Look, it happened, you weren't crazy,' and address it, And I addressed it, and, you know, that's a chapter in my life that's closed now."

Click here for lyrics to the song: "Forever & Always".

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