A History of Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’: From Go-To Wedding Song to a Track About ‘Red Flags’
Swifties everywhere have been rethinking their wedding song since Taylor Swift put "Lover" on her "denial" playlist ahead of the release of The Tortured Poets Department.
Swift, now 34, released the title track on her seventh studio album as a single one week before the full record dropped in August 2019.
"I was in bed. I was in Nashville. I got out of bed, I think it was really late at night and, like, stumbled over to the piano," she recalled to The New York Times in December 2019 about writing "Lover."
Swift continued: "I've been thinking for years, 'God, it would just be so great to have a song that people who were in love would want to slow dance to.' In my head, I had just the last two people on a dance floor at 3:00 AM swaying."
At the time, Swift had been in a three-year relationship with Joe Alwyn. While she hadn't said much about the romance (and still hasn't — at least outside of her lyrics), fans were quick to assume Alwyn was the inspiration behind the song, pointing in part to the line: "I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you / I've loved you three summers now, honey, but I want 'em all." The song subsequently sparked years of speculation that the twosome were engaged or secretly wed — which proved to be false — with Lover's bridge making a nod to weddings.
"Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? / With every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover," she sings. "My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue / All's well that ends well to end up with you / Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover." (Fans have also associated several songs said to be about Alwyn with references to the color blue.)
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Ahead of a performance of the song at her NPR Tiny Desk concert, Swift revealed that she's "really proud" of those lyrics specifically.
"The line says, 'With every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover.' That line is very special to me because I've spent quite a bit of my time writing breakup songs," Swift said. "And songs about things not turning out the way you wanted them to, or songs about what you thought would be love and it turned out not to be that at all — just, the struggle of life. Songwriting is just really a cathartic, therapeutic thing to me. So there are a lot of things I’ve written about in life that are the harder things I’ve had to go through."
She noted that she has literal scars on her hand, but the lyrics are also a "bigger metaphor for [the idea that] in life, you accumulate scars." Swift made it clear that she needed a partner who accepted her for who she is now and then. She explained: "You accumulate hurt. You accumulate moments of learning and disappointment and struggle. And if someone’s gonna take your hand, they better take your hand, scars and all.”
While talking to NYT for the outlet's "Diary of a Song" series, Swift revealed that part of the chorus — "Can I go where you go? / Can we always be this close forever and ever?" – actually came to her first when she sat at the piano, but she ended up penning the whole song by herself that night.
"It was, 'Can I go where you go? Can we always be this close?' I wanted the chorus to be these really simple existential questions that we ask ourselves when we're in love," Swift explained. "'Can I go where you go?' is such a heavy thing to ask somebody. 'Can we always be this close?' has so much fear in it, but so does love."
While the concept that "Lover" is anything but the perfect wedding song for Swifties didn't become part of the mainstream conversation until April 2023 when news broke that Swift and Alwyn split, it seems the signs were always there. Looking back at her own analysis of the song, Swift pointed out that she was asking a question of forever and fearful of the answer. She would later pen the song "Peace" (off of 2020's Folklore) during her relationship with Alwyn, which echoes similar fears of a partner not being able to commit to a life with her. While in "Peace" it's because of her high-profile status, in "Lover" it's a general question of can something like this last.
One year later, Swift is happily dating Travis Kelce — who has made it clear he has no issues with her level of fame. Prior to the new romance, fans were convinced that the musician often looked upset when she performed "Lover" and other so-called love songs from the era on tour in the weeks following her breakup from Alwyn.
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Swift sparked even more chatter about the song after she linked it to the "grief" stage of her "Five Stages of Heartbreak" (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) while promoting her upcoming 10th album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April 2024.
“This is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion," Swift told her fans about an Apple Music playlist labeled "Denial: I Love You, It's Ruining My Life Songs."
The inclusion of the song has caused some fans to spiral over the idea that "Lover" and some of Swift's other love songs about Alwyn — including "Sweet Nothing" — represent what it’s like to be in a relationship that isn’t going to last despite thinking you found The One.
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Some Swifties are looking for the “red flags” and think they found it in the lyric: “I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you.” Others Swifties are reexamining the lyric, “And at every table, I'll save you a seat, lover,” drawing the (seemingly unfounded) conclusion that in retrospect, the “lover” Swift is singing about didn’t show up for the important events.
It's likely the release of TTPD will only add more fuel to the fire as fans are convinced Alwyn will be the inspiration for many songs. Circling back to that NYT story on “Lover,” while acknowledging that the word "lover" can be polarizing — "anything I do is polarizing," she replied — Swift may have even dropped a potential Easter egg for the album years in the making.
"I've always liked that word, but I've never used it in, like, everyday life when people are like, 'That's my lover over there,' or calling each other a lover. I've never done that, but I've always loved it in the context of poetry or songs," she said.
Years later, fans will get a closer look at how Swift feels about poetry when The Tortured Poets Department drops on April 19.
