Swift Notes: Red (A Guide to Taylor Swift's Songs)

Dear Fellow Swifties,

We have been so overwhelmed with ALL the love you've been sending our way — by voting for our Taylor Swift fan fic "Know You Better," commenting on it, and adding it to your libraries — that we wanted to give something back! 

So we're going to be giving you a song-by-song analysis of RED, excerpted from our just-released-in-stores book Taylor Swift: The Platinum Edition. Some of you have been kind enough to buy it already, so this may be familiar for you — but for those of you who haven't yet read it, this will give you a peek inside and a taste of our non-fiction writing.

It was while writing this book that we learned so much about Taylor, and we try to use as many of those details and adorable quirks to make our fan fiction feel as real, and as Swifty, as possible.

And we'd love YOUR help with designing the cover for this Wattpad edition of our "Swift Notes" on Red! We know how artistic and awesome your designs are (100 times better than our own!), so if you're so inclined please post a link to a cover design to our Message Board, or email us a jpg at livspencerwrites@gmail.com! And if we get more than one, we'll post your designs as photos on each track!

We'll start posting this Sunday with "State of Grace"!

Until then, here's a taste of what to expect with a little breakdown of each section we include in our analysis:

Many of Taylor’s songs are about romantic relationships, but her very first and longest love affair is with words, and “Swift Notes” analyzes the songs on her albums just like Taylor dissects her past romances.

BEHIND THE MUSIC Details on Taylor’s inspiration and writing process for the song.

BETWEEN THE LINES Taylor’s an award-winning songwriter; find analysis of her lyrics here.

AUDIENCE OF ONE Taylor often writes her songs with a very specific audience in mind: “When I sit down and write a song the only person that I’m thinking about in that room is the person that I’m writing the song about and what I want them to know and what I wish I could tell them to their face, but I’m going to say it in a song instead.” Wonder if she’s singing about someone in particular? Find out in this section.

FUN FACTS These are extra tidbits about the song and Taylor.

DIARY DECODER Taylor encodes a secret message into the lyrics in her album booklets; this section solves the puzzles and discusses why Taylor chose that particular message.

CHARTING SUCCESS Taylor’s been smashing sales records since her debut. Find out how her singles did and info on awards she’s won.

xoxo
Crissy & Jen
a.k.a. Liv

Update! the first cover in was from @falleninfinitybooks — thank you! we'll be posting more soon xoxo

Update #2! We'll be posting your awesome Swift Notes images in the Multimedia section for each track's post. @WolfGirl54 had the excellent idea of making song-specific ones for each track on RED and we love that idea — thank you! :)

The image for this chapter (in the Multimedia section) is courtesy of the lovely & talented @taysminionyo!