#taylor swift timelines

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Writing Of 1989 Timeline

1989 changed Taylor's career forever. If Red had just sprinkles of pop sounds, 1989 was marketed as a pure pop album from the get-go.

While many fans and critics kind of expected that, it seems like:

Taylor didn't have a clear direction from the start (except for the cohesiveness): “I wanted it to be a sonically cohesive album, and it ended up really being the first I’ve done since Fearless. I also wanted the songs to sound exactly how the emotions felt. I know that’s pretty vague, so I really didn’t know where it was going to go, but I knew that I wanted to work with the collaborators I had such crazy electricity with on Red, like Max Martin. I wanted to do some things that sounded nothing like what we had done before.”

She knew that she didn't want another Red: “When people say that they like one of my albums, like when people told me that Red was their favorite album I'd done, I didn't take that as, 'So, I should make that again'. I took that as, 'Great, awsome, now I wanna make them like this new album just as much if not more than the last album.' But I want them to like it for different reasons.”

She was worried about the change of direction of her music: “I worry about everything. Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.”

October 17, 2012: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor writes This Love in LA. This will be the last song produced by Nathan Chapman and the only one recorded in Nashville.

“The last time I wrote a poem that ended up being a song, I was writing in my journal and I was writing about something that had happened in my life – it was about a year ago – and I just wrote this really really short poem. It said, 'This love is good /this love is bad / this love is alive back from the dead / these hands had to let it go free / and this love came back to me.' And I just wrote it down, closed the book and put it back on my night stand […] All of a sudden in my head I just started hearing this melody happen, and then I realized that it was going to be a song.”

Handwritten lyrics:

November 18, 2012: Taylor meets Jack Antonoff and his band, fun., for the first time in Frankfurt, Germany, while at the MTV Europe Music Awards. They bond over 80s music.

January 4, 2013: Taylor is seen in a boat without Harry Styles, ready to return to LA from the Virgin Islands.

She will wear the same dress in the Out Of The Woods music video (and also in Look What You Made Me Do)

January 10, 2013: Taylor tweets "Back in the studio. Uh oh...". She will confirm that the song was All You Had To Do Was Stay on October 27, 2014 on Tumblr.

Candids here;

“There’s a song on my album called 'All You Had To Do Was Stay.' I was having this dream, that was actually one of those embarrassing dreams, where you’re mortified in the dream, you’re like humiliated. In the dream, my ex had come to the door to beg for me to talk to him or whatever, and I opened up the door and I went to go say, 'Hi,' or 'What are you doing here?' or something — something normal — but all that came out was this high-pitched singing that said, 'Stay!' It was almost operatic. So I wrote this song, and I used that sound in the song. Weird, right? I woke up from the dream, saying the weird part into my phone, figuring I had to include it in something because it was just too strange not to. In pop, it’s fun to play around with little weird noises like that.”

January 11, 2013: Taylor is seen again at Conway Studios, likely to continue working on All You Had To Do Was Stay.

January 15, 2013: Taylor posts a picture of herself in the studio, with the caption "Somewhere in LA". She'll later reveal that she was writing How You Get The Girl.

“The song ‘How You Get The Girl’ is a song that I wrote about how you get the girl back if you ruined the relationship somehow and she won’t talk to you anymore. Like, if you broke up with her and left her on her own for six months and then you realize you miss her. All the steps you have to do to edge your way back into her life, because she’s probably pretty mad at you. So it’s kind of a tutorial. If you follow the directions in the song, chances are things will work out. Or you may get a restraining order.”

March 6, 2013: Taylor is seen going to a studio in LA.

March 23, 2013: Taylor posts a picture of herself playing guitar, which might mean that she was working on a new song: "Pre show. Columbia, South Carolina". This could be either Wonderland, New Romantics or a vault song.

May 27, 2013: While in Rhode Island for the Memorial Day weekend, Jack plays Taylor an instrumental track that will later become I Wish You Would.

“'I Wish You Would’ is a song that I wrote with Jack Antonoff and it was the first song we ever worked on together. I think, for this song, we wanted to create a sort of John Hughes movie visual with pining and, you know, one person’s over here and misses the other person but is too prideful and won’t say it. Meanwhile this other person is here and missing the same person; they’re missing each other but not saying it. And I had this happen in my life and so I wanted to kind of narrate it in a very cinematic way where it’s like you’re seeing two scenes play out and then in the bridge you’re seeing the final scene, where it resolves itself. So it says, 'It’s a crooked love in a straight line down, makes you wanna run and hide but it makes you turn right back around.’ It kind of is like that dramatic love that’s never really quite where it needs to be and that tension it creates.”

[Voice Memo Intro Transcript] “This is another way I’ve written songs recently. This is a song I did with Jack Antonoff, and Jack is one of my friends and so were hanging out and he pulled out his phone and goes ‘I made this amazing track the other day. It’s so cool, I love these guitar sounds.’ And he played it for me and immediately I could hear this finished song in my head, and I just said ‘Please, please let me have that. Let me play with it, send it to me.’ And so he sent it to me and I was on tour and this was me playing the track on my laptop recording me singing the vocal into my phone and it ended up being a song called 'I Wish You Would', because Jack wrote back and said ‘I love that’. So this is another way of writing, it’s writing to track.”

[Secret Sessions] “Taylor said that she wrote ‘I Wish You Would’ a couple of months after her and Harry Styles broke up, and they decided to become friends again and she said this was the first time she had become friends with an ex, to the point where they were comfortable enough to talk about why the relationship didn’t work out. She said he told her about how, after they broke up, he bought a house literally one road adjacent to hers. Every day he would drive home, and accidentally turn into her street, and he told her how he just wanted to stop at her house and see her, but he never did. She said this song is about while he was in the car making the decision to get out the car and see her, she was sitting in her bedroom, wishing he would make the move and go back to her and just pitch up at her house. She compared it to a classic John Hughes movie where both parties want the same thing but neither has the guts to say anything. Honestly, she spoke so fondly of that relationship.” [this is from a secret sessioner and therefore it should be taken with a grain of salt]

Between May 28 and June 2, 2013: Taylor writes I Wish You Would. She settled in Rhode Island basically all summer, so it's possible that she went to Jack's studio in New York by car without being seen and especially photographed, cause I couldn't find any pictures with the same outfit. Conway Studios are also credited but it's possible that she recorded background vocals there. Taylor was in LA in late August.

June 7, 2013: During an interview at the CMA Music Festival, Taylor confirms that she has started writing her next album.

[Transcript by me] “[The new album] is starting, all the anxiety is starting and when the anxiety starts, then the writing happens right afterward usually. I like to write for about two years before I'm finished with an album because at this point I kind of know that whenever I read in the first year is going to get away, because I'm going to like it but it's going to sound a little bit like the last project I had, and the second year usually ends up sounding like the next project. So I think at this point I feel like staying the same is the easy way to go but it's not the way that I want to go creatively. I think you need to challenge yourself, I think you need to change up your influences, I think you need to be inspired by different things that you've been inspired by before. It's harder to call people you don't know, it's harder to think of topics you haven't covered and think of new ways to say old emotions that everyone feels. I think one of the things that I'm happiest with in the last year is the acceptance level in country music for me experimenting and for me trying to evolve and challenge myself musically because I think it's never felt better to be on that stadium stage performing knowing that and so welcoming of change.”

July 13, 2013: After a show in New Jersey, Taylor has an interview with Rolling Stone, where she says that she has been writing a lot.

“The floodgates just opened the last couple weeks,” she says of the songwriting process. “I’m getting to that point where I’m irritating to be around because I’ll be with you for half the conversation and then the second half of the conversation I’m clearly editing the second verse of whatever I’m writing in my head. I really loved collaborating: you work with a lot of different people and you find the people you have this dream connection with in the studio. I know those people and I know the ones I want to go back to. But I also have a really long list of the people I admire and I would really love to go and contact. So that’s kind of where that is. I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point? It’s so overwhelming that when you’re starting a project there are such endless possibilities if you’re willing to evolve and experiment. If you’re willing to become a different version of yourself, you can really go anywhere with it. And that’s kind of where I am. The kind of the laboratory experimental stage of really catching onto a new thing that I’m liking.”

Somewhere around June and early September 2013: Taylor and Jack write Sweeter Than Fiction. No credits are available but we know that it's the second song on which Taylor and Jack worked, so that places it before I Wish You Would and Out Of The Woods.

In 2014, Lena Dunham (Jack's girlfriend at the time) posted this photo of Jack and Taylor working on the song at Jack's house.

September 15, 2013: Jack completes the instrumental track that will later become Out Of The Woods, after his show was cancelled.

[Jack Antonoff] “When I did the track for Out of the Woods, which is a Taylor song that I'm really proud of, there was some issue at a venue and our show was canceled that night and I didn't have my stuff, I had left it on the bus, so I only had these old samples on what was on my laptop, and caught up that 'oh oh'' thing, and I only had one drum kit on there, and these dumb little things sometimes turn into a great song.”

Somewhere around September and October 2013: Taylor writes Out Of The Woods.

Voice memo here;

[Jack Antonoff] Although Antonoff and Swift shared studio time for some of their other 1989 songs while working throughout 2014, “Out of the Woods” was completed as a long-distance collaboration. “She’s very natural -— when she gets an idea, it just happens very quickly. I would send her these tracks, and when an idea would happen, we’d be 5,000 miles apart or whatever, but she would start emailing me these voice notes like crazy and it would just be happening so quickly that there’d be this excitement. There’s a frantic feeling in the song,” he says. “What’s interesting about ‘Out of the Woods’ is that it doesn’t really let up. It starts with a pretty big anthemic vocal sample that’s me, and then there’s a drum sample that kicks in that’s kind of huge, and then you don’t really know how you’re going to get any bigger, but then the chorus hits and it just explodes even larger. And then the bridge hits, and it gets even more huge.“When I was working on the track, I was thinking a lot about My Morning Jacket,” Antonoff continues, “and how everything they do, every sound is louder than the last, and somehow it feels like everything is just f—ing massive. And that’s the feeling that I went for. It started out big, and then I think the obvious move would have been to do a down chorus, but the idea was to keep pushing.” Antonoff is excited to share the rest of his work with Swift on 1989, but he views “Out of the Woods” as a highlight on the project. “This song means a great deal to me. On a production level, on a writing level, Taylor’s lyrics and her melodies — there’s something very important about this song.”

[Jack Antonoff] “After 'I Wish You Would' and 'Sweeter Than Fiction', we did 'Out Of The Woods'. So it was the third thing we worked on together, and probably the easiest. I sent her the track for it, and she sent back a voice note with the verse and chorus in what felt like five seconds. And it was just perfect. It's eerie how similar it is to what the final product is.”

“It kind of conjured up all these feelings of anxiety I had in a relationship where everybody was watching, everybody was commenting on it. 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?’ 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?’ Those fragile relationships... It doesn’t mean they’re not supposed to happen. The whole time we were having happy memories, or crazy memories, or ridiculously anxious times, in my head it was just like, ‘Are we okay yet? Are we there yet? Are we out of this yet?’”

“That line is in there because it's not only the actual, literal narration of what happened in a particular relationship I was in, it's also a metaphor. 'Hit the brakes too soon' could mean the literal sense of, we got in an accident and we had to deal with the aftermath. But also, the relationship ended sooner than it should've because there was a lot of fear involved. And that song touches on a huge sense of anxiety that was, kind of, coursing through that particular relationship, because we really felt the heat of every single person in the media thinking they could draw up the narrative of what we were going through and debate and speculate. I don't think it's ever going to be easy for me to find love and block out all those screaming voices.”

October 21, 2013: Sweeter Than Fiction is released. Big Machine was originally not on board with the release since they wanted a dormant period between album releases.

Late 2013: Taylor writes Bad Blood, after Katy Perry announces her Prismatic World Tour.

“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends,or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?’ Then last year, the other star crossed a line. She did something so horrible. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational – you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”

“That was about losing a friend... But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant. I never said anything that would point a finger in the specific direction of one specific person, and I can sleep at night knowing that. I knew the song would be assigned to a person, and the easiest mark was someone who I didn’t want to be labeled with this song. It was not a song about heartbreak. It was about the loss of friendship.”

October 20 to 22, 2013: Taylor is in Cape Town (South Africa) shooting The Giver. One of the members of the cast is Alexsander Skarsgård. He is said to have inspired Wildest Dreams (or at least he's the most popular theory, as far as I know), because the music video is set in Africa and it features Clint Eastwood's son Scott as love interest, just like Alexsander is actor Stellan Skarsgård's son, but we don't actually know more about the song.

“I think the way I used to approach relationships was very idealistic. I used to go into them thinking, ‘Maybe this is the one – we’ll get married and have a family, this could be forever’. Whereas now I go in thinking, ‘How long do we have on the clock – before something comes along and puts a wrench in it, or your publicist calls and says this isn’t a good idea?’”

Note: Selena Gomez was present when Taylor wrote this song.

Handwritten lyrics:

November 19, 2013: Taylor records Blank Space. This is based on the wall behind her on an Instagram post from this day, the credits, and the behind the scenes clip.

Voice memo here;

Behind the Scenes here;

“Every few years, the media finds something they unanimously agree is annoying about me. 2012-2013 they thought I was dating too much, because I dated two people in a year and a half. ‘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 kind of excessive and at first it was hurtful, but then I found a little bit of comedy in it. This character is so interesting, though. If you read these gossip sites, they describe how I am so opposite to my actual life: I’m clingy, and I’m awful, and I throw fits, and there’s drama. An emotionally fragile, unpredictable mess. I painted a whole picture of this character. She lives in a mansion with marble floors, she wears Dolce & Gabbana around the house, and she wears animal print unironically. So I created this whole character and I had fun doing it.”

November 21, 2013: While at the American Music Awards, Taylor tells Billboard that she has around seven or eight songs ready.

[Transcript] “We got a lot already,” says Swift. “There are probably seven or eight songs that I know I want on the record. It’s really ahead of schedule for me. I’m just stoked because it’s already evolved into a new sound, and that’s all I wanted. And I would have taken two years to make that happen, but it just kind of happened naturally, so that’s all I could really ask for.”

December 2013: Taylor meets Diane Warren and they write Say, Don't Go.

[Diane Warren to Rolling Stone] Warren, who typically writes on her own, says the two of them “sat down and wrote the song,” which was released Friday as one of 1989 (Taylor’s Version)‘s vault tracks, “from scratch” during the last few days of 2013. She remembers being impressed with how specific Swift was with her lyricism and how considerate she was about how her fans might receive it. “She was very particular about how she said certain things. It was a really interesting experience. She gets her audience,” Warren says. “She’s deeply aware of how her fans want to hear something. I can’t explain it, but that’s probably why she’s the biggest fucking star in the world.”

2013: Taylor writes New Romantics and Wonderland. Not much is known about these songs, except that they were both written in 2013.

[About New Romantics] “People will say, 'Let me set you up with someone', and I’m just sitting there saying, ‘That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not lonely. I’m not looking.’ They just don’t get it. I’ve learned that just because someone is cute and wants to date you, that’s not a reason to sacrifice your independence and allow everyone to say whatever they want about you. I’m not doing that anymore. It’d take someone really special for me to undergo the circumstances I have to go through to experience a date. I don’t know how I would ever have another person in my world trying to have a relationship with me, or a family.”

New Romantics handwritten lyrics:

Wonderland Handwritten lyrics:

January 1, 2014: Taylor records Say, Don't Go.

[Diane Warren to Rolling Stone] Several days after writing the song together, they got into Warren’s office to record a demo, where Swift played it on her acoustic guitar. “We demoed it on New Year’s Day. And I’m a workaholic, and that’s fine for me,” she says. “But I remember being impressed that she did, too. Everybody’s on vacation, but she showed up.”

January 6, 2014: Taylor decides to look for a house in New York.

[Lover Journal] LA. So I've decided I want to look at places in New York. I know I went through this phase months ago, but it has to mean something that i've circled back to it, right? You know what they say, if you love something let it go and if it comes back... blah blah blah. so I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. Dating is awful. Love is fiction/ a myth. I'm over it all.

January 21, 2014: Taylor sends Ryan Tedder the I Know Places Voice Memo.

January 22, 2014: [From the 1989 Booklet] Taylor and Ryan finish and record I Know Places.

“I had this idea of like, when you’re in love, along the lines of 'Out of the Woods’, it’s very precious, it’s fragile. 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. I kind of was in a place where I was like, ‘No one is gonna sign up for this. 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.‘ 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, ‘Hey, I know places we can hide. We could outrun them.’ I’m so happy that it sounds like the urgency that it sings.”

January 23, 2014: Taylor and Ryan Tedder write Welcome To New York. Ryan produces a demo in three hours. This demo is the one included in the album.

“I wanted to start 1989 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. I dreamt and obsessed over moving to New York, and then I did it. The inspiration that I found in that city is hard to describe and to compare to any other force of inspiration I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s an electric city.”

[Ryan Tedder] “I thought we were going to walk in and start something from scratch because that's what I was used to. Then she calls me and says, 'Is it cool if I already have an idea?' I said, 'Sure.' She said, 'I have this song, I'm obsessed with New York and I just moved there, I want to write an ode to New York because no one's done it in a long time.' And then she sent me a voice memo. She's like, 'I want it to sound like the 1980s.' So the next day I brought in a Juno-106, which is a very 1980s keyboard, and I literally programmed that entire song right in front of her. It was very much on the fly, and that song was done in about three hours. And I did the rest of the production I think later that week.”

Handwritten lyrics:

January 26, 2014: Night of the 56th Grammy Awards. Taylor delivers a legendary performance of All Too Well, but loses the Album Of The Year Award to Random Access Memory by Daft Punk. This will prompt Taylor to make a "sonically cohesive" pop album.

[Lover Journal] January 25th. LA. It's the middle of the night and I was at the Clive Davis Party tonight which means... the Grammys are tomorrow. Never have I felt so good about our chances. Never have I wanted something as badly as I want to hear them say 'Red' is the Album of the Year.

“It was the night of the Grammys this year. I remember going home and playing a lot of the new music I had recorded for some of my backup singers and one of my best friends. We were all sitting in the kitchen and I was playing them all this music, and they were just saying, ‘You know, this is very eighties. It’s very clear to us that this is so eighties.’ We were just talking and talking about how it’s kind of a rebirth in a new genre, how that’s a big, bold step. Kind of starting a part of your career over. When they left that night, I just had this very clear moment of, ‘It’s gotta be called 1989.’”

“I woke up one morning at 4 a.m. and I decided the album is called 1989. I’ve been making ‘80s synth pop, I’m just gonna do that. I’m calling it a pop record. I’m not listening to anyone at my label. I’m starting tomorrow. I liked the idea of collaborating. But with 1989 I decided to narrow down the list. It wasn’t going to be 10 producers, it was going to be a very small team of four or five people I always wanted to work with, or loved working with. And Max Martin and I were going to oversee it, and we were going to make a sonically cohesive record again.”

January 2014: Taylor writes You Are In Love. This is actually speculation but it's based on (1) Taylor going to NY in early January and (2) Jack Antonoff confirming that it was the fourth song they did and (3) it's the only Antonoff-produced song that is copyrighted in 2014. Based on the credits, I'm pretty sure that Taylor and Jack worked on the song separately, with Jack recording the instrumental at the Jungle City Studios in NY (which is a studio that Jack used in 2014 to record Bleachers' first album Strange Desire) and Taylor recording the vocals at Conway Studio in LA.

“I wrote it with my friend Jack Antonoff who’s dating my friend Lena. Jack sent me this song, it was just an instrumental track he was working on and immediately I knew the song it needed to be. And I wrote it as a kind of commentary on what their relationship has been like. So it’s actually me looking and going, ‘This happened and that happened, then that happened and that’s how you knew you are in love.’”

“I’ve never had that, so I wrote that song about things that Lena Dunham has told me about her and Jack Antonoff. 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.”

“We first worked on that song together and realized we kind of have a good thing, and the next thing we did was ‘Sweeter Than Fiction,’ which was on the [One Chance] soundtrack, and after that we did ‘Out of the Woods’ and another song called ‘You Are in Love.’

January 26, 2014: At the Grammy's, Diane Warren reveals that she and Taylor wrote a song together (aka Say, Don't Go).

[Transcript] “I worked with Taylor Swift on a great song. I don't even know what she's done [for her next album], I'm excited about the one that we did, it's pretty cool.”

[Billboard 2016 Interview] “I know [Swift] likes it, so hopefully it will see the light of day. I know she really likes the song. She didn’t want me to give it away, so hopefully that means she wants it.”

February 9, 2014: [From the 1989 Booklet] While in London, during the European leg of the Red Tour, Taylor and Imogen Heap write Clean in just 9 hours at Imogen's home studio. Taylor will sing the song just two times.

Voice memo here;

“'Clean' I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. 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. And you know how it is when you’re going through heartbreak. A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours. It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, ‘Hello, beautiful. Good morning.’ You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was. 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.”

“'Clean' is the last song on the album for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it felt like the complication of this emotional process I’ve been going through for the last couple of years. You know, I feel like my personal life was really, really discussed, and criticized, and debated, and talked about to a point where it made me feel almost kind of tarnished, in a way. And the discussion wasn’t about music. It broke my heart that I had made an album that I was proud of, and I was touring the world, and playing sold-out stadiums, and still they managed to only want to talk about my personal life. At a certain point I felt a switch and it was at the end of recording this album that I began to feel like my life was mine again and my music was at the forefront again. I was living my life on my own terms and I really no longer cared what people were saying about me. That was when I started so see people talk less about the things that didn’t matter.”

“I had this metaphor in my head about being in this house, there’s been a drought but you feel like there’s a storm coming. Instead of trying to block out the storm you punch a hole in the roof and just let all the rain come in, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s washed away.”

[Imogen Heap] “We met at my studio in London. She had the bare bones of “Clean.” She had the lyric, the chorus and the chords. I thought it was brilliant.I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises, played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great. I knew she loved it. She said she loved it and her mum loved it. But I wasn’t sure it would be included on the album. But everyone felt it had something special. It came together really magically.”

Imogen's detailed blog entry about this songwriting session.

[Taylor about Imogen Heap] “The coolest thing about Imogen for me was that there was no one else in the studio. There was no assistant; there was no engineer. It was her doing everything.”

February 11, 2014: Taylor gets a haircut. (I'm including this for funsies)

February 15, 2014: Taylor, Max Martin and Shellback write Shake It Off.

Voice memo here;

[Lover Journal] LA. This week I've been in the studio with Max and Johan every day and it has been the most creatively successful and fulfilling time. The first day, Johan just made a really up tempo drum beat because we decided we needed something up and light. We worked at it for a few hours before i just started singing "shake it off, shake it off, shake it off" And then the best way i know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky. It ended up being this song about doing your own thing even though haters are gonna hate, and you just have to dance to your own beat. We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE. We spent all day doing vocals and the next day recording the background vocals. I think it'll end up being the first single and Max said it's his favorite song he's ever been a part of.

[Max Martin during the lawsuit] “Shellback started out with a drumbeat. Shellback, Taylor, and I then collaboratively developed the melody and other lines of ‘Shake It Off’ to Shellback’s drumbeat. I did not write or provide any input into any lyrics in ‘Shake It Off,’ which were written entirely by Taylor.”

“I've had every part of my life dissected – my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music. 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. 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.”

“The message in the song is a problem I think we all deal with and an issue we deal with on a daily basis. We don’t live just in a celebrity takedown culture, we live in a takedown culture. People will find anything about you and twist it to where it’s weird or wrong or annoying or strange or bad. 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.”

February 19, 2014: Taylor, Max Martin, Shellback and Ali Payami write Style. This is the last song made for the album.

“I loved comparing these timeless visuals with a feeling that never goes out of style. It's basically one of those relationships that's always a bit off. The two people are trying to forget each other. So, it's like, 'All right, I heard you went off with her, and well, I've done that, too.' My previous albums have also been sort of like, 'I was right, you were wrong, you did this, it made me feel like this' – a righteous sense of right and wrong in a relationship. What happens when you grow up is you realize the rules in a relationship are very blurred and that it gets very complicated very quickly, and there's not a case of who was right or who was wrong.”

“This song is about those relationships that are never really done. You always kind of have that person, that one person who you feel might interrupt your wedding and be like, ‘Don’t do it cause we’re not over yet.'”

[Guitarist Niklas Ljungfelt] “I played on “Style,” a song I started with Ali Payami for ourselves. He was playing it for Max Martin at his studio; Taylor overheard it and loved it. She and Max wrote new lyrics. But I recorded the guitar on it before it was a Taylor song. It was an instrumental. I didn’t have a clue that Taylor would sing on it. The inspiration came from Daft Punk and funky electronic music.”

1989 is officially done!

[Taylor On Ryan Seacrest] “I'm pretty sure after we finished this one I knew the record was done. Shake It Off and Style were the last two songs to be written for 1989.”

February 19, 2014: While on tour, Ryan Tedder produces another three versions of Welcome To New York.

[Ryan Tedder interview] “I was in Switzerland on a tour bus, and I did four versions of 'Welcome to New York,' one of which I liked personally more, but the thing about artists is they become very obsessed with the demo. She was in love with the demo so no matter how hard I fought, she brought it back to the demo, so really what you hear is what I did on the first day.”

March 22, 2014: Billboard reports that Taylor and Ryan Tedder have worked together in LA in January

March 24, 2014: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor moves to New York.

[Lover Journal] So in the last few weeks, I've completely moved into my apartment in Tribeca. That's right, I'm writing this from my new bed in my new place, watching Law and Order with Meredith. Strangely, I've never felt more busy.

May 1, 2014: 1989 Photoshoot (I got this date from an insider)

May 29, 2014: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor chooses another photo for the cover, after having a nightmare of the previous one being not enough.

May 30, 2014: Taylor chooses the album cover.

[Lover Journal] Shanghai. So we got to China at around 2pm and I knew it would completely ruin me if I slept when i got to the hotel, so I decided to work out. WHY IS THIS PEN RUNNING OUT?! Just went to my purse and got my pen. So a crazy story unfolded in the last 24 hours. Last night, I had this vivid dream where the photo I'd chosen for the album cover wasn't good enough, intriguing enough, artful enough. it woke me up. I couldn't shake it and it stayed with me all day. Because that nagging feeling I'd been pushing back for weeks was now confirmed in my gut... it wasn't good enough. I went to the venue, mind racing, wandering if I'd have to do an entirely new photo shoot... I got to my dressing room with newer versions of the "cover" I looked at it and felt nothing. The team pulled up this new scanned file of the polaroids we had taken during the shoot. I saw it within 10 seconds. The shot. The cover. It's a polaroid of me sitting against a beige wall with a blue seagull sweatshirt on. You can see my red lips but the photo cuts off my eyes. For some reason unknown to me it's the most intriguing photo i've seen. I think it's the mystery of not seeing my eyes. Maybe it just looks effortlessly cool. The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not. I played a sold out show in Shanghai tonight and the crowd was amazing. Tomorrow we go to Tokyo, where they'll have the whole ticker tape parade at the airport. Smile and wave...

Mid To Late 2014: Taylor and Jack write Now That We Don't Talk.

[Tumblr Music] "Now That We Don't Talk is one of my favorite songs that was left behind. It was so hard to leave it behind, but I think we wrote it a little bit towards the end of the process, and we couldn't get the production right at the time. But we had tons of time to perfect the production this time, and figure out what we wanted the song to sound like, and I just think it's, I think it's the shortest song I've ever had. I think it packs a punch. I think it really goes in for the short amount of time we have, I think it makes its point."

Conclusive notes

What 1989 represented for Taylor:

“The 1980s was a very experimental time in pop music. People realized songs didn't have to be this standard drums-guitar-bass-whatever. We can make a song with synths and a drum pad. We can do group vocals for the entire song. We can do so many different things. And I think what you saw happening with music was also happening in our culture, where people were just wearing whatever crazy colors they wanted to, because why not? There just seemed to be this energy about endless opportunities, endless possibilities, endless ways you could live your life. And so with this record, I thought, 'There are no rules to this. I don't need to use the same musicians I've used, or the same band, or the same producers, or the same formula. I can make whatever record I want.'”

“In the past, I've written mostly about heartbreak or pain that was caused by someone else and felt by me. On this album, I'm writing about more complex relationships, where the blame is kind of split 50–50 ... even if you find the right situation relationship-wise, it's always going to be a daily struggle to make it work.”

Bonus: Secret Messages

Author's note: I wrote this timeline around 2 years ago. While I found some dates later on, this is 100% my research. If you use this timeline for your posts, research or whatever, PLEASE, credit me! I'd be very thankful. This is 2 years of work.

Links to my other Timelines:

Writing of Fearless Timeline

Writing of Speak Now Timeline

Writing of Red Timeline

My Spreadsheet with a timeline overview

Credits:

Most of the quotes have been copy-pasted from Taylor Swift Switzerland.

Taylor Swift Pictures for the candids.

Heather from Nerdy by Nature for the WTNY handwritten lyrics picture.

#taylor swift #1989 #1989 taylor's version #1989 era #red era #taylor swift timelines #1989 tv #blank space #shake it off #harry styles #out of the woods #wildest dreams #style #imogen heap #1989 tour #taylor swift unreleased songs #vault songs #1989 vault

[fruitypieq]

I really do love following people who hate each other. I'll see some shit like "STOP POSTING ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT SHE SUCKS SHE IS THE WORST" followed by someone else reblogging 5 Taylor Swift gifsets in a row

#comedy gold right on my own timeline #my opinions on taylor swift? #you'll never know #(just kidding I don't really have any. her music slaps though)

[spicysighs]

Matty Healy + Taylor Swift Timeline

11/7/13: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band and being asked to tour with her.

1/21/14: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band. xx

3/31/14: Matty talks about being asked to tour with Taylor and turning it down. "That was cool. It’s like, ‘We can’t, but that is really nice, thank you very much.”

11/4/14: Matty is pictured wearing a deluxe 1989 album cover tee at his concert in Milwaukee.

11/8/14: Taylor reblogs the picture on tumblr and says they are her favorite band.

11/9/14: Taylor likes these two pictures of Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt.

11/9/14: Taylor liked this gif-set of Matty talking about whether he’s a dog or cat person.

11/19/14: Selena Gomez, Taylor and other friends went to The 1975 show in LA. Video of them singing along to ‘The City.’

11/19/14: Taylor & Matty making a video for a fan. (Jamie’s daughter Kitty)

11/22/14: Matty follows Taylor on Twitter.

11/23/14: Taylor was pictured wearing a The 1975 band shirt.

11/23/14: Taylor likes these two posts of them wearing each others merch.

11/24/14: Matty dedicates ‘Robbers’ to Taylor. Supposedly he’s done this multiple times. xx

11/25/14: Taylor likes these Tumblr posts. And this picture of Matty.

11/26/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post.

11/26/14: Matty likes Taylor’s post on Instagram.

11/26/14: Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt again.

11/26/14: Matty talking about meeting Taylor "I met Taylor Swift, that was really nice." and when asked about possibly dating "I mean bloody hell, what am I going to do? Go out with Taylor Swift? She's a sensation, I wouldn't say no."

11/28/14: Taylor is rumored to have attended The 1975 show in Chattanooga, TN.  

11/29/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post.

11/29/14: Matty signed this Polaroid for a fan, and the fan talking about the interaction.

11/29/14: Matty says he can’t kiss a fan because he’s taken.

12/2/14: Matty’s mom retweets this.

12/2/14: Matty likes Taylor’s Instagram post.

12/3/14: Matty about Taylor “Well, she’s amazing. She’s an amazing role model. And not only is she an incredible songwriter, she’s an incredible pop songwriter, which I think is even harder. I can’t speak highly enough about Taylor Swift.”

12/4/14: Taylor, Martha, Karlie and others went to The 1975 show in NYC. Where Matty dedicated ‘fallingforyou’ to her. Rumored that Matty missed the after-party and spent the night with Taylor. xx 

12/5/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post about Matty singing ‘fallingforyou’ to her.

12/5/14: Matty’s tweet in response to articles about him and Taylor getting his name wrong.

12/6/14: Matty has a breakdown on stage in Boston, MA. In 2015 talking about the incident he says “There was girl stuff. There was family stuff. There was financial stuff. There was drug stuff.” 

12/6/14: Matty talking about a fan saying “I love you” to him. “What did I say to the poor fucking girl? ‘You don’t have the right to love me. You don’t know me. I love you but you don’t get to love me.’ Jesus. Can you imagine your favorite band shouting that at you? What a dickhead. What a horrible thing to say to a kid who fucking does love me.”

12/9/14: Matty at a show in NY “I was sad the other day as someone told me they loved me. And I said ‘No, you don’t. Not really.’ And today I told someone I loved them. And they said ‘No, you don’t.’ And it fucking sucks to hear that. Especially when you mean it. Don’t do that to someone. Don’t do what I did.”

12/14/14: Matty posts this on Instagram.

12/30/14: Matty deletes this Instagram post.

1/16/15: Matty denies dating rumors. Admits they exchanged numbers but “That didn’t really happen as much as it’d be amazing for me if it did, unfortunately it didn’t.”

2/25/15: They hangout at the BRIT Awards afterparty. (This weekend is when she met Calvin and they started dating)

2015: Matty & Halsey date and breakup.

11/15/15: Matty talks about Taylor in an interview “The things that surround her are like Barack Obama. I fell for her a little bit, but everyone falls for Taylor Swift” “The day after she’d been to a show of ours, someone sent me a screenshot of E! News with the headline ‘Who is Matt Healy?’ That freaked me out. I’m not ready to indulge in that world and I’m not ready to be judged by that world.”

12/8/15: Matty talks about reaching out to Taylor to have her in his music video.

Sometime in 2015: Matty & Gabriella Brooks start dating.

2/1/16: Matty talking about Taylor “She was a fan of the band and we just became friends, and we related to each other over how mental our lives were. But when you’re with people like Taylor, there are a million people flying around you the whole time, and this security guard is talking to that guy, and this guy is the new manager. I didn’t like the pace of it, because it makes me confused and I feel like I’m going to miss something. And being perceptive is one of the abilities that I like to think that I have.“

3/17/16: Matt Healy has suggested that dating Taylor Swift would have been "emasculating" for him because of her huge global fame.

3/18/16: Journalist who interviewed him writes an op-ed saying his words were misconstrued and "I saw an intelligent and liberal man wrestling with our culture’s gender roles."

3/19/16: He apologizes for said comments and calls Taylor "One of the most gracious, hard working, creatively gifted, and beautiful women that I have had the pleasure to meet."

6/1/16: Taylor & Calvin Harris breakup.

6/15/16: Taylor starts dating Tom Hiddleston.

8/17/16: Matty says he has Taylor’s number but “she’s probably changed her number by now.” And jokes “I keep texting her.”

8/30/16: Matty talks about Taylor on the BBCR1's Breakfast Show. They joke about Taylor doing jury duty.

9/6/16: Taylor & Tom Hiddleston breakup.

October 2016: Taylor & Joe Alwyn start dating.

10/27/16: Matty about Taylor in Rolling Stone “She came to our show, and you would have thought that Barack Obama had come out. I don’t know another person on the planet that would elicit that kind of reaction.”

11/11/16: Matty again denies he dated Taylor and says “She came to a show and we hung out. We fancied each other, but then we couldn’t have it go any further, because it would be like going out with Barack Obama.”

11/20/17: Podcast talking about Taylor & Matty.

12/3/18: Matty talking about his journal “It’s mainly stories that I write about my dreams of being in love with other popstars.”

12/4/18: Matty retweets a picture of Taylor.

8/28/19: Matty & Gabriella Brooks breakup.

9/23/19: Mentions wanting to produce an album for Taylor in an interview (at 13:48 & 32:00) “Taylor, if you ever want someone to help you set up the mics for your little acoustic record, just so you know, I’m there.”

9/23/19: Matty retweets and tags Taylor in a post quoting him saying he wants to produce an album for Taylor.

9/24/19: Matty tweets “Taylor Swift. With an acoustic guitar. Doing her ‘Nebraska’. Doing her ‘Blue’. Kill me.”

January 2020: Matty & FKA Twigs start dating.

2/12/20: Both attend the NME awards and hug. Beabadoobee (who Taylor is talking to in the video) about meeting Taylor that day “Taylor’s so ethereal, So badass, I was like ‘Holy shit!’ She was walking towards me and I’m like, ‘She’s going to Matty [The 1975] not me.’ And then she comes up to me and I’m like... I vomited in my mouth. I couldn’t believe it.”

2/20/20: Matty mentions seeing Taylor and wanting to work with her in an interview with Zane Lowe. “She was just stood behind me. I mean, I haven’t seen Taylor in years so it was actually a really nice room. But it, unfortunately, wasn’t the time for me to pitch my post-rock Joni Mitchell project.”

10/22/20: Deuxmoi posts these.

2021: Matty starts working with Jack Antonoff on The 1975′s upcoming album.  

November 2021: Taylor and Jack Antonoff start working on “Midnights.”

6/7/22: Matty & FKA Twigs breakup. 

8/9/22: Matty Healy shares Taylor Swift’s reaction to The 1975’s new album, with her saying “it’s so funny.” 

9/3/22: Matty says there will be no collab on Midnights. “I would love that! But unfortunately FAKE NEWS :(”

10/7/22: Matty tweets “You guys actually thought Taylor Swift was gonna have me on her album”

10/11/22: Matty on working with Taylor “Oh we’re not. We’d love to. Love to work with Taylor Swift. Love Taylor Swift, think she’s one of the best songwriters, but yeah, no we haven’t done that. We’d love to though.”

10/11/22: The 1975 discuss covering ‘Lover’ for the BBC live lounge.

10/12/22: Matty briefly mentions Taylor in a Zane Lowe interview (45:53).

10/18/22: Matty briefly mentions Taylor in a podcast (1:22:40) when talking about who they would like to see on the podcast. Interestingly enough her name seems to be cut from the video version of the podcast.

10/23/22: Matty posted on his Instagram to stream Midnights.

10/26/22: Matty posted he was listening to ‘Hey Stephen TV’ on his Instagram story

11/27/22: Matty said he worked on Midnights with Taylor but their versions didn’t make the cut (4:52). “We actually worked a bit on that, but then the version of it never came out.” “It was for reasons not to be criticized.”

12/21/22: Matty said ‘Chocolate‘ reminds him of Taylor “Tumblr, Doc Martens, Taylor Swift, the 1975”

‘Question…?’ Played in The 1975 pre-show playlist. (Don’t have dates because it happened multiple times)

1/12/23: Matty & Taylor before The 1975 show.

1/12/23: Taylor does a surprise performance at The 1975 show in London. Deuxmoi later claims they stayed up until 4 am talking (later confirmed in his profile with The New Yorker.)

1/12/23: Matty “I’m not kissing anybody in front of Taylor Swift, have some respect. in front of the queen? not happening"

2/2/23: Matty briefly mentions Taylor and the Ticketmaster situation (38:06)

February: Allegedly spent several days at a Los Angeles recording studio together.

3/15/23: Matty seen with Ana Salazar.

3/17/23: First show of The Eras Tour

3/22/23: Puff-piece comes out stating Joe and Taylor are ‘great together’ and ‘super supportive of her career’ and will be travelling to her ‘when he can’.

‘About You’ plays at the same time as the Lover MV has been playing on The Eras Tour pre-show playlist. (Don’t have dates because it happened multiple times)

3/29/23: Matty’s ex says “Things were going well until around March 29th then, out of the blue, he stopped replying to my messages and calls.”

3/31/23: Taylor changes The Eras Tour setlist from ‘Invisible String’ to ‘The 1’

4/7/23: Matty follows Taylor on Instagram.

4/7/23: Matty likes Taylor’s Instagram post.

4/8/23: Matty’s birthday.

4/8/23: It's announced Taylor and Joe have broken up.

4/8/23: Matty talking about love and how happy he is.

4/10/23: Matty deactivates his social media accounts.

4/10/23: Matty on why he deactivated “Everything happens in eras. The 1975 is a very eras band. And I think that the era of me being a fucking asshole is gonna come to an end.” and “I perform all the time and it’s my job and I love doing this, but I can’t perform off the stage any more as I just want to be a bloke.”

4/10/23: Matty says “Hey, I love you.” during ‘About You’.

4/10/23: Matty mouths “You know who you are.” and points during ‘About You’.

4/11/23: Matty “A call for something sincere and direct. That’s what we’re all looking for. That’s what I’m looking for. Maybe I’ve found it.. I’m feeling quite happy.” 

4/13/23: Deuxmoi says she got a tip that Matty & Taylor are dating. (19:16)

4/14/23: Matty cheering during ‘Me & You Together.’

4/14/23: Matty “Romance is nice when it works, this next song worked.” ‘fallingforyou’ starts playing “Oh it’s a different song, this song did not work.”

4/14/23: Before ‘About You’ “Ok, this is the one that worked.”

4/14/23: Matty mouthing “I love you” during ‘About You’ and saying “Fuck yeah, I win!” after it ends.

4/16/23: Matty’s “Yeah you will!” during ‘Happiness’ after the line, “I’m never gonna love again.”

4/19/23: Matty says “It takes bit to get here but its worth it” and “true story” before playing ‘Me & You Together.’

4/21/23: Matty plays a cover of ‘The Best of Me’ by The Starting Line. Take note of the lyrics.

4/24/23: Matty spoke about how he sees people listening to ‘She's American’ in three places: Manchester, Tokyo and Pennsylvania “that’s a whole other thing don’t worry about that.”

5/3/23: The Sun reports Matty and Taylor are dating and will go public with their romance at her shows in Nashville.

5/3/23: Matty introducing ‘Me and You Together song’, saying “I’ve got something real to tell you guys!”

5/3/23: Matty mouths “This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.” while playing ‘About You.’

5/3/23: Matty does a cover of ‘The Best of Me’ by The Starting Line again.

5/4/23: Matty introducing ‘Me and You Together song’, saying “So I’ve been trying to tell you guys” and “That’s right.”

5/4/23: Before playing ‘About You’ Matty mouths "This is why I'm happy. Who is it about? Who am I talking to?"

5/4/23: Matty is seen mouthing the words "I love you" before writing the letter T on the camera lens.

5/4/23: Matty saying “she sure is” before playing ‘She's American.’

5/4/23: Matty flies from Manila to Nashville. (Which is around a 20hr flight)

5/5/23: Matty at Taylor’s concert. Nashville night 1.

5/5/23: Taylor mouths “This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.” during ‘cardigan.’

5/6/23: Matty grabbing coffee accompanied by Taylors bodyguard after leaving Taylors condo.

5/6/23: Matty at Nashville night 2. xx

5/6/23: Matty & Taylor pictured arriving at Taylor’s condo together.

5/7/23: Matty at Nashville night 3.

5/11/23: Matty and Taylor spotted on a date with Jack Antonoff in NYC. More pictures here.

5/12/23: Matty at Philly night 1.

5/13/23: Matty at Philly night 2.

5/13/23: Taylor performs ‘This Love’ with no introduction.

5/14/23: Taylor plays a request of “Hey Stephen”, but doesn’t say who requested it.

5/14/23: Matty pictured at the VIP tent at The Eras Tour Philly night 3

5/15/23: Matty and Taylor pictured leaving a party at Electric Studios in NYC.

5/18/23: Article comes out saying Joe is 'distraught and slighted' over Taylor & Matty dating, saying he ‘trusted’ Taylor when she said they were just friends.

5/18/23 Matty entering Taylor’s NYC Apartment.

5/20/23: Matty’s ex talks about Matty and Taylor.

5/20/23: Taylor’s speech before playing ‘Question...?’  in Foxborough, MA. "I want you all to know that I've never been this happy before in my life. It’s not just with the tour, I just sort of feel like my life finally feels like it makes sense. And so I thought I’d play this song, which brings me a lot of happy memories."

5/20/23: Taylor plays ‘Question...?’ on night 2 in Foxborough, MA.

5/22/23: Matty dropping Taylor off at Electric Lady Studios.

5/24/23: Taylor and Matty leaving the Electric Lady Studios separately.

5/27/23: The Sun reports Matty and Taylor are moving in together.

5/29/23: Matty’s profile with The New Yorker comes out which includes multiple mentions of Taylor.

5/29/23: From The New Yorker “Healy found it annoying that, at a certain level of fame, celebrities can cultivate liberal auras while avoiding the risk of taking real political stands. (Swift, I thought, but didn’t say, seemed to be excepted from his critique.)”

5/29/23: From The New Yorker about Taylor & Matty dating “ Neither of their representatives would comment on the record, but I kept getting texts from people who knew them, and who insisted: this time, it’s real.”

6/5/23: Matty & Taylor reportedly break up.

6/6/23: People releases an article saying "There is no drama, and who knows what could happen again.” and "Taylor and Matty still care for one another but they are in the middle of world tours so both are incredibly busy. They've been friends for years and are still friends."

6/6/23: While discussing Taylor on his podcast (21:06) Zach Sang says "I'm like kind of friends with Selena Gomez. We've known each other for a very long time and we share a lot of close friends. And from what I heard like in the aura around Selena, Taylor was talking about Matty Healy like he was the one." 

6/11/23: Matty reactivates his Instagram.

6/11/23: Matty “You know what’s nice, playing songs in context“ before ‘Me and You Together song’

7/1/23: Matty mentions Taylor "I don’t wanna use this thing [the catwalk], it feels very democratic, it feels very… I mean Beyonce of course, Taylor, Machine Gun Kelly, whoever it may be… I don’t like it, it makes me feel exposed."

7/5/23: The Sun claims Matty & Taylor are back together and “want to make it work at all costs.”

7/5/23: People declines claims that they are together.

7/18/23: Matty briefly mentions Taylor “I speak about this a lot, the Tumblr times, the simpler days, the golden days. When it was just us and Taylor and Lana and Arctic Monkeys.”

7/22/23: Taylor removes ‘About You’ from The Eras Tour pre-show playlist.

8/7/23: Matty is seen with Meredith Mickelson at an airport in Hawaii.

August 2023: Taylor starts dating Travis Kelce.

September 2023: Matty starts dating Gabbriette.

December 2023: Multiple people receive miss prints of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” which appears to show the song “Slut” originally featured The 1975.

4/19/24: Taylor releases her new album “The Tortured Poets Department” where many songs are believed to be about Taylor and Matty’s previous relationship. 

#i know someone else made a timeline but #it was missing some stuff so i made my own #with more details #taylor swift #matty healy #tatty #mine #long post

[likeadevils]

Midnights Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on Midnights in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also included a few other songs she worked on while writing Midnights and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process.

If you don't want to read all that, check out this playlist of the album in order, or this playlist of her entire discography. (warning: there is a very large chunk in the middle of Midnights that I have no information on (Maroon-Dear Reader. On the playlist not the album I have guesses for more than one song)).

I’ve also added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but all available evidence points to that date

Speculation: This date is based off pure vibes and guesswork and is highly likely to change.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices

Renegade: March 7-15, 2021 (Confirmed)

Aaron: “I wrote the music [for Renegade] at some point after we finished [evermore], and sent it to her, because she was inspired by a llot of the Big Red Machine stuff we were working on. And she had already sung on Birch, a song that hasn't come out yet but is one of the major ones on the record. And I think she wanted to write a song for Big Red Machine. She very much feels like part of this community to me. So I wrote Renegade, the music, and sent it to her. And not unlike a lot of the things we've done together, one day I woke up to a voice memo from her and she had written this incredible song about how anxiety and fear get in the way of loving or being loved. And she was clearly thinking about Big Red Machine. And then we recorded her vocals and everything the week of the Grammys, when I was there in LA, and it was really nice to have something to think about that wasn't related to the Grammys - just to make music because you feel like making it." (transcript from jaimie)

High Infidelity and Would've Could've Should've: March 7-15, 2021 (Confirmed)

Aaron: [Would've Could've Should've], we wrote that song together, and recorded it while we were together in LA for the folklore Grammys. It goes back that far. And the same with High Infidelity. Those songs, we actually recorded in her house, the vocals, we recorded them then. And I just kept making music, and it was kind, after we had made folklore and evermore, I started to have ideas which I would share. And eventually, she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack, and it became something different. But High Infidelity, and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, and The Great War, and we made Hits Different with Jack and Taylor and I also, and it was great to be part of that record in that way. (transcript from @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes)

The Great War and Hits Different: between April-October 2021 (Speculation)

In the above quote talking about his songs on Midnights, Aaron says "Eventually, she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack, and it became something different," implying his stuff was written before the bulk of midnights in fall. He also says High Infidelity and Would've Could've Should've "[go] back that far," which implies they were some of the earliest stuff on Midnights, so it's safe to assume TGW and Hits Different come sometime afterwards.

Summer 2021: Jack has a session with Sounwave, Sam Dew, and Zoe Kravitz, where the instrumentals for Lavender Haze and likely Glitch are written

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: Before Antonoff began to work on Swift’s tenth album, he was cooking up tracks with Spears, Dew, and Zoë Kravitz [...] During a brainstorming session, the quartet put together a track that would eventually become “Lavender Haze.”

November 3 2021: It was announced that Joe has been cast in Stars at Noon, alongside Margaret Qualley, Jack Antonoff's then girlfriend now wife. Since Joe was parachuted into the film last minute, filming had already started, making it likely he left as soon as possible.

Taylor: We’d been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved, but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners (both actors) did a film together in Panama. Jack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past.

November 8: Jack gets back from touring with Bleachers. Let the games begin.

Vigilante Shit: November 2021 (Speculation)

Vigilante Shit is the sole solo writing credit on the album, which implies it was written before her and Jack were holed up together 24/7. Also Scooter and his wife divorced in July. Beyond that there's no evidence this is early in the process, besides it making sense that Taylor wrote this alone, brought it to Jack, and then fell into a creative inferno.

Maroon, Anti-Hero, You're on Your Own Kid, Midnight Rain, Bejeweled, Labyrinth, Mastermind, Paris, and Dear Reader: November/December 2021 (Inferring)

I don't have enough info on the making of any of these songs to give them each their own little blurb, but if anything pops up I will update this post and reblog it letting y’all know.

Question..?: After November 21, 2021 (Inferring)

We know Rachel Antonoff, Dylan O'Brien, and Austin Swift were there the day they recorded it thanks to this behind the scenes footage of them recording the cheering vocals. Dylan was filming The Vanishings at Caddo Lake in Louisiana sometime between October 5 and November 20. I don't know exactly which dates he was filming-- he was in New York for All Too Well filming in late October and to attend the premiere on November 12, but since we know for sure he was in Louisiana on the 20th, I'm just gonna Occam's Razor it and say Question was written sometime after he got back from that.

You're Losing Me: December 5, 2021 (Confirmed)

December 17, 2021: Filming wraps on Stars at Noon, and with it the bulk of recording for Midnights.

Lavender Haze: Early 2022 (Speculation)

Lavender Haze, Snow on the Beach, and Karma are the only songs to have Henson Recording Studios credited (I can't find studio credits for the 3am tracks so there is possibly more on there). This could point to them all being recorded around the same time time, or it could be in reference to Jack and Sounwave's original recording sessions taking place at Hensen. I lean towards the former, since 1) it seems like the Winter 2021 sessions were mostly between Taylor and Jack, and the spring sessions have other collaborators, and 2) the tabloid rumors about Taylor and Joe getting engaged really started heating up in February 2022. On the other hand, Sounwave implies that there was a notable stretch of time between Lavender Haze and Karma, so I totally understand if you want to put it with the rest of the Winter 2021 sessions. Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: A few months [after Jack and Sounwave wrote the instrumentals], Antonoff reached out to Spears, Dew, and Kravitz to see if he could pitch [Lavender Haze] to Swift, who loved it immediately. She wrote lyrics inspired by a Mad Men scene, numerous tabloid rumors and online gossip about her relationship status, and “1950s expectations.” “When Jack brought us in the hear for the first time, all our mouths dropped. She took it to a whole new world and made it her own. She created different pockets we did not hear.”

Glitch: Early 2022 (Speculation)

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: "Glitch,” one of the bonus songs on the Midnights (3am) edition, was born from the same studio session as “Lavender Haze.” I don't know if this means the instrumentals to Lavender Haze and Glitch were done in the same session, Taylor wrote the lyrics in the same session, or both. For the same reason as Lavender Haze, I lean towards this coming later in the process, as well as Glitch mentioning being together for six years, and in November 2021 Taylor and Joe had been together for a little over 5 years. That being said, Taylor could've assume the album was going to come out in 2022, and that she would stay with Joe until then, and bump up that date a bit. It's still very up in the air.

February 5, 2022: Taylor is photographed leaving Jack's house holding a keyboard.

Sweet Nothing: Spring 2022 (Inferring)

Joe is a co-write on this, meaning they likely wrote it after he got back from filming. It also mentions their trip to Ireland in 2021 and refers to it as "last July", implying it was written in 2022. While I was writing this timeline Taylor liked this post on twitter, implying that at least the second verse is in reference to Paul and Linda McCartney. The quote is from his poem Blessed, which you can read in this interview (TWs for death and cancer)

Bigger Than The Whole Sky: March 2022 (Inferring)

Claire Winter, a close friend of Taylor's, posts on Instagram that she miscarried. (I toyed with whether or not to add this, but seeing as Claire Winter made the information public herself, I decided to put it in. If she ever takes that Instagram post down, let me know and I'll delete this part.)

Snow on the Beach: April 1, 2022 (Inferring)

On April 1, Lana Del Rey posts a video on Instagram of Jack in the studio with an unidentified female voice in the background. Two days later she posts this photo, which Taylor and Jack both include in posts about Midnights/Snow on the Beach. Lana: Well, first of all, I had no idea I was the only feature [on that song]. Had I known, I would have sung the entire second verse like she wanted. My job as a feature on a big artist’s album is to make sure I help add to the production of the song, so I was more focused on the production. She was very adamant that she wanted me to be on the album, and I really liked that song. I thought it was nice to be able to bridge that world, since Jack [Antonoff] and I work together and so do Jack and Taylor. Taylor: And with Snow On The Beach, which features the genius Lana Del Rey, very lucky to have collaborated with her on that. And Dylan [O’Brien] was actually in the studio with me and Jack, because a lot of the time we record at his place, and Dylan was just hanging out, drinking wine with us, and listening to stuff, and he was just trying out the drum kit there. He wasn't serious. But we were drinking wine, and we were sort of like, 'We haven't recorded the drums for this one yet! See if you want to...' and he played the drums on the song. Sometimes it just happens like that. (transcript once again from jaimie)

Karma: Spring 2022 (Speculation)

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: The bubbly “Karma” came later [than Lavender Haze and Glitch], when Antonoff reached out to Spears for any other ideas he may have to contribute to the album and its synth-pop vision. “‘Karma’ was just a last-minute Hail Mary,” Spears says. “I remembered I was working with my guy Keanu [Beats] and had something that was too perfect not to send to her. As soon as I sent it, Jack was instantly like ‘This is the one. Playing it for Taylor now. We’re going in on it.’ The next day, I heard the final product with her vocals on it.”

April 19, 2022: Elle's interview with the Conversations with Friends cast is released, and when Joe is "asked if he hopes to continue writing songs, Alwyn simply says, “It’s not a plan of mine, no.”" It's possible this means Sweet Nothing was yet to be written, but I think it's more likely Joe was just denying in order to not create hype around a song that wasn't officially announced yet.

May 2022: Taylor teases Labyrinth lyrics in her NYU Commencement Speech and says m i d n i g h t very prominently on this instagram post, meaning by early summer she was likely confident in the album's name and which songs would make the tracklist.

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

#taylor swift #timeline* #wrote this one in a haze with frequent breaks to pace around cause i was shaking so much #so if theres a typo that’s why #as always lmk if you spot a mistake/want further sourcing on anything/etc #AHHHHHH!!!!!

[sonknuxadow]

the sonic twitter takeovers are canon when they say something i like and not canon when they say something i dont like hope this helps

#ok jokes aside i refuse to accept the sonic twitter takeovers as 100 percent undeniably canon #nobody can convince me that i should take them seriously #before anyone says ''well sega said everything is canon'' no they didnt. that was a silly joke tweet not an actual serious statement #and even if it was serious you still shouldnt take it as ''every piece of sonic media exists in the same timeline'' #because thats just not possible #HOWEVER the twitter takeovers do have some fun/cute character interactions #and the answers i do like i like to take and keep as headcanons #like shadow liking coffee beans and kittens and volunteering at soup kitchens . very good #shadow and amy being taylor swift fans ? into the shredder. not canon #they would have better taste in music + that sort of music just doesnt fit shadow at all #+ the private jet thing is literally sonic villain behavior

[loml]

this is my multiverse of madness

#seriously what fucking timeline are we in im screaming #speak now taylor’s version #taylor swift #taylor lautner #joey king #speak now tv

[seeminglyranch87]

Taylor and Travis Timeline

A relationship timeline of tay tay and killatrav for funsies

October 2016

October 2022

December 2022

February 2023

May 2023

June 2023

July 2023

August 2023

September 2023 - part 1 // part 2

October 2023 - part 1 // part 2 // part 3

November 2023 - part 1 // part 2

December 2023 - part 1 // part 2 // part 3

January 2024 - part 1 // part 2

February 2024 - part 1 // part 2

March 2024 - part 1 // part 2 // part 3

April 2024 - part 1 // part 2

#taylor swift #travis kelce #traylor #taylor and travis #taylor swift and travis kelce #87 and 89 #killatrav #seemingly ranch #Taylor & travis timeline #tayvis #T&T #87 + 13 = 100 #timeline #TnT #swelce #travlor #1989 #87 #13 #Tay & Trav #chiefs #kansas city chiefs #chiefs kingdom #the eras tour #love story

[neverbeforeandneversince]

pls re-vote because I accidentally set my previous pill for just 1 day instead of a week so that’s my fault and results are obviously skewed. I’m a dumb baby.

#taylor swift #1989 #1989 tv #1989 taylor's version #1989 vault tracks #ugh sorry guys I can’t believe I forgot the change the poll’s timeline before posting yesterday #anyway #as you can tell I’m having a big moment with Suburban Legends rn #but all of the vault tracks are god tier

[keepin-it-on-the-d-l]

And if I said Nick is currently and unknowingly making the same parental decisions as Glenn by being more of a friend to Taylor than an actual parental figure? What then?

#the close-foster family is NOT healing from generational trauma either #the way that he literally barely remembers that timeline and yet still falls victim to it #dndads #dungeons and daddies #dndaddies #dndads s2 #dndads season 2 #dndads quest #Nick close #Nick foster #nicky foster #dndads taylor swift

[joesalw]

"Even statues crumble if they're made to wait"

These lyrics are awful! Not poetic at all. She really is pretentious. She's not even a reader. Lol

Is that a real lyric from ttpd? its giving wannabe failed poet's department💀

#anti taylor swift #lmfao #anti ttpd #a new tag for new album because i don’t wanna end up in swifties' timelines

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Writing of Speak Now Timeline

Disclaimer: Hello! Just a quick note before you dive in. As I said in the Writing of Red Timeline, not every album has enough information to pinpoint the exact date on which its songs were written. Sadly, Speak Now is one of those albums, so I based this timeline more on the experiences that I think inspired the songs on the album. Of course, I'm not Taylor, I'm not in her head and I don't know people in the music industry that can corroborate this research. Therefore, there's always the chance that some of the conclusions might be wrong. You are more than welcome to take the sources listed here and come up with your own theories on the condition that you'll credit me. This is 100% my research, originally posted on Reddit on March 3rd, 2023.

Trigger Warning: John Mayer.

Introduction: The making of Speak Now was very different from Fearless which was recorded live, and closer to Debut. After Taylor wrote a song, the first step was to record a stripped-down demo at Nathan Chapman's studio Pain In The Art, where Nathan would play all of the instruments and Taylor would record the vocals. To understand better what "stripped-down" means in this context, listen to Let's Go. All of Speak Now started like Let's Go. Some of the demo instruments survived, and others were re-recorded by other musicians or overdubbed at a later date, between January 2010 and July 2010. Taylor's demo vocals ALL survived. They were not re-recorded.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “With Speak Now, we deliberately went back to our initial way of working together. We had an unlimited budget, and could have gone and recorded the whole album in the Bahamas, used any studio we liked and whatever musicians we wanted. But we decided to bring it back to the basics on purpose, because we wanted to keep it about the music and our chemistry. [We were trying not] to over-compensate for the pressure we were feeling for a follow-up to Fearless. That's why we stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. So Taylor comes in, and plays me a song, and I chart it while listening to her. I then tap out a tempo, she hands me her guitar, I go into a recording booth, put on headphones, start the click‑track and hit record. She's hearing what I'm doing and singing along while she's in the control room, so I know where I am in the song. After that, I program the drums, usually using Superior Drummer in Logic. I play the drum parts on my Roland Fantom G6 keyboard, and then quantise. I then play the fills that I want to complete the drum part. After this I'll put down a bass part, and at this point we make sure we're really OK with the tempo and that we love the arrangement. I may add an electric guitar to make the track bigger, and then she'll go into the vocal booth and she'll sing the song three or four times. We may do a little bit of comping, but she executes these songs really well, and I don't want to mess with her takes too much. The audience wants to hear someone sing with real emotion. From there we'll listen to what we have and we'll maybe add some vocal harmonies and guitars, and I do a quick mix and she's out of the door.”

WRITING OF SPEAK NOW TIMELINE

November 2, 2006: Taylor writes Sparks Fly, after opening for Jake Owen in Portland, OR, on Halloween night. The secret message in the album booklet is Portland, Oregon. She will perform the song for the first time on April 6, 2007, in her native Reading PA.

[From MySpace] Happy Halloween! I'm sitting at the airport in Portland, Oregon... About to get on a red-eye flight (Oh yes, I just said red-eye. Meaning, all night. This should be interesting...)  to Toronto, Canada for another weekend of Rascal Flatts shows. Tonight was awesome. It was a show in Portland at a bar called Duke's, I opened up for Jake Owen. And a little back-story, I've had his album on repeat for the past couple of months... It's an amazing album and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I've got every line memorized, and if you see me on a plane.. Chances are, I'm listening to some song off that album, at a volume level that's probably going to cause long-term hearing damage someday. ANYWAY. I got to walk in on his sound check and meet him. Turns out he's extremely cool, and had bought my album on iTunes. :-) And since I had to leave after one song of his set, he played my favorite song "8 Second Ride" first. Which is another reason why he's awesome.

The writing date was leaked by Steve Hall from the IC on July 21, 2010. Since we didn't have the secret message yet, we didn't have any reason to believe it was written after the Jake Owen show. (thanks @backup-baby-backup!)

Original handwritten lyric sheet:

May 30, 2007: First performance of Sparks Fly in Oroville, CA. Steve Hall from the Inner Circle/Dark Blue Tennessee.com films it and posts it online.

Differences between the draft and the 2007 live version:

“You stand there in front of me” -> “you stood there in front of me”

“Get me with those brown eyes, baby” -> “get me with those green eyes, baby”

“Take your open hand and take me out” -> “reach out open-handed and lead me out”

“Dim the paper lanterns” -> “don’t need more paper lanterns”

“This night is the 31st” -> “my heart is beating fast”

“So let’s make it count now, baby” -> “I could wait patiently”

“I’ll run my fingers” -> “I run my fingers”

“And make no borderlines” -> “gonna strike this match tonight”

“Forgive me when I can’t take in everything you are” -> “and lead me up the staircase”

“You kissed me like you meant it, I swear I saw sparks” -> “I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show”

There was also an additional section: We stood at the gate (and you kiss me) / With the moon on your face / And you’ll kiss me

September 2008: Taylor and Martin Johnson team up to write a diss track about Camilla Belle, called Drama Queen. This is one of the first steps in the Taylor-Joe-Camilla saga, which started with Forever & Always and Drama Queen and continued on Speak Now. There is no evidence that Drama Queen was considered for Speak Now, but for being an unreleased song, it made it as far as being mastered for the OG Fearless so it has to mean something. In my opinion, it would've taken Better Than Revenge's place, if BTR hadn't existed. Taylor talked about the Fearless mastering process on September 30th on MySpace: this song literally CANNOT be younger, since the mastering of a song is considered a legal document, necessary for copyright protection and the collection of royalties.

March 8, 2009: John Mayer tweets: "Waking up to this song idea that won't leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it's good enough to finish. It's called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song."

Taylor's answer: "I freaked out when I heard [it], because I’ve been such a big fan of John for such a long time. I’m really excited about just the idea that he would even mention me in his Twitter!”

March 13, 2009: [From her Twitter] [second source] "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

March 19, 2009: [From MySpace] ““I’m wiped out. I've been in the studio all day (I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

Speculation: One of the songs is possibly Mr. Perfectly Fine, since, as we know from Fearless TV, it was considered for Fearless Platinum. Maybe Haunted was also part of the same recording session. Haunted is the first Speak Now song to be copyrighted, so it has to be one of the first songs.

‘Haunted’ is about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love. That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.

The secret message is: "Still to this day".

Early April 2009: Taylor and Martin Johnson from Boys Like Girls write If This Was A Movie.

Speculation: I think it was written in April just because of the lyric "six months gone and I'm still reaching" and Taylor and Joe Jonas had broken up six months before, in October.

Literally nothing else is known about this song.

April 23, 2009: The Fearless Tour starts in Evansville, Indiana. Taylor will write most of Speak Now while on tour.

May 22, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform White Horse and Your Body Is A Wonderland at the LA Staples Center.

May 23, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer record Half Of My Heart.

May 29, 2009: [From MySpace] “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks.

June 8, 2009: [From Twitter] "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: [From Twitter] "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

June 12, 2009: American publishes an interview with Taylor where she talks about her third album. The interview was probably done in April.

“There are definitely breakup songs on this record, but not too many. I like to balance out the amount of happy songs, breakup songs, sentimental songs, I-miss-you songs, angry songs. I don’t want to try and harp on the same emotion too much because I feel like if you make the ‘angry’ album, that’s going to lose people.”

June 16, 2009: the Jonas Brothers release their new album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which includes a song called Much Better, that references Taylor:

I get a rep for breaking hearts / Now, I'm done with superstars / And all the tears on her guitar

This is likely the song that inspires Taylor to write Better Than Revenge, since the phrase "much better" is used multiple times in the song.

“The song "Better Than Revenge" is about a girl, who a few years ago, stole my boyfriend. I think she probably thought I forgot about it, but I didn't.”

Fun Fact: Joe Jonas changed the lyrics from "I'm done with superstars" to "I'm cool with superstars".

July 1, 2009: [From MySpace] “What else is new... Recording a bunch of new songs.”

One of them is possibly Better Than Revenge, maybe even Let's Go. Taylor seems still bitter about Joe leaving her.

July 11, 2009: Taylor writes on her diary about going to an antique shop. This is probably the inspiration for Timeless.

[Lover Journal] I just got back from a trip to Canada that was absolutely refreshing and good for the soul. I never really knew what a good thing having no cell or internet could be. But it was a great thing. I did things a little differently up there, and I actually liked it. I started reading self-help books. It’s really uplifting knowing that you can change your life today, tomorrow … just by doing a few things you never thought of. Or doing things differently than you’ve done them before. New things I adopted from a self help book: Get up early. Keep your cool. Don’t tee off on people you love. Laugh more. You can control your moods. Create a love account and make deposits, in other words, show people that you love them. Another new hobby of mine is ….. antique stores. And not just neat, organized antique stores. I really like the ones where there’s so much crap to dig through, you can find absolute treasures for nothing. I went to 2 antique stores in Saskatchewan, and one today in Winnipeg. I bought all these old glass mason jars. I’m gonna use them for candle holders. I bought old scales and watch faces and chairs and old trunks and a bird cage and 2 lamps.

July 21, 2009: [From Twitter] Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure. Album #3.

July 2009: Based on a Lover Journal, I think that Taylor wrote Never Grow Up in July 2009.

Handwritten Lyrics From a Lover Journal:

‘Never Grow Up’ is a song about the fact that I don’t quite know how I feel about growing up. It’s tricky. Growing up happens without you knowing it. Growing up is such a crazy concept because a lot of times when you were younger you wish you were older. I look out into a crowd every night and I see a lot of girls that are my age and going through exactly the same things as I’m going through. Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is seven or eight, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours.”

September 6, 2009: Taylor announces Fearless Platinum Edition on MySpace, out on October 26, 2009. It includes Jump Then Fall, which was originally written in the summer of 2008, while Taylor was dating Joe Jonas. The secret message of the song is "Last Summer Was Magical". It seems like Taylor doesn't harbor bitter feelings toward Joe anymore.

“We just put out Fearless last year? I know! We’re not putting out a whole new album. We’re re-releasing Fearless with SIX new songs added. I’m so excited for you to hear this new music, see the new pictures, and watch the 50 million hours of bonus content. I love you a lot and I’ll see you on the road!”

September 13, 2009: New York. Night of the VMA incident, where Kanye West interrupts Taylor while she's accepting the Best Music Video Award for You Belong With Me. Taylor starts writing Innocent shortly after.

Based on the themes of the song and on the fact that, according to the booklet, it was written in 2009, I think that Castles Crumbling was also inspired by the VMA incident.

[GQ] “When the crowd started booing, I thought they were booing because they also believed I didn’t deserve the award. That’s where the hurt came from. I went backstage and cried, and then I had to stop crying and perform five minutes later. I just told myself I had to perform, and I tried to convince myself that maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. But that was the most happenstance thing to ever happen in my career.”

September 15, 2009 (morning): Taylor is still in New York doing interviews, like The View with Whoopy Goldberg. Taylor says that she bought her own condo in Nashville. Unsurprisingly, the main topic is the VMA incident.

September 15, 2009 (night): Taylor attends Owl City's show in New York. She and Adam Young (aka Owl City) had exchanged emails in the previous months. She writes Enchanted after their meeting.

[MTV Interview] “I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you.’ Using the word ‘wonderstruck’ [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that’s a word which that person used one time in an e-mail... so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

[Adam Young Interview] When Young met the 21-year-old music superstar backstage at one of his shows in New York, he was starstruck. "She was on her way up to meet me and that was the most nerve-racking few minutes of my life just waiting to meet Taylor Swift," he says. "When I met her she was glowing and I was too. It's hard to put into words, but I was definitely wonderstruck to meet her." Unfortunately for Young, nothing ever progressed beyond emails and one fateful meeting. "I think I'm not the most romantic and eloquent guy in the world," he admits. "She's just this endearing, wonderful girl and maybe I said something wrong. Who knows. It went on for three or four months, something like that."

Speculation: I think that the first verse of Enchanted is a reference to the View interview that Taylor did that morning.

September 26, 2009: While touring in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Kellie Pickler and Gloriana, Taylor writes a song, possibly Last Kiss.

“The song ‘Last Kiss’ is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a break-up. Going through a break-up you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song.”

[Drummer Nick Buda on the recording of Last Kiss, recorded in mid 2010 circa] On "Last Kiss," South African-born Nick Buda said there was an air of real excitement when they were recording the album. “She is awesome to work with and super-appreciative of her players. There was a real chemistry involved in this record.” Their desire to get exactly the sound they wanted extended to changing Buda’s modern drum kit to a vintage one on some choruses in order to get a different tone from some of the bombastic “teenage rock band” sound. “The songs were so well written that very rarely did they go past a third take,” he said.

The secret message is "Forever And Always".

October 17, 2009: [From Twitter] Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 7, 2009: Taylor sings "Monologue Song (La La La) at the SNL, where she mentions her breakup with Joe and dating Taylor Lautner.

November 30, 2009: Taylor tweets: “If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five...”

Late November/Early December 2009: Taylor writes Ours and possibly Superman. Maybe they're the songs Taylor was talking about in the tweet.

[People Country] “I wrote [Ours] when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember. [I won't say who inspired it], to me, the song says something bigger, which is "I love you, and I don't care what anyone else thinks."”

(About Ours) “I’m excited about telling the beginnings of stories, like the story of this song called ‘Ours,’ where I wrote it about this guy nobody thought I should be with. So I wrote this song specifically just to play it for him, just to show him, ‘I don’t care what anyone says. I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.’ And that song ended up actually making it on [Speak Now] and becoming a #1 song.”

That's how Taylor broke down the lyrics for People in April 2012:

“Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves” -> "I felt like I was on a tightrope. I knew that falling in love with the wrong person could freak people out."

“So don’t you worry your pretty little mind” -> "A lot of people have pretty little heads, but it's difficult to find a pretty little mind."

“People throw rocks at things that shine” -> "I kind of made up the phrase. It has a nursery rhyme feel, which I like."

“The stakes are high, the water's rough” -> "Those are the first lines that came to me."

“Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles” -> "It stereotypes girls who that pretend they're happy for your and are not."

“I'll fight their doubt and give you faith with this song for you” -> "My realization of what we were up against came out in that line. I was desperate to make it work."

“Cause I love the gap between your teeth” -> "My favorite part of the song. It's symbolic of "I love your idiosyncrasies."

“And any snide remarks from my father about your tattoos” -> "My dad thinks that this line is hilarious. He loves to tease me."

[About Superman] “This is about, well, a guy, as usual. This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with. This song got its title by something that I just said randomly in conversation. When he walked out of the room, I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.’”

Dear John's secret message is "I Loved You From The Very First Day", which is a line from Superman.

The song also includes the line "Wishing the flowers were from you", which may or may not be the same flowers mentioned in Back To December ("You gave me roses and I left them there to die").

Gossip Speculation: This makes me think that Taylor was never deeply in love with Taylor L (-> "And I realised I loved you in the fall") and she left Taylor L for John Mayer (-> "And if you'd never saved me from boredom, I would've gone on as I was")

December 6, 2009: [From MySpace] “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day...”

December 11, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform Half Of My Heart at the Z100 Jingle Bell Ball concert in New York. After this concert, rumors of them dating surface.

December 13, 2009: Taylor turns 20.

December 22, 2009: [From Twitter] "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 11, 2010: [From Twitter] "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless. Home-made cupcakes were brought. Awkward fist-pumps happened. Onward!"

January 13, 2010: [From MySpace] Thank you January. I have had this month off. [...] I've written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother's birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I've gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I've made new music. I've gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. So thank you for giving me so much to be thankful for this January. Thank you beyond what I know how to say.

[From Twitter] "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

[Music News.com Interview] “The weirdest place I have ever written a song is probably in an airport, and I got an idea so fast that I had to run to the bathroom at the airport, grab a paper towel and write lyrics on the paper towel. I still have it. I still have it in a box in my room.”

“Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

January 2010: It's possible that one of the songs recorded during the January session was Speak Now.

[MTV Interview] "One of my friends... the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she said. "And my first inclination was to say, 'Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be."

“This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he’s getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, ‘So, you gonna speak now?’ She was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I was like ‘Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I’ll go with you. I’ll play guitar. It would be great.’ She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding.”

The secret message for Speak Now is “You always regret what you don’t say.”

In January 2010, things are starting to get serious. Taylor, Nathan and the rest of the group, are at the Starstruck Recording Studio to finish up some songs.

Mid January 2010: In a Rolling Stone interview, Taylor confirms she has already recorded some songs.

“‘I’ll be moving out, living on my own, experiencing relationships,’ she says. ‘All of that will be documented in sort of a photo-album-slash-diary, which will be this next record.’ I’ve written so much for this next record and recorded a bunch of songs already, but I don’t want to give away any of the titles – it’s still too early in the process. I don’t really write for albums as much as I just write for my life and process what I feel, whether that feeling is resentment or hope or happiness or a crush — writing songs helps me get through those moments.”

January 31, 2010: Taylor wins her first AOTY for Fearless at the 52nd Grammy Awards.

February 1, 2010: Bob Lefsetz posts his particularly negative review of her performance with Stevie Nicks at the Grammy's. Mean was likely written shortly after.

“When you do what I do, which is you put yourself out there for a lot of people to say whatever they want about it, there are a million different opinions from a million different people. I get it that not everyone is going to like everything that you do, and I get that no matter what, you’re going to be criticized for something. But I also get that there are different kinds of ways to criticize someone. There is constructive criticism. There’s professional criticism. And then, there’s just being mean. There’s a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person, and there’s one guy who just crossed the line over and over again. Just being mean, and saying things that would ruin my day. […] There’s always going to be someone who’s just mean to you. Dealing with that is all you can control about that situation, how you handle it. ‘Mean’ is about how I handle it, and sort of my mindset about this whole situation.”

"There's a song called 'Mean,' that I guess you could categorize it into feelings and or relationships but it's actually about a critic."

In a later interview with 60 Minutes, Swift revealed that the critic was someone who attacked her performance with Stevie Nicks at the 52nd Grammy Awards, where she sang off-key.

February 3, 2010: Taylor writes Mean.

[InDemand] "There's a song on the record called Mean. I remember I started writing it sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it. Then I took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night, and finishing it in the dressing room.

I'm inferring the date but Taylor went to Australia on February 4th, so that's the closest date to the Bob Lefsetz's post. Alternatively, the other closest date is February 17th.

February 4, 2010: John Mayer is interviewed for Rolling Stone, and a friend of his says: "Nothing is what it seems. He operates in layers of meaning, where a poop joke is so much more than a poop joke. And he’d be a phenomenal chess player, because he knows all the moves so many steps ahead. That’s just how he operates.” (-> "And I lived in your chess game, but you changed the rules every day.")

February 5, 2010: Josh Farro from Paramore announces his engagement. Since he specifies that some people already knew about it, it is safe to assume that Hailey Williams, his ex-girlfriend and bandmate, knew before this date about it. Taylor's interviews imply that they were talking about the engagement, not the wedding.

I've got some news to share with you guys so here it goes... As some of you already know, I am engaged! So, as weird as it is to stay behind, I need to take some time off to plan the wedding and everything.

February 11, 2010: Taylor Lautner's birthday. Taylor doesn't call him, as she confessed in Back To December.

February 13, 2010: Based on a Lover Journal entry from this day, it seems like Taylor and John were no longer dating. Dear John must've been written around this period.

[Lover Journal, Flight from Adelaide to Nashville]: “My horoscope said today someone new is going to come into the picture and change my life in an exciting way. PLUS, its the 13th so it has to be true. Right? Right Well, I don't see it happening in the form of meeting someone. Maybe I'll get an email or a call. From someone fantastic and life changing. Or maybe I won't. That's more likely. I've been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it's just right. I don't know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it's there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep MY attention for 2 years.”

“The song ‘Dear John’ is sort of like the last email you would ever send to someone that you used to be in a relationship with. Usually people write this venting last email to someone and they say everything that they want to say to that person, and then they usually don’t send it. I guess by putting this song on the album I am pushing send.”

February 22, 2010: [From MySpace] “I’ve been writing lots of songs.”

March 10, 2010: Taylor writes Mine.

[InDemand] "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually."

According to three different Reddit sources, Taylor was dating a non famous guy from Belmont University. The coffee shop referenced in Mine is a coffee shop in Austin, TX, by the water called Mozart's.

“This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie. After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn’t talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw.”

“Lately I’ve had this bad habit of running away from love. Kind of getting to the place where it’s about to commit, and then you just, like, run in the opposite direction. ‘Mine’ is about the idea that I could find someone who would be the exception to that, someone who would be so sturdy and so much of a sure thing that I wouldn’t run from it. Sometimes I look back on a lot of examples that I’ve seen of love, long term, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out. There are goodbyes and people get really hurt, so I tend to be a little ‘run-awayish.’ But I’m never past hoping that at some point that could change. This song is the first single because it has this… There was this moment between Nathan [Chapman] and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is it. This is the one.’”

[Nathan Chapman interview] “The demo for 'Mine' took less than five hours to record, and sounded almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on [until July], and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world.”

[Scott Borchetta Billboard Interview] "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office, just a few doors down the hall from the leather couch in the lobby.

"We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments." And then it got serious. "I said, ‘Keep going,’ " Borchetta says. "She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’"

Taylor will talk about being challenged by Borchetta to write more for Speak Now during the Red Era:

“During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album's finished,' he said, 'No, it's not -- you need to keep writing.'”

Early March 2010: According to Scott Borchetta, shortly after he challenged Taylor to write more, she finishes writing Innocent, which she had started 6 months prior.

"Innocent," written after the VMA incident with Kanye West, for example, didn't come to Swift quickly. "Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with 'Innocent.'

“It took a while to write that song," Swift says. "That was a huge, intense thing in my life that resonated for a long time. It was brought up to me in grocery stores and everywhere I went, and in a lot of times in my life, when I don’t know how I feel about something, I say nothing. And that’s what I did until I could come to the conclusion that I came to in order to write ‘Innocent,’ " she says. "Even then, I didn’t talk about it, and I still don’t really talk about it. I just thought it was very important for me to sing about it.”

March 24, 2010: Taylor has lunch with Taylor Lautner. This meeting is likely what inspires Back To December. (thanks to @backup-baby-backup for locating the article)

[Interview Clip] Transcript: “‘Back To December’ is a song that addresses a first for me, in that I’ve never apologized to someone in a song before. This is about a person who was incredible to me- just perfect in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”

[CBS Interview] She explained in the interview that she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she revealed. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

April 3, 2010: Paramore's member Josh Farro marries Jenna Rice. Taylor attends the ceremony. She also goes to the studio in the morning.

[From Twitter] "Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules."

April 13, 2010: Taylor comes up with the title "Speak Now" after Scott Borchetta rejects "Enchanted". She also writes in her journal about getting tired of songs.

[From a Lover Journal] “So I've been obsessing over the new records to the point where it's all I can focus on. I'm majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I've raised the bar and I can beat half of the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn't talk about it in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I've been silent about so much that I'm saying on this album. It's time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!”

[Scott Borchetta Interview] “At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,'” Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta said. “We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I‘m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called ‘Enchanted.'” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the “Speak Now” title, which comes closer to representing the evolution that the album represents in her career and in her still-young understanding of the world.

June 5, 2010: End of the Fearless Tour. Around this week, Taylor writes Long Live, scrabbling the chorus in her journal.

“This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years. We’ve had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don’t care how we’re dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, “How is this happening?” And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. ‘Long Live’ is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It’s sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team.”

“"Long Live," (in parentheses "We Will Be Remembered"), is the first song where I've ever had parentheses in the title. Besides that, though, this song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we've had in the last two years. We've had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don't care how we're dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, "How is this happening?" And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. "Long Live" is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It's sort of the first love song that I've written to my team.”

June 9, 2010: Night of the CMT Music Awards, held in Nashville. 'CMT Music Awards' is the secret message of The Story Of Us.

“‘The Story of Us’ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. But I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up. I went home and I sat there at the kitchen table and I said to my mom, ‘I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.’ Then I got up and ran into my bedroom, as she’s seen me do many times. And she probably assumed I had come up with a line in the song.”

“'The Story of Us' is a song that I wrote about an awkward situation where, well… Let me just preface by saying that I have happened to run into exes in strange places lately. This is about one of those situations where the strange place that I ran into him was an awards show. I was seated a couple of seats away from him and there was so much that needed to be said, and neither one of us was willing to say it. We were both acting like we were engaged in conversations with people that we don't even know. It was just miserable. I was telling my Mom about it later, and I said I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room. And then I was like, "Gotta go. Bye!" And my Mom is used to that at this point so, that's what this song is about.”

June 13, 2010: Taylor premiers Mine during the 13-hour Meet & Greet at the CMA Music Festival. Fans ask a lot of questions about Sparks Fly.

“'Sparks Fly' is a song I wrote a few years ago and played in concert. You guys have learned it and I think like it, which makes me really happy. When we did the 13-hour Meet and Greet at the CMA Fest, there was a comment I got over and over again. You guys were saying, 'So what about 'Sparks Fly?' Is it going to be on the next record? [...] I played that song at maybe one or two shows, and you guys just jumped on it and really made it something that I had to put on the album because you really showed interest in it.”

Comparison between the 2007 live version and the final one:

First verse: You say my name for the first time, baby, and I fall in love in an empty bar -> You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.

Second verse: So reach out open-handed and lead me out to that floor / I don’t need more paper lanterns / Take me down, baby / Bring on the movie score / ‘Cause my heart is beating fast and you are beautiful / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would... -> My mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea / You touch me once and it’s really somethin’ / You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be / I’m on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it’s no good / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would…

Bridge: Just keep your beautiful eyes on me / Gonna strike this match tonight / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show -> Just keep on keepin’ your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I'm captivated by you, baby I’m captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show.

Speculation: I think that the line "I'm on my guard from the rest of the world" from Sparks Fly being written after "And you figure out why I'm guarded" from Mine is very telling of what Taylor was going through.

June 16, 2010: [From a Lover Journal] After the CMT Music Awards, Taylor works on The Story Of Us for a few days, before finishing it on June 16th, on her way to Nathan Chapman's studio.

[MTV Interview] “I was at an awards show, and there was a guy there, obviously — it all starts there, doesn’t it? It was a guy I had been in a relationship with, falling out, then we end up at the same awards show, both trying to act like we don’t care, both like, you know, chatting up the people next to us. Afterward, I just felt so empty, like we were both fighting this silent war of pretending we didn’t care that the other was there. And I went home, and I wrote this song about it. And at that point, I had this gut feeling, and I knew the album was finished.”

[Lover Journal Page Transcript] “So I've been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning, throw on a sundress, skip makeup, tie my hair in a messy side-braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I'll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car three steps to Nathan's basement studio. I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan's this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort a torn sounding... like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you know the person you're pining away for is in the room. There are these invisible walls keeping things from being okay. So you're not fine. And they're not fine. And I'm happy I wrote that song!! :)”

Video: Making of The Story Of Us Demo

It will be the last song she writes before having a writer's block that will end 6 months later with All Too Well.

[USA Today Interview] [All Too Well] came after a six-month writing drought that followed a particularly toxic relationship. "There's a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can't even write about it," she says of that time. "When you feel pain that is so far past dysfunctional, that leaves you with so many emotions that you can't filter them down to simple emotions to write about, that's when you know you really need to get out."

June 18, 2010: John Mayer presents Taylor with the Hal David Starlight Award, at the 41st Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

John's speech: “You could put her in a time machine in any era and she would have a hit record. Don't confuse everybody loving one thing as hype. Sometimes that's everyone agreeing that it's fabulous.”

From now on, Taylor will only focus on the production of Speak Now, tweaking the songs and overdubbing the instruments.

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets about Amos Heller recording the bass on Mine at the Blackbird Studio. Clips from this day are also released.

July 8, 2010: Taylor is spotted in Maine, while filming the music video of Mine. The final mix of the song is not ready yet.

[Source] Taylor Swift was in Kennebunk today, July 8, shooting part of a new music video at Christ Church on Dane Street. The Rev. Janet Leighninger, pastor of Christ Church said they had been contacted a while ago by a company that scouts film locations and happened to check the church out one Sunday. “Then they called about a week ago and said could they possibly film here,” she said. Leighninger said she was told it would be a country artist shooting a music video, but not who the artist was. “We wanted to make sure it was appropriate,” she said. On the morning of the shoot, Leighninger discovered the artist was Swift.

[People who were there] "It was a blast to watch! Both Taylor and the guy in her video seemed to be having tons of fun and at one point where he proposes and they kissed he looked up at the camera crew and said 'She said no by the way.' The scene lasted about 30 minutes and then they started filming in the house again."

[Mixer Justin Niebank Interview] "Interestingly enough, I'd done some kind of pre‑mix of 'Mine' for a video thing, with the original drums and bass, and Nathan and Taylor were like: 'This is cool, but we want to go a little bit more for a power approach.' So by the time it got to the final mix they had rerecorded the bass and the drums and it sounded great.

The rough version of the final mix is called "Mine JN Master Mix", where JN stands for Justin Niebank. You can also see "SF" which stands for Shannon Forest, the drummer. The old stems played by Nathan are also visible.

To sum up all of the known Mine demos:

First demo: Recorded in March 2010; all instruments played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Nathan.

Second demo: Mixed in June 2010, made for the Music Video; all instruments still played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Justin Niebank.

Third demo: Called "JN Master Mix": Mixed on July 21, 2010, bass played by Amos Heller, drums played by Shannon Forest, mixed by Justin Niebank, mix ready or almost ready to be mastered.

July 15, 2010: Taylor and Toby Hemingway are spotted shopping in West Hollywood. This is also the day when the orchestra strings for Back To December and Haunted are recorded, arranged by Paul Buckmaster. Taylor's interview in the studio here.

“I wanted the music and the orchestration [for Haunted] to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience – recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for.”

Late July 2010: In the meantime, Justin Niebank completes the definitive mixes. Mine is completed on July 21st specifically.

[Nathan Chapman] For Speak Now we had to mix 17 songs in three weeks, and I knew that I would want to go back to tweak some of the songs we had mixed earlier, and I did not want to have to recall the mixing board every time. There just wasn't time for that.

July 2010: Taylor moves out to her own condo in Nashville.

“This summer I've been 99 percent focused on my new record and one percent focused on the fact that I actually just moved into my first place. I'm officially moved in! I'm so excited! As you know, I've been constantly talking about how I've been antique shopping and non-stop planning and construction on this place. It's been really awesome to figure out what it's like to be on your own, just cooking and stuff. I'm having such a blast with it.”

The Never Grow Up secret message is: "I moved out in July".

July 2010: Shooting of the Speak Now Photoshoot with her band, The Agency.

August 4, 2010: Mine is released. It was supposed to be released on August 15th, but since it had leaked its release was anticipated.

August 31, 2010: The Mine Music Video is released. Taylor has a get-together at her home in Nashville with the kids in the video and their families.

Taylor broke down the music video in 2012 in this very funny interview for Vevo Certified;

Behind The Scenes Footage: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 from the Speak Now Deluxe Edition/Target. This is very unhinged.

[Director Roman White comment] Creating this piece was beyond fun, and I’ve honestly never had a better time on a shoot. Was it crazy hot? Yes. Were there tons of bugs? Yes. Was all of this offset by the insanely gorgeous scenery? 100% YES! We shot the entire piece near Portland, Maine and much lobster was eaten! My AMAZING producer, Tameron Hedge, actually got accosted by a HUGE seagull who took off with her lobster roll (that’s how good they were). Other than that one little incident, Maine was absolute perfection. On the first day, we shot on a private estate with more than 2,000 acres and a private beach, rounding out the second day in a small harbor town. There was a lot going on, and I had a BLAST with the entire gang!

September 12, 2010: Taylor premiers Innocent at the VMAs, a year after the Kanye incident.

“You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don’t… but then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual, raw feelings, that doesn’t benefit anyone. As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can’t really control any of that. It’s just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you’ve got to find a balance for.”

“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him.”

October 25, 2010: Speak Now is finally released.

“There is also the fact that the album is called 'Speak Now,' and that pertains to the album as a concept and as an entire theme of the record, more than I can even tell you," she says. "I've been working on it for two years. Ever since we put out 'Fearless,' I've been writing for this record and conceptualizing it and putting it together in my head, what I wanted it to be. I like to take a lot of time between albums to work up the next one and see what it is. We did the same thing with 'Fearless.' We put two years in between it [and her self-titled debut album] and that gives enough time for me [to] write everything that I live. You have got to give yourself time to live a lot of things, so you can write a lot of things.”

“I wrote all the songs myself for this record. It didn't really happen on purpose. It just sort of happened that way. I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York; that would happen again in Boston; that would happen again in Nashville. The songs that made the cut for the albums are the ones that I wrote by myself so – wish me luck!”

“In life you have a lot of situations that pop up and people that come into your life, and sometimes you don’t get to tell them what you wish you would have told them,” Swift said. “This album is my opportunity to do that track-by-track. Each song is a different confession to a different person.”

“Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through,” she added. “Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I’m beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions.”

Bonus: The Vault

“My favorite thing to do is make a list of what the album can be, even when I'm in the beginning stages of writing the album and I've got three songs on the list. I still make a list of what the track listing would be like. Which [song] is track one, two or three. And then you keep writing more songs and writing more songs and all of a sudden you've got a list of 25 songs. What I would do is keep bumping off songs that I felt I had overwritten. As you keep writing more songs, your list gets better and better and better. And I did that so many times I can't even count!”

The Vault Titles:

Castles Crumbling

Someone Just Told Me

His Lies

Wonderful Things

I Can See You

Let's Go

Foolish One

Timeless

Bother Me

Electric Touch

When Emma Falls In Love

All of them are self-written.

This post will be edited once we will have additional info on the songs, especially the Vault Songs. Thank you for reading!

#taylor swift #speak now #writing of speak now timeline #speak now taylor's version #taylurking #speak now vault #vault songs #speak now tv #taylor swift timelines

[rainmidnight]

"there's too much lore to learn to understand ttpd" then don't think about the lore? the beauty of art is we can give it our own meanings and interpretations !!!

#it's literally what i've been doing all this time i go into the album blind as much as possible #the only reason i know the theories as to which song is about who (for any album) is because i just so happen to stumble across it online #but i never actively tried to understand who it was about #for example i've been an innocent stan for over ten years now and i only learned last year that it was about kanye apparently? #all because someone on my timeline mentioned it #it never ruined my own interpretation of the song though #the tortured poets department #ttpd #taylor swift

[sophietv]

Kaylor Timeline BEFORE VSFS 2013

It's a thread I did on my Twitter that I'll transfer here.

Once again, I used amazing Tumblr posts to do it. So I'll credit them as we go (If I need to do something else tell me, I'm new to the Tumblr etiquette).

So the official story is that Taylor and Karlie crossed path a couple of times without interacting and met for the first time at the Victoria Secret Fashion Show in 2013 🤔

Well they met A LOT of times and interacted before actually 😅

Let's see the Timeline before that VSFS in 2013!

***I'll edit this post as I find new interactions (because I feel like I'll find a lot of them) I'll add this 🆕 beside new additions and dates when it was added at the end of the post.

First meeting!

So what motivated my thread in the first place is this Interview Taylor did in 2014 with Andrew Bevan of Teen Vogue.

Here's the YouTube Link (X)

But here's the most important part of that interview:

He is saying that he introduced Karlie and Emma Stone to Taylor!!

Ok we know that Taylor met Emma at the 2008 Young Hollywood Award.

I don't think though that he is talking about that event. Because he says that he congratulated her for her cover.

Taylor did two covers with Teen Vogue, one in 2009 and one in 2011.

Following the Timeline and everything it's most likely the March 2009 one:

EDIT:

Thanks to this Anon! (X)

A magazine cover is planned 2-8 months in advance, up to a year for major celebrities.

The Young Hollywood Award was on late April 2008 and the cover was for March 2009 so it make sense.

So it's most likely that Taylor met karlie for the first time at the same event she met Emma for the first time.

🆕 Really cute fact.

On the Cover of that magazine, Taylor wears a dress from the Calvin Klein Spring 2009 show. (X)

Guess who walked that runway??

Karlie! (X)

I exceeded the limit of picture so click on the (X) to see the posts.

Tommy Hilfiger spring 2010 collection:

Septembre 16th 2009 Taylor attends the Tommy Hilfiger Spring Show during New York Fashion Week. (X)

Karlie was there too! (X)

In this post, you can see videos of Taylor watching Karlie on the runway: (X)

Here's the YouTube video : (X)

🆕Met Gala 2010:

They were both at the Met Gala in 2010

🆕In Milan together

Although they were not at the same Fashion Show (that we know) Taylor and Karlie were in Milan at the same time during the Fashion Week.

Another interesting facts. This could explain the "1958" reference of Timeless:

Thanks to Izg on Twitter for giving me this!!

Roberto Cavalli 40th Anniversary Party:

Septembre 30th 2010

Taylor and Karlie attends the Roberto Cavalli 40th Anniversary party in Paris.

Met Gala 2011:

May 2nd 2011

Karlie and Taylor both attend the Met Gala:

This is also the first time that we have confirmation of an interaction between them:

Thanks to that amazing post! (X)

Karlie said in Teen Vogue that they joked about having a baking date.

Rodarte Spring 2012 fashion show:

Septembre 13th 2011

Taylor attend Rodarte Spring 2012 fashion show where Karlie walks.

Here's a link to the video (X)

Vogue Febuary 2012:

January 17th 2012

Taylor mentions Karlie in her Vogue interview: "I love Karlie Kloss! I Want to bake cookies with her!"

And this quote, made history.

Karlie answers the same day:

Vogue Fashion's Night Out:

August 2012

Thanks to this post (X)

Taylor and Karlie star in the same commercial about Vogue Fashion Night Out:

Thanks to @hairpinraindrop for the video

Karlie and Taylor were present at the event too on Septembre 6th 2012

Paris 2012:

Septembre 30th 2012

Karlie walks the runway for Jean-Paul Gauthier in Paris:

Taylor is in Paris at the same time to film the Begin Again MV:

Funny Koincidence(?), I went back and watch that MV again, and look at the opening scene!

The Love Lock Bridge!!!

Elie Saab Spring Summer 2013 show:

Octobre 3rd 2012

Taylor is still in Paris and attends The Paris Fashion Week (X) at a fashion show where I'm pretty sure Karlie walked (I'm still searching for photos/videos).

But we know that Karlie was at the Paris Fashion Week too! (Thanks Astra!)

Here's a video:

🆕Met Gala 2013

They were also both at the Met Gala in 2013. Wich was in May.

So there you have it! All of Kaylor interaction BEFORE the 2013 VSFS!

This explains the timing of it all.

Because they allegedly met at the 2013 Victoria Secret Fashion Show in Novembre.

But as we know, Taylor moved to New York because Karlie asked her:

Timestamp 1:23

And people believe that she moved there after their Big Sur trip in March 2014.

Actually. Back in January 2014, Taylor was already looking to buy an appartment near Karlie's:

And she actually bought her Tribeca oenthouse in February.

Thanks to Bigsurlor for this!!

So they definitly knew each other before 2013!

Edit August 19 2023: Met Gala 2010, Milan trip together and Met Gala 2013 and the appartment hunting

Edit August 27th 2023: the Calvin Klein Spring 2009 dress section

#gaylor #kaylor #lsk #lgbetty #karlie kloss #taylor swift #timeline #mastermind #invisible string #your past and mine are parallel lines #Youtube

[likeadevils]

1989 Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on 1989 in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also included a few other songs she worked on while writing 1989 and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process

Of all the albums in Taylor's discography, I think this is the one that improves the most when you listen to it in order. All of those things Taylor was talking about in the promo for this album-- how this is an album of her coming into her own, figuring out her values, learning to stand on her own two feet-- it all clicks into place. Listening to it in order has made me cry on more than one occasion, and it's also the thing that made me start this whole crazy process of figuring out the dates she wrote each song.

If you don't want to read the whole post, check out this playlist of the album in order or this playlist of her entire discography.

I’ve also added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but all available evidence points to that date

Speculation: This date is based on guesswork and is highly likely to change, or, all that is known is the general season.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices)

Without further ado...

Oct 6, 2012: Taylor seems to have been in a studio in London (Note: I have no idea where this photo comes from and I can not find a place that specifies if this is a music studio or radio interview.)

This Love: Oct 17, 2012 (Confirmed)

October 19, 2012: Taylor mentions wanting to work with Imogen Heap, prompting Imogen to get in touch with Taylor

Time Interview: Who’d be your dream collaboration, especially now that you’re taking more musical risks? Let me think. Imogen Heap! She’s amazing. Taylor: Someone asked me in an interview "Who would you like to work with?" and I said Imogen Heap. I get an email to my management, sent like "Imogen just saw that Taylor just said an interview that she would like to work together" She said "Why don't you come out to my studio." Imogen: I got a phone call [in 2014] saying Taylor Swift was in London, she'd love to work with me and the only date she could do (between 4 sold out 02 arenas!) was the day after we got back, Sunday. It was both unexpected and not at the same time as I'd heard Taylor was a fan a while back via this Time magazine piece but somehow didn't think it would actually happen.

Fall 2012: Taylor possibly writes a song with Harry Styles and Jacknife Lee (her producer for The Last Time)

“It was out of my field of expertise and interest, but I was intrigued and my girls were thrilled. Taylor was nice and very professional. She knew what she wanted and there was no fucking about. She was seeing Harry Styles at the time, so he came to Topanga on her recommendation. She wrote a few songs with him, and it was the same thing – quick. But this time it was more directed by the management and label. They were after something specific. I wanted more acoustic and gentle, almost Americana, and they wanted bombast. They got what they wanted, and that was the extent of my foray into teen-pop territory. It was fun.”

All You Had to Do Was Stay: Jan 10, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor is photographed outside Conway, and then tweets "Back in the studio. Uh oh..." Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording All You Had To Do Was Stay. Taylor: 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 [...], 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.'

January 11, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside Conway again

How You Get The Girl: Jan 15, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor posts a picture of her playing a guitar in the studio, captioned "Somewhere in LA..". Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording How You Get The Girl. Given what was going on in her personal life, she likely wrote this sometime in the fall/winter of 2012, but all we know for sure is the date she recorded it.

February 9, 2013: Tweets "Grammy rehearsals last night, studio today, who knows what tonight holds! (I do. Laying around watching TV and eating candy.)"

March 6, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside a studio in LA

March 23, 2013: Posts a picture of her playing guitar captioned "Pre show. Columbia, South Carolina"

I Wish You Would: May 28, 2013 (Inferring)

Taylor is photographed out for lunch in Rhode Island with Lena Dunham (and likely Jack Antonoff, who was Lena's boyfriend but not as famous at the time) on May 27 before leaving for her show in Phoenix, Arizona the next day Jack:  "We were hanging out at her house in Rhode Island and we were talking about John Hughes movies, and a lot of the music that inspired [them], and just this general culture of sound in that time period that was really larger-than-life in an anthemic, positive way. These songs could be at the end of films that were really, really beautiful and said a lot. That actually ended up being a song called 'I Wish You Would' which is going to be on her album. We first worked on that song together and realised we kind of have a good thing. Taylor: “This is a song I did with Jack Antonoff, and Jack is one of my friends and so we were hanging out and he pulled out his phone and goes "I made this amazing track the other day. It's so cool, I love these guitar sounds." And he played it for me and immediately I could hear this finished song in my head, and I just said "Please, please let me have that. Let me play with it, like send it to me" And so he sent it to me and I was on tour and this was me playing the track on my laptop recording me singing the vocal into my phone and it ended up being a song called "I Wish You Would", because Jack wrote back and said "I love that".”

June 7, 2013: At the CMA fest, Taylor is asked if she's started writing for her next album yet

“It's starting, all the anxiety is starting and when the anxiety starts, then the writing happens right afterward, usually. Um, so, yeah, I basically... I like to, I like to write for about two years before I'm finished with an album because I... at this point I kind of know that whenever I write in the first year is going to get thrown away, because, I'm going to like it, but it's going to sound a little bit like the last project I had, and the second year usually ends up sounding like the next project. So I think at this point, at this point I feel like staying the same is the easy way to go but it's not the way that I want to go, creatively. I think you need to challenge yourself, I think you need to change up your influences, I think you need to be inspired by different things that you've been inspired by before, and, uh, y'know, It's harder to call people you don't know, and it's harder to think of topics you haven't covered and think of new ways to say old emotions that everyone feels, but, that's the goal at this point."

June 20-21, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

July 15, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview to Rolling Stone

“The floodgates just opened the last couple weeks,” she says of the songwriting process. “I’m getting to that point where I’m irritating to be around because I’ll be with you for half the conversation and then the second half of the conversation I’m clearly editing the second verse of whatever I’m writing in my head.” “I really loved collaborating [on Red],” she says. “You work with a lot of different people and you find the people you have this dream connection with in the studio. I know those people and I know the ones I want to go back to. But I also have a really long list of the people I admire and I would really love to go and contact. So that’s kind of where that is.” “I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point? It’s so overwhelming that when you’re starting a project there are such endless possibilities if you’re willing to evolve and experiment. If you’re willing to become a different version of yourself, you can really go anywhere with it. And that’s kind of where I am. The kind of the laboratory experimental stage of really catching onto a new thing that I’m liking.”

July 18, 2013: Taylor unfollows the three backup dancers that left her tour for Katy's, meaning Bad Blood was likely written sometime between July and November 2013.

Sweeter Than Fiction: Summer 2013 (Speculation)

Taylor wrote this one over email, and then it was recorded in New York (partially in Jack's living room, partially in an actual studio)

August 25, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out at the VMAs, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

August 25, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview on the VMAs red carpet

"But I think [songwriting is] about to start to kick into full gear. I'm about to go into the studio. It's about to get really intense."

Out Of The Woods: September 14 2013 (Inferring)

On September 14, Fun cancelled their show. Taylor was likely either flying to or from Charlottesville, where she had a show for the Red Tour. Jack: "When I did the track for Out of the Woods, which is a Taylor song that I'm really proud of, there was some issue at a venue and our show was canceled that night and I didn't have my stuff, I had left it on the bus, so I only had these old samples on what was on my laptop, and caught up that 'oh oh'' thing, and I only had one drum kit on there, and these dumb little things [sometimes turn into a great song]" Jack: "So 'Out Of The Woods' was the third thing we worked on together, and probably the easiest. I sent her the track for it, and she sent back a voice note with the verse and chorus in what felt like five seconds. And it was just perfect. It's eerie how similar it is to what the final product is." Taylor: "This is a track that Jack Antonoff sent me, and I was actually on a plane, I got it and I got on a plane and I'm listening to it, and I'm just like listening to it and mumbling melodies cause the song came to me immediately like, in full [...] I think what I should start by playing you, is when I got the track, what I sent him like an hour later, and it is, me.. um, me singing what came to me, which ended up being the finished version of the song, or at least really close to it."

September 20, 2013: In a brief interview with USA Today, Taylor says she plans to work on her next album between the next few legs of the Red Tour

"I’ll be in the studio, figuring out what comes next. I really like to take two years to make a record, and I’ve been writing and doing stuff for the last year. This is kind of the year that it goes into overdrive, and it’s all I think about and I become obsessive over it and I’m hard to talk to"

September 22, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to New York Magazine where she talks about her plans for TS5

These days, Swift is thinking a lot about her next record. While on the Red tour, she’d been writing songs and stockpiling ideas: reams of lyrics, thousands of voice memos in her iPhone [...] she plans to spend much of 2014 writing and recording the new album, a prospect she finds exhilarating and terrifying. “I worry about everything. Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.” Swift hopes to collaborate with new songwriters and producers. But she planned to begin, she said, by heading back into the studio with Max Martin and Shellback. “I want to go in with Max and Johan first, just to figure out what the bone structure of this record is going to be. “I have a lot of things to draw from emotionally at the moment. But I have to draw from them with a different perspective than on Red. I can’t say the same things over and over, you know? I mean, I think it’s just all the more important that I don’t ever allow myself to coast. At the same time, there’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting. The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do. Like, where there’s a dance break that doesn’t make any sense, there’s a rap that shouldn’t be there, there’s like a beat change that’s, like, the coolest, hippest thing this six months—but it has nothing to do with the feeling, it has nothing to do with the emotion, it has nothing to do with the lyric. I never want to put things in songs just because that might make them popular, like, on the more rhythmic stations or in dance clubs. I really don’t want a compilation of sounds. I just need them to be songs.”

September 28-October 5, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez are in the same city, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

October 12, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to the Associated Press

Swift: I think the goal for the next album is to continue to change, and never change in the same way twice [...] How do I write these figurative diary entries in ways that I’ve never written them before and to a sonic backdrop that I’ve never explored before? It’s my fifth album, which is crazy to think about, but I think what I’m noticing about it so far is it’s definitely taking a different turn than anything I’ve done before. AP: You said recently you’ve been working on songs for the new album for about six months. What can you tell us about what you have planned? Swift: It’s too early to tell who are going to be my predominant collaborators, but I do know that my absolute dream collaborators were Shellback and Max Martin on the last project. I’ve never been so challenged as a songwriter. I’ve never learned so much. I’ve never just been so excited to show up to the studio every day, just because you never know what we’re going to put together. I’ll bring in ideas and they’ll take such a different turn than where I thought they were going to go, and that level of unexpected spontaneity is something that really thrills me in the process of making music. ... What if we did this? What if we made it weirder? What if we took it darker? I love people who have endless strange and exciting ideas about where music can go."

October 14, 2013: At the NSAI, Taylor talks about reinventing herself for different albums

"I’m making my 5th record now, so I think you have to change things up, you have to explore different corners of music as much as you can. Cause I really, it’s been a big goal of mine to never make two albums that sounded the same. I really want my fans to be able to be like "Oh that song? Clearly that's from the Fearless album", "No that one, that one was from Red" and so I’m in the process of doing that thing all over again for my 5th album and it’s amazing to be in the studio and to be songwriting again, and be honored for songwriting tonight"

Blank Space: October 26, 2013 (Inferring)

It looks like she’s wearing the same outfit in this behind the scenes footage and these candids Taylor: "I was going into write with Max Martin and Shellback, who are two of the primary collaborators on 1989, and I... was preparing all these things, and I, I think Blank Space was like the third thing I played them, and they just stopped and they were like "NO, this is the first thing we're working on today." [...] I had the idea for the chorus and I had the hook, but a lot of the verse was gibberish." Taylor (On what song took her the least amount of time to write): "Blank space, cause I'd written a lot of the lines down already in the year preceding the session"

October 29, 2013: Tweets "Sitting in the studio writing the next album (!!!!) and wanted to thank you for the American Music Award nominations!"

November 1 : While promoting Keds, Taylor is asked about her next album

"What I go through is going to be the story that I tell. I think lyrically, I always try to tell my fans exactly what’s happened to me in the last two years, and that’s the thing they can expect. Everything else, they won’t be able to expect. Having been in the studio with this one, I’m just like… oh, this is going to be fun"

Bad Blood: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

The backup dancer drama seems to have kicked off in mid-July. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

New Romantics: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Unfortunately, Taylor doesn't really talk about this song. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Wildest Dreams: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Selena reportedly told a fan she was there when Taylor wrote this, and I've noted above all the times Selena could have been with Taylor in 2013 (Here's my personal ranking of how likely each date is). Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013.

Wonderland: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Another one Taylor just doesn't talk about all that often. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Nov 20, 2013: Taylor posted "While in the studio, I came to the realization that my bangs are long enough to use as a sleep mask on long flights. Then I remembered I don't ever use sleep masks on flights. So really, I just need a haircut"

November 25, 2013: Taylor and Scott Borchetta have a meeting to talk about her plans for TS5 and are both asked about the next album at the AMAs

Taylor: “We got a lot already. There are probably seven or eight [songs] that I know I want on the record. It’s really ahead of schedule for me. I’m just stoked because it’s already evolved into a new sound, and that’s all I wanted. And I would have taken two years to make that happen, but it just kind of happened naturally, so that’s all I could really ask for.” Scott Borchetta: "Well earlier today we got together and she played me seven new songs, and she’s just on fire. The level of desire and passion that she has just to keep getting better, she’s an artist that just really never wants to just say ‘Well okay this is good enough’. It’s always gotta be better. She’s in amazing creative place right now." By the end of November, Taylor had likely recorded This Love, All You Had To Do Was Stay, How You Get The Girl, I Wish You Would, Out Of The Woods, Blank Space, Bad Blood, New Romantics, Wildest Dreams, and Wonderland. That’s 10 songs total, 5 of which were likely recorded in the past two months, and 7 that had been made since Taylor and Jack had their conversation about 80s music in May.

Dec 21, 2013: Taylor briefly talks to Billboard about TS5

"I’m really loving collaboration right now [...] I see it as a bit of an apprenticeship. I want to be around people who love writing songs and have done it for years. Every time I’m in a studio I’m learning, like how to build a drum track, and getting a new perspective on things. It’s so thrilling to keep learning on your fifth album. As soon as [an album] comes out I’m figuring out what the next one will be. It’s gotten to the point where each one is a reinvention, which is what I like best. I like it when it sounds new and people don’t know where you’re going to go next."

Say Don't Go: Jan 1, 2014 (Confirmed)

Diane Warren: Warren, who typically writes on her own, says the two of them “sat down and wrote the song […] from scratch” during the last few days of 2013. She remembers being impressed with how specific Swift was with her lyricism and how considerate she was about how her fans might receive it. “She was very particular about how she said certain things. It was a really interesting experience. She gets her audience [...] She’s deeply aware of how her fans want to hear something. I can’t explain it, but that’s probably why she’s the biggest fucking star in the world.” Several days after writing the song together, they got into Warren’s office to record a demo, where Swift played it on her acoustic guitar. “We demoed it on New Year’s Day. And I’m a workaholic, and that’s fine for me,” she says. “But I remember being impressed that she did, too. Everybody’s on vacation, but she showed up.”

You Are In Love: Jan 2014 (Inferring)

This song is copyrighted for 2014. Taylor has said a few times that Clean, Shake It Off, and Style were the last songs written for the album, meaning You Are In Love was likely completed in January or early February. Given Taylor's busy schedule in late January and early February, I'd guess this was written at some point in early January. Furthermore, I'd guess it was sometime after the 9th, when she returned from looking at house in New York.

I Know Places: Jan 22, 2014 (Confirmed)

Taylor: "I sent this voice memo to Ryan Tedder because I'd always wanted to work with him, and finally we scheduled some studio time. So I always wanna be prepared, I wanted to send him the idea that I was working on before we went into the studio just in case he wrote back and said "I can't stand that, I wanna work on something else, think of something else" So I just sat down with the piano, put my phone on top of the piano and just kind of explained to him where I wanted to go with the song, how I saw the melody sitting in and we ended up recording the song the next day and it ended up being on the record called "I Know Places" So this was the voice memo that I sent to him the night before we ended up finishing the song"

Welcome To New York: Jan 23, 2014 (Confirmed)

Ryan Tedder: "I thought we were going to walk in and start something from scratch because that's what I was used to. Then she calls me and says, 'Is it cool if I already have an idea?' I said, 'Sure.' She said, 'I have this song, I'm obsessed with New York and I just moved there, I want to write an ode to New York because no one's done it in a long time.' And then she sent me a voice memo. She's like, 'I want it to sound like 1980s.' So the next day I brought in a Juno-106, which is a very 1980s keyboard and I literally programmed that entire song right in front of her. It was very much on the fly, and that song was done in about three hours. And I did the rest of the production I think later that week. I was in Switzerland on a tour bus, and I did four versions of 'Welcome to New York,' one of which I liked personally more, but the thing about artists is they become very obsessed with the demo. She was in love with the demo so no matter how hard I fought, she brought it back to the demo, so really what you hear is what I did on the first day."

January 26 2014: Dianne Warren says that she recently wrote a song with Taylor

"I worked with Taylor Swift on a great song [...] I'm excited about the [song] that we did, it's pretty cool Dianne in 2016: “I know [Swift] likes it, so hopefully it will see the light of day. I know she really likes the song. She didn’t want me to give it away, so hopefully that means she wants it.”

January 26 2014: Taylor loses Album of the Year at the Grammy's to Daft Punk. She tells a few different stories about what the rest of the night looked like for her-- in some she goes home alone, in some she has some friends over-- but in all of them, this is the night where she decides that she's gonna name the album 1989, and she's not going to let her label tell her to put any country songs on it.

Clean: Feb 9, 2014 (Confirmed)

According to Imogen Heap's blog post, Taylor had the first verse and chorus by the time they got into the studio, and then wrote the second verse and bridge during the session. Taylor's part was wrapped up in 9 hours, ending at 8pm, while Imogen stayed up until 4am because she didn't want to stop working on it. Taylor: ""Shake It Off" and "Clean" were the last two things we wrote for the record, so it shows you where I ended up mentally. “Clean” I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. 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. [...] The first thought that came to my mind was – I’m finally clean." Imogen Heap: I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises to [“Clean”], played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals [for “Clean”] during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great.

February 15, 2014: Taylor posts "It was a studio Valentines Day with Max and Johan!"

Shake It Off: Feb 15, 2014 (Confirmed)

Lover Diaries (From Feb 22): "This week I’ve been in the studio with Max and Johan every day and it has been the most creatively successful and fulfilling time. The first day, Johan just made a really up tempo drum beat because we decided we needed something UP and light. We worked at it for a few hours before I just started singing “shake it off, shake it off.” And then the best way I know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky. It ended up being this song about doing your own thing even though haters are gonna hate, and you just have to dance to your own beat. We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE. We spent all day doing vocals and the next day recording background vocals. I think it’ll end up being the first single and Max said it’s his favorite song he’s ever been a part of." Taylor: "The problem was, I had all these lyrics, and I didnt have, like... writing session was coming up and I'm just like "I'm not getting a melody, I'm dead, I don't know what I'm gonna do." The thought terrified me, so I just sorta sulked into the studio and I was like "Guys, I have like an idea but its like, lyric, but I... and I know the vibe I want-- I want it to start off and the second the song starts, I want it to be the song where like, if it's played at a wedding, and there's this one girl who hasn't danced all night at the reception, all her friends come over to her and there like "You have to dance, come on, you have to dance on this one!". That's what I wanted. So I was like "Shellback, can you just go to the drum kit and try to play that?" Taylor: "There's one thing that I've always said to Max, is like "I don't like horns" I just always had a thing about it, I was always like weirdly scared of it, or intimidated by horns, I don't know what it was? It's a weird, like, nerdy studio fear of mine. I was like "No, no horns!" and I don't.. I don't even know, I don't have a reason for it, I love songs that have horns on them, I was just like "I don't think I can pull off horns." Strange. But, he goes over to the mellotron and he starts playing this horn sound. I'm like "What are you doing. Don't do that." and he's like, "No, I think this is cool" and I'm like "No it's not cool, and where are your chorus chords, because, that, you're just playing three chords over and over again and I can't make a chorus out of them, why don't you go to like a chorus chord that starts off the chorus, where is the one, like why don't you go--" and then there was this moment, where I thought of the whole chorus, and it's over the chords that I had just told him are not "chorus chords", which is a ridiculous thing to say."

February 18, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering Conway Studios

Style: Feb 19, 2014 (Confirmed)

Niklas Ljungfelt (guitarist): I played on “Style,” a song I started with Ali Payami for ourselves. He was playing it for Max Martin at his studio; Taylor overheard it and loved it. She and Max wrote new lyrics. But I recorded the guitar on it before it was a Taylor song. It was an instrumental. I didn’t have a clue that Taylor would sing on it. The inspiration came from Daft Punk and funky electronic music. Taylor: I'm pretty sure after we finished this one I knew the record was done. Shake It Off and Style were the last two songs to be written for 1989.

March 2014: Taylor's interview with Glamour is published (likely conducted two months beforehand)

TS: Working on this album has been unbelievable [...] I'm already in love with it. It's so different. CL: What's the new sound? TS: On Red I did three songs with Max Martin Shellback [...] I think we'll be doing a lot more than three songs together on the next album [Laughs].

March 26, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering a music studio in New York

May 30, 2014: Taylor writes in her diary:

So a crazy story unfolded in the last 24 hours. Last night, I had this vivid dream where the photo I’d chosen for the album cover wasn’t good enough, intriguing enough, artful enough. It woke me up. I couldn’t shake it and it stayed with me all day. Because that nagging feeling I’d been pushing back for weeks was now confirmed in my gut … It wasn’t good enough. I went to the venue, mind racing, wondering if I’d have to do an entirely new photo shoot … I got to my dressing room with newer versions of the “cover.” I looked at it and felt nothing. The team pulled up this new scanned file of the Polaroids we had taken during the shoot. I saw within 10 seconds. The shot. The cover. It’s a Polaroid of me sitting against a beige wall with a blue seagull swear shirt on. You can see my red lips, but the photo cuts off my eyes. From some reason unknown to me, it’s the most intriguing photo I’ve seen. I think it’s the mystery of not seeing my eyes. Maybe it just looks effortlessly cool. The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not.

August 23, 2014: Taylor is photographed walking out of a studio in LA (Note: I can not find a place that specifies if this is a recording studio, dance, photography, radio, or television studio.)

Now That We Don't Talk: Summer 2014 (Speculation)

Seeing as Taylor said she didn't have time to figure out the production, I imagine this came fairly late in the process. Taylor has a habit of adding songs right up to the deadline-- with Folklore and Evermore, she added multiple songs a week before the album came out. The latest she added songs to albums while signed to Big Machine was September, though (both Forever & Always and So It Goes...), so I assume that's the absolute latest she could've added a song. Taylor: "Now That We Don’t Talk” is one of my favorite songs that was left behind, it was so hard to leave it behind, but I think we wrote it a little bit towards the end of the process and we couldn’t get the production right at the time. But we had tons of time to perfect the production this time and figure out what we wanted this song to sound like. I think it’s the shortest song I’ve ever had, but I think it packs a punch, I think it really goes in. For the short amount of time we have, I think it makes its point.

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

#txt* #timeline* #taylor swift #OH MY GOD ITS OUT ITS OUT ITS OUT I'VE BEEN RESEARCHING THIS FOR THREE YEARS AND IT'S DONE #!!!!! #as always let me know if you want further sourcing on anything/if you spot a typo or something

[dipplinduo]

Brain Chemistry = INFLUENCED Your Feelings = IN DANGER

When @kyokokusakabe is whispering ideas in your ear ft. @snobithesnorunt screaming "I LIKED THE WAR BETTER" in the background

#I AM CACKLING LIKE A MADMAN #SWORE UP AND DOWN I'D NEVER PULL THIS TRIGGER BUT I HAD A MOTIVATION BLOCK AND KYOKO JUST #PUT A GUN IN MY HAND #WAR IS OVER WE TEAMING UP NOW #ALSO #MY N KEY IS BROKEN AGAIN HELP LOOOOL IM FURIOUSLY TYPING #WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PITCHFORKS #I CAN SM ELL EM #AHAHAHHAHA #my fics #dipplinshipping #kieran pokemon #kieran x juliana pokemon #juliana x kieran pokemon #kieran x juliana #juliana x kieran #juliana pokemon #the friend group #we joined forces wHAT A TIMELINE #taylor swift didnt even release ttpd yet I am not even at my full power but #GOD THE FUN WTH THIS SUBPLOT IS SO BEYOND INCREDIBLE #you coulda had something sweet #YOU COULDA #BUT YOU VOTED DIFFERENTLY ON THE POLL #ITS ALL YOUR FAULTS

[llumimoon]

TFW ur shitty dad decides to prank ur whole school to teach you to be more chaotic but instead you just realize how attached you've become to certain people. This is the EAH AU's version of Spring Unsprung!!

Gotta give credit where credit is due, @silverlistenstothings really helped out with this arc !!! So many good Hermie thoughts as always ough <333

We decided this happens like right before the Big Plot Shit happens in the AU and instead of being a festival it's Hermie's Birthday !!! The cursed riddlebook is a gift from Scam that Hermie gives to Scary instead bc he doesn't rlly care about it, which . turns out to be a very bad idea. The curse quickly spreads throughout the school reversing everyone's personalities and causing Normal to try and pretty much end the world.

This arc is Hermie and Taylor focused !!! :D Although it is really fun to think about the reverse teens running rampant NWVEGWHAAHA reverse norm is a little treat for me <3 but reverse Link is SO INCREDIBLY FUNNY . shoutout to this message from @happi-tree bc it's been burned into my memory and I cant stop laughing about it

When it comes to the curse we decided that bonds and skills stay the same but the personalities are inverted, which means reverse Scary being sooo attached and clingy to Hermie is just her personality changing the way she decides to communicate her affection for who she sees as her best friend. Its cute <3

Herm is SUPER on edge due to being incredibly irritated with his dad and feeling insecure about his friendship with Taylor, who's having a bit of a crisis on his own about his feeling about Link. Toss in their shared homesickness for Wonderland, a realm they can't go back to, and Taylor panicking over a gift his mom left him going missing, well it's not good for anyone. How are they gonna figure things out enough to save Ever After from destruction?

(EAH AU is by me, @rindomness & @kaseyskat !!)

Image Description is under the cut

[ID: Image 1: Normal smirking evilly with a hand up to his chin and the other on his hip. His eyes are a light purple and he's saying "Hey." To his right is Scary happily waving while smiling, her eyes similarly a light purple. She's saying "OMG hiiii Herm!! <3"

Image 2: Hermie with a stunned and mad expression on their face and trying to pout tea from a teapot into a teacup but missing the cup by a lot. Their cat ears are turned downward and tucked against their head while their tail behind them is stuck straight up with fur sticking out in all directions. They have a thought bubble that says "I'm gonna KILL my dad." there's text in the bottom left that has an arrow pointing off the canvas and is labeled "Scam giggling off screen."

Image 3: Link doing the fuck boy expression, his eyes half lidded and biting the corner of his lip with a pointed hand on his chin, with his other hand with the thumb tucked into the top of his belt. His eyes are similarly a light purple and he's looking at Taylor. There's text with an arrow pointing at Link that says, "turned into a shitty fuck boi liar because of the curse" To his right stands Taylor who has his arms by his side in a dinosaur like pose and a grossed out and devastated expression on his face. His bunny ears are sticking straight up. There's an arrow pointing to him that says "Fucking Appalled" in all caps.

Image 4: Scary smiling with her eyes closed and hugging Hermie with one of her legs posed upward behind her. Hermie is standing still with their eyes obscured due to the shine of their glasses with a neutral expression on their face and their cat ears turned downward and their tail puffed up and sticking up. To their right stands Taylor with both his hands up to clutch his face and his bunny ears pointed downward. Scary is saying "Haha yaaaay besties forever after!!" with flowers and hearts drawn around her. There is an arrow pointed at her labeled "still cursed". Hermie has a thought bubble that says "MY DAD IS A DICK." and an arrow pointed at them that's labeled "so touch starved". Under that is an arrow pointing at Taylor that is labeled "having a gay crisis" and he is surrounded by question marks. He has a large thought bubble that says "Why am I so jealous that Link is flirting with everybody ohmygod do I have a crush on my best friend forever after holy shit what"

Image 5: Normal looking down with an evil smirk and light purple eyes with his hand out to hold something. Hermie looks up with a frustrated expression on their face and their pupil's sharpened and is clutching Normal's arm as his hand holds Hermie's chin. Normal is saying "Shame you've decided to get in my way kitten, I really did like you. Well whatever. It's not going to matter in a moment, nothing is. You're too late." the word "nothing" is underlined for emphasis.

Image 6: A discord screenshot of 'willy KILLER MAIMER DESTROYER' saying "Link: babe you’re being so fucking silly but hey at least you’re also hot. Wanna kiss maybe. That’s gotta fix you or whatever

Taylor: ???????????????? OK ACTUALLY I FORGOT I WAS GETTING LUNCH WITH HERMIE GOTTA GO under his breath wtf wtf wtf"/end ID]

#dndads #dungeons and daddies #dndads s2 #dungeons and daddies season 2 #cal draws #eah dndads au #normal oak #scary marlowe #hermie unworthy #lincoln li wilson #taylor swift dndads #THIS ARC IS SO VERY FUNNY TO ME IM NOT OVER IT LMAOOOOO #i could explain more but the post was getting too long #we've actually created a goofle doc timeline for the events that happen in the au #i gotta organize and add more to it but maybe we'll release that later to explain the plot LMAO #there's some writing going on behind the scenes that im eating upppp hehehehehehe #never recovering from reverse Link jusy being a fuck boi gaslighter it's ridiculously funny to me . Help. #also never recocering from normal calling eah au hermie kitten. points. gay . #Scam is the cheshire cat btw. thats the implication #lmk if i want me to explain all the reverse teens personalities btw . bc i will i thought abt them a lot #described