Taylor Swift Apparently Wrote 1 Song From Her Friend’s POV
Though Taylor Swift boasts many talents, her songwriting abilities have earned her the most acclaim. Throughout the course of her career, Swift has written or co-written every single song she’s ever released. In fact, she wrote her third album, Speak Now, entirely on her own. This was partially in a bid to shut down critics who questioned how much writing input she actually had on her Grammy-winning tunes.
How does Taylor Swift write her songs?
Interestingly enough, Swift doesn’t have one set method for writing songs. Sometimes lyrics come first, while other times, it’s a melody. Some songs seem to come to the All Too Well director with staggering quickness. An example of this would be her song “Lover”, which she wrote alone in the middle of the night. Other times, it takes years for Swift to fully conceive song ideas, which was the case for “The Man” and “the last great american dynasty.”
The ‘Midnights’ singer is known for writing songs from various perspectives
Swift also plays around with alternative perspectives in her music. For example, for her Reputation album, the Pennslyvania native primarily penned tunes from the perspective of her alter ego. Meanwhile, for her hit song, “Blank Space”, Swift wrote from the perspective of the boy crazy character the media had assigned to her.
But it seems that Swift also writes songs from the perspective of her friends. At least that’s what Swift’s close collaborator and good friend, Aaron Dessner, believes. When breaking down Swift’s song, “the 1” for Vulture, the Grammy winner revealed that the lead-off track isn’t written from Swift’s point of view. However, the “Weird Goodbyes” writer feels that Swift put elements of her persona in the tune as well.
Aaron Dessner does a deep dive into Swift’s song, ‘the 1’
“It’s clear that ‘the 1’ is not written from her perspective,” Dessner shared about the nostalgic Swift song. “It’s written from another friend’s perspective. There’s an emotional wryness and rawness, while also tothis kind of wink in her eyes. There’s a little bit of her sense of humor in there, in addition to this kind of sadness that exists both underneath and on the surface. I enjoy that about her writing.”
The lead-off track almost didn’t make it on to ‘folklore’
Regardless of whose perspective “the 1” is written for, the song served as a great intro into folklore. Interestingly enough, it was one of the very last songs that Swift wrote for the Grammy award-winning album. In fact, Swift figured the album was complete prior to writing the tune. However, when she sent the song over to Dessner in the middle of the night along with the song “hoax”, the collaborators decided the songs needed a place on the album.
Swift certainly has a penchant for switching things up with her music. We’re sure her loyal fans are curious to see what kind of music she’s created for her upcoming album, Midnights. The new tunes are said to explore 13 sleepless nights in the Amsterdam actor’s life. But whether they’ll all be written about from her perspective remains to be seen.
