“This is about a relationship that I had that was both the best thing ever and the worst thing ever – at the same time. I was thinking about correlating the colors to different feelings I went through and red is such an interesting color to me ‘cos you have the great part of red, the red emotions that are like daring and bold, passionate, love and affection; and then you have like, on the other side of the spectrum, jealousy and anger and frustration.”Taylor Swift (431)

“This is a song that I wrote about someone that I really liked at the time. In my life there are a lot of opinions about who you fall in love with. I was dating a guy who everyone else thought I shouldn’t be dating so I wrote him this song to let him know that I didn’t care what everyone else thought.”Taylor Swift (431)

“I wrote the song “Mean” about a critic who really strongly disliked me. This critic hated me. I felt really helpless so I did what I always do and went into my lonely little corner and wrote a song about it. It became a bullying thing, like people pick on each other and it’s not OK. Wherever you are in life, whether it’s middle school, junior high, college, people are still there picking on you. The you go into the real world, people still pick on you. It affects everybody and I want to thank you for making this song bigger than a critic picking on me.”Taylor Swift (431)

“It’s a song about a girl who stayed forever in the exact spot where her heart was broken, completely frozen in time.”Taylor Swift (1283)

“It’s about listening to your gut when it tells you to leave. How you always know before you know, you know?”Taylor Swift (1283)