Love Story Taylor Swift Song Background Writing

Swift used Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as a reference point for "Love Story"; the balcony scene (pictured) is referenced in the song's opening lines.^[1]

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift relocated from Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2004 to pursue a career as a country music artist,[2] and in 2006, she released her self-titled debut album at 16 years old.[3] The album spent more weeks on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart than any other album that was released in the 2000s decade.[4] Taylor Swift's third single "Our Song" made Swift the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a Hot Country Songs number-one single.[5] Her success was rare for a female teenage artist; the 2000s country-music market had been dominated by adult male musicians.[6][7]

While promoting her debut album on tour in 2007 and 2008, Swift wrote songs for her second studio album Fearless.[8] She developed "Love Story" late into the production of Fearless.[9] Answering fan questions on Time in April 2009, Swift said the song was inspired by a boy whom she never dated and was one of the most romantic pieces she had written.[10] Swift recalled the reactions she received after introducing him to her family and friends: "[They] all said they didn't like him. All of them!"[11][12] This made Swift relate to the narrative of William Shakespeare's 16th-century play Romeo and Juliet, which she described as a "situation where the only people who wanted them to be together were them".[11] Reflecting on the event, Swift thought, "This is difficult but it's real, it matters"; she developed the second refrain and later the whole song around that line.[13]

Although inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Swift felt the play could have been "the best love story ever told" had it not been for Shakespeare's tragic ending in which the two characters die.[14] She thus made the narrative of "Love Story" conclude with a marriage proposal, which she deemed a happy ending the characters deserved.[14][15] Swift wrote "Love Story" on her bedroom floor in approximately 20 minutes, feeling too inspired to put the song down unfinished.[11] According to Swift, the song represents her optimistic outlook on love, which is inspired by her childhood fascination with fairy tales.[15] Looking back on "Love Story" after she released her seventh studio album Lover (2019), which is about her first experience of "love that was very real", Swift said the track is "stuff I saw on a movie [and] stuff I read mixed in with some like crush stuff that had happened in my life".[16]