This is a track from American Country-Pop singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's third studio album, Speak Now. Taylor apologizes in this song about the way she messed up a relationship with a former boyfriend, who now finds it hard to trust her.
Taylor admitted to E! News the song is dedicated to an actual person to whom she had done wrong: "It addresses a first for me in that I've never apologized in song. The person I wrote this song about deserves this. This is about a person who was incredible to me, just perfect to me in a relationship, and I was really careless with him."
Many of Taylor's fans believe that the song is referring to American actor Taylor Lautner, whom she dated briefly at the end of 2009. However, even though the singer is happy to pour out personal details in song, she is remaining silent on just who is the recipient of her apologies. "It's such an interesting little quirk," Taylor told USA Today. "It's like, 'Obviously, you're writing songs about your life and you're almost admitting to these things.' But when it actually comes time to talk about them in an interview, I get pretty shy and coy about it."
The song's music video was directed by Yoann Lemoine, who was also the man behind the lens for Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream." The chilly clip finds Swift contemplating the best way to apologize to a former lover, played by male model, Guntars Asmanis, for breaking his heart. Footages of the school and baseball stadium were filmed in MacArthur Park, New York, while scenes with Swift were shot in an old country mansion outside of Nashville.
Lemoine told MTV News that he wanted the video to be simple yet metaphorical: "I wanted to work on the coldness of feelings in a very visual way, playing with the snow, the distance and sadness. [Taylor] really liked it. The winter theme was very interesting to me — the snow, the ice. I even wanted the guy to go swim in frozen lakes at some point. It was not possible, but I wanted to translate how you feel sometime when your heart is broken. The snow in the apartment is supposed to show how connected she is to him. He is outside, in the cold, but somehow she is connected to him."
As for Asmanis, both Swift and he agreed that he was the perfect fit for the part. "I wanted a boy that was fragile and beautiful. I didn't want to go for a hunk or a perfect cheesy boy that would have killed the sincerity of the video," Lemoine said. "I just imagined a face that would enhance the fragility of the video. We did cast a couple of boys and both Taylor and I loved Guntars."
