for those of you who want sourcing, @taylor-on-your-dash found this old forum thread discussing taylor dropping the fearless cover and above tracklist, including this hilarious comment
it tracks with other stuff we know about the album development— taylor famously wrote forever and always incredibly last minute, and she’s mentioned adding another song last minute as well (i believe nathan chapman has also discussed some last minute sessions)
Very preliminary and speculatory writing of Midnights timeline
Disclaimer: All the exact dates are based on tracking Taylor's private jets, which is a controversial activity (to say the least). Those are sourced from @youareinlovees' detailed masterposts.
Aaron Dessner confirmed that High Infidelity and Would've, Could've, Should've were written and recorded during Grammys week in March 2021. Since Taylor was in LA between March 7th and March 15th only, we can safely assume that those songs were written within that period.
The Great War and Hits Different were probably written before Jack Antonoff became the main co-writer of Midnights, because (according to Dessner in the podcast above) that signified a change in concept, but they probably also weren't written in March 2021 since Dessner mentioned them separately.
According to Taylor, most Taylor/Antonoff co-writes were written in New York, when JA and Jack's fiance were filming in Panama. This means they were written between November 22nd, when Taylor flew back from Panama to New York, and December 16th, when Taylor flew to Panama.
According to Rolling Stone, Lavender Haze and Glitch came out of a session where Jack Antonoff, Sounwave, Sam Dew and Zoe Kravitz worked on Zoe's debut album. This was before Jack started working on Midnights (so before November 2021), but also Jack only sent those tracks (demos?) a few months later, which might put the date around late 2021/early 2022.
Also in the same article, Karma was a "last-minute Hail Mary"-- wouldn't be surprised if it was the last song to be written on the album.
Sweet Nothing mentions a trip to Ireland "last July", i.e. July 2021, which probably implies the song was written in 2022. Additionally, on 19 April 2022, JA did an interview where he mentioned he didn't intend to write any more songs under a pseudonym, which either means 1. he signed an NDA or 2. he had already written Sweet Nothing at this point. For wishful thinking purposes I will assume the latter.
Snow On The Beach, which was co-written with Lana Del Rey, was finished by 4 April 2022, as on that day Lana posted this photo on her Instagram, a colourized version of which was later included in this Instagram post.
Now on to the solo writes: Vigilante Shit is a mystery. It mentions Scooter Braun's ex-wife so that puts it after July 2021, but that's it. Maybe she saw the news of Scooter getting a divorce and cackled manically? (also I don't think the FBI line points to anything concrete-- more of a revenge fantasy than anything IMO)
Bigger Than The Whole Sky is also a mystery, but if you believe that it's about Claire Winter then that would place it after March 2022.
You're Losing Me... um... I really don't know? I think there is a possibility it was written along with most of Midnights in that Nov-Dec 2021 session, especially since JA was in a different country then, but it also could have literally been written last month and we would be none the wiser. Here I'm going to give Taylor the benefit of the doubt. Also Hits Different is a breakup anthem but we don't talk about that...
Midnights was most likely finished by May at the latest, when she quoted a lyric from Labyrinth in her NYU speech and may or may not have teased the name of the album in this Instagram post.
To conclude:
7-15 March 2021: High Infidelity, Would've, Could've, Should've
March-November 2021: The Great War, Hits Different, Vigilante Shit
22 Nov-16 Dec 2021: Maroon, Anti-Hero, You're On Your Own, Kid, Midnight Rain, Question...?, Bejeweled, Labyrinth, Mastermind, Paris, Dear Reader, You're Losing Me
Late 2021-Early 2022: Lavender Haze, Glitch
2022 (before May): Bigger Than The Whole Sky, Snow On The Beach, Sweet Nothing, Karma
Feel free to comment if you think I've missed something important or got something wrong, though I might not respond immediately (busy week coming up).
do you remember when, bother me, better off and drama queen were registered with castles crumbling on ascap in january? what happened to these songs, only castles crumbling is getting released on speak now tv
ok so... that was fake. i think that whoever posted it, either did it with malicious intent to create havoc or they don't know anything about copyright laws and how copyright websites work. anyway.
i have a spreadsheet where i copy-past every copyright code, of every copyright website, including ascap. the last time i edited it was in november 2022, to add the midnights codes. i looked at my ascap list for unreleased songs and this is how bother me, better off, drama queen and castles crumbling were ordered (open the screenshots):
as you can see, american boy is the very first registered in ascap, making better off one of the first songs ever registered there. drama queen follows shortly after.
bother me was registered around 2011 just before i bet you think about me.
castles crumbling was registered around 2010/2011 with a bunch of other speak now songs.
if you're wondering why drama queen and i bet you think about me are in red, in my spreadsheet it means "unleaked, unavailable", cause i copypasted the codes before their leak/release. i still have i bet you think listed as an unreleased worktape lol (i'll change it one day, but changing the color is just boring so i never did it)
only bother me and castles crumbling were considered for speak now. drama queen was for fearless and better off is a 2004 demo made cause taylor had left rca and she needed another label (she didn't even know scott borchetta!)
i have the demo of mr. perfectly fine and i am planning to leak it soon. the production reminds me of nathan chapman’s on the pop mix of love story. the vocals are amazing, with heavenly harmonies in the bridge. leaking it on july 15. hope y’all like it:). <3
I guess I'll have something to look for if I don't get tickets on July 13th.
I have a full track that was scrapped from Lover and it was recorded in the same session as London Boy. However, unlike the song London Boy, this song doesn’t have just Taylor on it. It features the amazing vocalist Ariana Grande. The title of the track is “ Heaven (Graceful)”. There are three versions of this song, two being demos. It features production from Jack Antanoff, but the instrumental is still somehow beautifully unique. There is a lot of piano, but also some drums and guitar. This song is put together beautifully and may just be one of the best things Taylor has ever written. The runtime of the song is seven minutes and twenty eight seconds. In this song, Ariana and Taylor describe the love that they feel for their significant others, and how their partner feels like heaven all around. They also talk about the beauty and grace of their lovers.
I was so sure about I Can See You being about Kanye, Foolish One being about the aftermath of Dear John, and also the antique shop detail is the most speak now thing ever
so i’ve seen a few running lists of the surprise songs from each show but i thought it’d be nice to keep one with links to the surprise song audios! all audios come from the lovely @hope-ur-ok everyone say thank you rachel <3
3/17 Glendale, AZ: mirrorball + Tim McGraw
3/18 Glendale, AZ: this is me trying + State of Grace
3/24 Las Vegas, NV: Our Song + Snow on the Beach
3/25 Las Vegas, NV: cowboy like me + White Horse
3/31 Arlington, TX: Sad Beautiful Tragic + Ours
4/1 Arlington, TX: Death By A Thousand Cuts + Clean
4/2 Arlington, TX: Jump Then Fall + The Lucky One
4/13 Tampa, FL: Speak Now + Treacherous
4/14 Tampa, FL: The Great War + You’re On Your Own, Kid
4/15 Tampa, FL: mad woman + Mean
4/21 Houston, TX: Wonderland + You’re Not Sorry
4/22 Houston, TX: A Place In This World + Today Was A Fairytale
so i’ve seen a few running lists of the surprise songs from each show but i thought it’d be nice to keep one with links to the surprise song audios! all audios come from the lovely @hope-ur-ok everyone say thank you rachel <3
3/17 Glendale, AZ: mirrorball + Tim McGraw
3/18 Glendale, AZ: this is me trying + State of Grace
3/24 Las Vegas, NV: Our Song + Snow on the Beach
3/25 Las Vegas, NV: cowboy like me + White Horse
3/31 Arlington, TX: Sad Beautiful Tragic + Ours
4/1 Arlington, TX: Death By A Thousand Cuts + Clean
4/2 Arlington, TX: Jump Then Fall + The Lucky One
4/13 Tampa, FL: Speak Now + Treacherous
4/14 Tampa, FL: The Great War + You’re On Your Own, Kid
4/15 Tampa, FL: mad woman + Mean
4/21 Houston, TX: Wonderland + You’re Not Sorry
4/22 Houston, TX: A Place In This World + Today Was A Fairytale
Songs in red are not leaked but some of them are circulating.
PRE-RCA DEAL (2002/2003) - 32 SONGS: A Little More Like You; Baby Blue; Beautiful Days; Beautiful Eyes; Brand New World; Can I Go With You? (2002); Christmas Must Be Something More (2003); Cross My Heart; Didn't They; Don't Hate Me For Loving You; Fire; Firefly; Gail's Song; Go Slow; Half-way To Texas; Heaven; Houston Rodeo; I Wished On A Plane; Kid In The Crowd (March 2003 or before - only a snippet released); Lucky You (2002- first song ever); Mary Jo; Not One Day (June 5, 2003); One More Day; One-Sided Goodbye; Ride On; Someone Loves You (September - perfectioned on Valentine's Day 2004); Smokey Black Nights (January 11, 2003); Today; You; You Walk Away; Your Picture.
VOLUME TWO (2003) - 16 SONGS: My Turn To Be Me; I Used To Fly; Same Girl; Never Fade; Point Of View; Honey Baby; Spinning Around; Sugar; This Here Guitar; Live For The Little Things; That's Life; American Boy; Mandolin; For You; In The Pouring Rain; Tennessee.
Demos Recorded at Abtrax Studios (Written in November 2003 - recorded on January 15, 2004): I'm Only Me When I'm With You; A Place In This World; What Do You Say.
According to this article she had written 84 songs by July 4, 2004.
Demo CD produced by Robert Ellis Orrall (June-September 2004) - 10 SONGS: The Outside (June '04), Your Face, I Heart? (June '04), Crazier, Beautiful Eyes (August 9th), What To Wear, Better Off, Invisible, Just South of Knowing Why, Need You Now, I'm Every Woman (Sept 16).
Others Demos signed with Sony/ATV (Nov 1st 2004): - 4 SONGS: Closest To A Cowboy; Bein' With My Baby; Songs About You; Teardrops On My Guitar.
2004 - 26 SONGS: A Perfectly Good Heart; All Night Diner; Angelina; Check Out This View; Dark Blue Tennesse; Her (only a snippet leaked); Look At You Like That; Love They Haven't Thought Of Yet; Long Time Going; Made Up You; Mary's Song; My Cure; Never Mind (Spring/Summer); Rain Song; Scream; Songs About You; Sweet Tea & God's Graces; The Outside (Feb 14); Thinkin' Bout You; Wildflower; What To Wear; Who I've Always Been; Your Anything (demo not leaked); 3 unknown worktapes written with Orrall.
Songs Recorded with Sony/ATV aka Sony Songs (Early 2005) - 11 SONGS: Brought Up That Way (Acoustic); Me & Britney (Acoustic); Nashville (Acoustic - performed in Dec. 2006); R-E-V-E-N-G-E (Studio); Ten Dollars & A Six-Pack (Studio); That's When (Acoustic); This Is Really Happening (Acoustic; November 2004); Til Brad Pitt Comes Along (Acoustic); Under My Head (Acoustic); Wait For Me (Studio x2); Welcome Distraction (Studio).
September 1st, 2005: Taylor signs with Big Machine Records.
2005 - 26 SONGS: By The Way; Cold As You; Don't You (x3, demos not leaked); Down Came The Rain (Taylor not on lead vocals); Fall Back On You; Gracie; I Know What I Want; Love To Lose; Making Up For Lost Love; Matches; Need You Now; None Of The Above; Our Song; Perfect Have I Loved; Permanent Marker; Picture To Burn; Pretty Words (x3, demos not leaked; Taylor not on lead vocals); Stupid Boy; Tell Me; Thirteen Blocks; Tied Together With A Smile (Aug); Tim McGraw; You All Over Me; You Do; We Were Happy; Unknown Mac McAnally Collab (early 2005).
2006 - 10 SONGS: Come in With The Rain; I'd Lie (March); It's Still You (sung by Ashely Monroe) ; The Other Side Of The Door; Should've Said No (Aug); Sparks Fly (Oct/Nov); Superstar; You're Not Sorry; You Don't Have To Call (May; ringtone); White Horse (Dec).
2007 - 14 SONGS: Acting Like A Boy; Best Days Of Your Life; Breathe; Bye Bye Baby (aka The One Thing); Fearless; Fifteen; Change (Nov 7th); Christmases When You Were Mine; I'm Looking Out For You; Tell Me Why; The Best Day (Summer); The Way I Loved You; Too Beautiful; Unknown Craig Wiseman Collab (late 2007).
2008 - 16 SONGS: Castles Crumbling; Drama Queen (recorded); Forever & Always (Sept); Hey Stephen; His Lies; I Can See You; Love Story (March); If It Was A Movie; Jump The Fall; Someone Just Told Me; This One's Different (Taylor on backing vocals); Today Was A Fairytale; Two Is Better Than One; You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home; You Belong With Me; Wonderful Things.
2009 - 15 SONGS: Better Than Revenge (summer); Bother Me; Enchanted; Foolish One; Haunted; Mine; Last Kiss; Let's Go (summer); Monologue Song (Nov); Mr. Perfectly Fine (summer); Never Grow Up (July 19th); Ours (Dec); Superman; Thug Story (June); Timeless.
2010 - 8 SONGS: All Too Well (Dec - 10 min rehearsal version); Back To December; Dear John; Mean; Innocent; Long Live (June); Speak Now; The Story Of Us (June 16th).
2011 - 16 SONGS: All Too Well (Feb - First Draft + Mar - Final Draft); Begin Again (Sept); Better Man (demo not leaked); Both Of Us; Eyes Open; I Almost Do; I Bet You Think About Me (June 24th; worktape not in circulation); I Knew You Were Trouble; Red (Sept 8th); Sad Beautiful Tragic (No Demo recorded); Safe & Sound; Stay Stay Stay; State Of Grace; The Moment I Knew; Cannon Balls (feat. Justin Bieber) (Aug 26th); Unknown T-Pain Collab.
2012 - 17 SONGS: 22 (late Summer/early Autumn); Babe (not recorded); Come Back... Be Here (March); Everything Has Changed (May 15th, recorded on the 28th); Holy Ground (Feb); Nothing New (March); Starlight (Summer); The Last Time (May 29th; written and recorded in 9 hours); The Lucky One (March); This Love (Oct); Treacherous (March); We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together; Run (May 15th - recorded on the 28th); Unknown Ed Sheeran Collab (Not Recorded); Message In A Bottle (mid May 2012); Unknown Ryan Adams Collab.
NOTE: Titles are missing from Red. She had 25 songs by October 2011 and the total count for Red in 2012 was 35ish.
2013 - 7 SONGS: All You Had To Do Was Stay; I Wish You Would; How You Get The Girl; Out Of The Woods; Sweeter Than Fiction; Wildest Dreams; Unknown Diane Warren Collab.
2014 - 8 SONGS: Bad Blood; Clean (Feb 9th); I Know Places (Jan 22th); New Romantics; Shake It Off (Feb 15th); Style (Feb 19th); You Are In Love; Welcome To New York.
2015 - 2 SONGS: Unknown Ed Sheeran Collab for his album; This Is What You Came For (aka The Reason Why - only a snippet leaked).
2016 - 9 SONGS: ...Ready For It?; Delicate (Oct); Don't Blame Me; Dress; Gorgeous (over September); I Did Something Bad; I Don't Want To Live Forever; Look What You Made Me Do; King Of My Heart.
2017 - 8 SONGS: Call It What You Want; Dancing With Our Hands Tied (Jan); Family (Jan); Getaway Car; End Game (July); New Year's Day; So It Goes...(September); This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.
November 19, 2018: Taylor signs with Republic Record.
2018 - 9 SONGS: November To December: Afterglow; Daylight; I Forgot That You Existed; It's Nice To Have A Friend; ME!; Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince; Only The Young (Nov - Lover Outtake); The Man; You Need To Calm Down.
2019 - 14 SONGS: January to February 24th: All Of The Girls (Feb); Beautiful Ghosts; Cornelia Street; Cruel Summer; Death By A Thousand Cuts; False God; I Think He Knows; London Boy; Lover; Need (Feb); Paper Rings; Soon You'll Get Better; The Archer. Christmas Tree Farm (written Dec 1st - recorded Dec 2nd).
February 6, 2020: Taylor signs with Universal Music Publishing Group.
Songs she didn't write: Am I Ready For Love? (2002); Diary Of Me (2004/2005?); I'm Every Woman (Sept. 16, 2004); Birch (2021);
FAKE SONGS: 1989 title track; Boys And Love, Break Burn Inhale (real, but doesn't feature Taylor), Going Louder Folks, Keep Going, Party Like It's 1989, reputation title track; Sunshine, The Reason Why (It's just an alt title for This Is What You Came For).
Maybe Fake, Maybe Not: Favorite Scott song off of reputation (it can be Family, but we don't know); Original Sparks Fly Demo; You Need To Calm Down Demo with different bridge; Second Version of R-E-V-E-N-G-E recorded in 2008; Older Version of Your Face.
THERE IS A TOTAL OF 315 CONFIRMED SONGS.
There are some songs which I'm not sure I've placed correctly.
Everything I wrote has a source or at least a reasoning, if you want to know what it is just leave a comment.
I just realized that the only possible month in which Taylor and Pat Monahan could have written Babe is February 2012. I will probably update the writing of Red timeline soon with this, but hear me out.
January 10th - Train releases Drive By. The mastering code is from 2011, and it makes sense because its release was scheduled for January.
February - Taylor spends the whole month in LA during promo for the Lorax. I think this is when Pat contacts Taylor to ask her to write a song for their album California 37, which they don't end up doing, but they write Babe instead (source: Pat's interview in 2013)
February 28th to March 18th - Taylor tours in Australia, so she couldn't write with Pat.
March 19th to March 31st - she's in LA again, but it's too late for Babe because California 37 is about to be released.
April 13th - California 37 is released. The rest of the songs are mastered in 2012, so it means that there was still time to add songs after the release of Drive By
Edit: now that the Vault has been unlocked, I'll edit this post to add the missing titles and delete the predictions. I'm pretty proud of myself, I guessed every song except for Ronan.
This post was edited a lot. Sorry if you've reblogged the wrong version(s).
June 16, 2010: The Story Of Us is the last song Taylor writes before having a writer's block that ended 6 months later.
"There’s a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can’t even write about it. 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."
Late December 2010: All Too Well is born during a Speak Now Tour rehearsal.
[Interview with Pop Dust] The lyric I’m most proud of on the album is from ‘All Too Well’: ‘And you call me up again just to break me like a promise / so casually cruel in the name of being honest.’ That was something I came up with while ranting during a soundcheck. I was just playing these chords over and over onstage and my band joined in and I went on a rant. Those were some of the lines I thought of. I was going through a really hard time then, and my band joined in playing, and one of the first things that I came up with, just, like, spat out, was ‘And you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest.’
February 2011: All Too Well is reworked. This is probably the Ten Minute Version.
First week of March 2011: All Too Well is edited thanks to Liz Rose.
[Liz Rose to Rolling Stone] When we wrote the song, I hadn’t heard from her in awhile. She hadn’t really been writing. I was in Nashville one day, slowly moving the last bits of junk out of my garage so I could move to Dallas. […] I was in my driveway and my phone rings, and it’s Taylor saying, ‘Man, I’ve got this thing and I really need you to help me with it. Can you write today? What are you doing today?’ [I later] drove over to Taylor’s. It was the first song she wrote for that record, I think. She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information. I just let her go. She already had a melody and she started singing some words, and I started writing things down, saying, ‘Ok, let’s use this, let’s use that.’ She mentioned a plaid shirt, and I wrote that down in a corner, and when we got to the end, I said, ‘Let’s put the plaid shirt in there.’ That turned into one of the best lines. […] It was the most emotional, in-depth song we’ve ever written.
March 19, 2011: While in her hotel room in Madrid, Taylor writes Better Man.
[Taylor talking about it] Transcript: The song Better Man is one that I originally wrote for the Red album. I remember I was on tour, and I wrote it alone in a hotel room. And I remember standing in front of a mirror—I think the first thing I thought of was, ‘I wish it wasn’t 4am, standing in a mirror, saying to myself, 'you know you had to do it.“ That was an actual visual from my life that ended up being the first thing I wrote, and then I expanded outward from there. And it was a song that I really thought belonged on the album and there were just too many songs I loved that I had written in that period of time, so some of them had to be left off. I think I chose All Too Well over Better Man. I think that was what happened. I was either going to put on All Too Well or Better Man, and then I left off Better Man.
Late May/early June 2011: Taylor writes Sad Beautiful Tragic on her ukulele on her tour bus, reminiscing about a relationship that ended months ago.
[Billboard Interview]: ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ is really close to my heart. I remember it was after a show and I was on the bus thinking about this relationship that ended months and months before. The feeling wasn’t sadness and anger or those things anymore. It was wistful loss. And so I just got my guitar and I hit on the fact that I was thinking in terms of rhyming; I rhymed magic with tragic, changed a few things and ended it with what a sad beautiful tragic love affair. I wanted to tell the story in terms of a cloudy recollection of what went wrong. It’s kind of the murky gray, looking back on something you can’t change or get back.
Speculation:
The date is not confirmed but the secrete message is "While you were on a train" and Jake Gyllenhaal joined Mumford & Sons in late April in their Railroad Revival Tour... on a train. Taylor wasn't on tour in April, she reprised it on the 27th of May.
According to Swift Facts, Sad Beautiful Tragic is a demo and it was recorded once.
June 11, 2011: Taylor says, during a show in Detroit, that she had written 10 songs, all of them sad.
In Detroit, Swift seemed somewhat melancholy. Once in a while, I had the feeling that she was on the verge of bursting into tears. She said that she had recently decided that life is “about achieving contentment... You’re not always going to be ridiculously happy.” She had written about ten songs so far for her next album. Asked to characterize them, she said, “They’re sad? If I’m being honest.” The most recent one, she said, “is about moving on.”
I think that the songs written were: All Too Well, I Almost Do, Sad Beautiful Tragic, The Moment I Knew, Better Man.
“I Almost Do' is a song I wrote about the conflict that you feel when you want to take someone back, and you want to give it another try, but you know you can’t. And you can’t because you know it’s hurt you so deeply that you know that you couldn’t bear to go through that again. So you’re sitting there and wondering where they are and hope that they think about you and that you’re almost picking up the phone call, but you just can’t. I think I needed to write this song in order to not call that person actually. I think that writing the song was what I did instead of picking up the phone.”
June 24, 2011: Taylor meets up with Lori McKenna at her house. They write I Bet You Think About Me.
June 17, 2011: [from a Lover Journal] Taylor mentions "feeling blissfully happy" especially since she wrote "those 2 songs", which she will record after flying back to Nashville after the show in Pittsburgh, PA. One of them may be State Of Grace.
[On Good Morning America] "I wrote this song about when you first fall in love with someone — the possibilities, kind of thinking about the different ways that it could go. It’s a really big sound. To me, this sounds like the feeling of falling in love in an epic way."
August 26, 2011: Kuk Harrell tweets that Taylor and Justin Bieber wrote a song together, called Cannon Balls.
"‘I Bet You Think About Me’ is a song I wrote with Lori McKenna, who is one of my favorite singer-songwriters ever. I’d always wanted to work with her. And I wrote this with her at her house when I was playing Foxboro Stadium on the Speak Now Tour. We wanted this song to be like a comedic, tongue in cheek, funny, not caring what anyone thinks about you sort of break up song, because there are a lot of different types of heartbreak songs on Red. Some of them are very sincere, some of them are very stoic and heartbreaking and sad. We wanted this to be the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t care about anything.’ And we wanted to make people laugh with it, and we wanted it to be sort of a drinking song, and I think that that’s what it ended up being."
August 31, 2011: Cannon Balls is reworked. Tom Strahle, one of Justin Bieber's collaborators talked extensively about the song in these lives.
September 8, 2011: [From Lover Journal 1] Taylor writes Red on a plane on her way to Nashville. Taylor and Nathan Chapman record the demo in the evening, at the Pain in the Art Studio. A second demo exists. These demos are NOT produced with Dann Huff, unlike the album version.
[VH1’s Storytellers] "This relationship that I had that was, like, the worst thing ever and the best thing ever at the same time. I was writing this song and I was thinking about correlating the colors to the different feelings I went through. You have the great part of red, like the red emotions that are daring and bold and passion and love and affection. And then you have on the other side of the spectrum, jealousy and anger and frustration and ‘you didn’t call me back’ and ‘I need space."
September 9, 2011: [From Lover Journal 1] She's in the studio to record again.
October 19, 2011: "I have written 25 songs so far."
Some of these 25 songs include: State Of Grace, Red, All Too Well, I Almost Do, Stay Stay Stay, Sad Beautiful Tragic, The Moment I Knew, Girl At Home, Better Man. All of them are solo written and produced only by Chapman, which resembles the process in Speak Now. Others songs are I Bet You Think About Me with Lori McKenna and Cannon Balls with Justin Bieber, so 11 songs in total and 14 are missing. It's possible that Cannon Balls wasn't counted since it was supposed on Bieber's album.
"The song ‘Stay Stay Stay’ is a song that I wrote based on what I’ve seen of real relationships, where it’s not perfect, there are moments where you’re just so sick of that person, you get into a stupid fight. It’s still worth it to stay in it. There’s something about it that you can’t live without. In the bridge it says, ‘I’d like to hang out with you for my whole life’ and I think that’s what probably the key to finding the one, you just want to hang out with them forever."
According to Swift Facts, the songs written after Red are the ones included in the album.
According to a Reputation Secret Sessioner, Girl At Home is a demo.
December 2011: Taylor writes Begin Again.
‘Begin Again is a song that I wrote about getting through a breakup, and still being sad about it, and feeling a little insecure about all the things that relationship made you feel are wrong with yourself. And after months, and months, and months, having the courage to stand back up, dust yourself off, and go on that first date. And it’s about, kind of, the vulnerability involved with that, and the idea that you realize that, 'wow, this could be great.’
The song is supposedly for Will Anderson from Parachute. The white dress she wears in the single cover is the same she wore at his birthday party on May 5, 2012.
December 13, 2011: Taylor turns 22. She's in the studio to record, wearing a pair of bright red shoes.
Late December 2011: Taylor writes Starlight.
[Washington Post] I get a lot of style inspiration from the 1960s, so I’ll go and look at black and white pictures, and look at photos from the ‘50s and '60s, and I came across this picture of these two kids dancing at a dance. It immediately made me think of like how much fun they must have had that night. It was back in the late '40s. I ended up reading underneath that it was Ethel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. And they were, like, 17. So I just kind of wrote that song from that place, not really knowing how they met or anything like that.
Description of the Starlight Studio Demo (not in circulation): "3:37 minutes long. This demo is much rougher sounding than the released version. The verses are acoustic guitar-driven, there are less spacey sounds, and there are much louder background vocals as the song builds."
January 2012: "With Red, [Scott Borchetta] came to me in January and said, 'I think the album's finished.' This time, I said, 'No, it's not -- I need to keep writing.' At that point, she went to Chapman and told him she wanted to work with other producers, too."
January 19, 2012: Taylor meets Rory Kennedy (Conor's aunt), at the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary about Ethel Kennedy premiered.
January 21, 2012: Taylor meets Ethel Kennedy.
"When asked how the odd-couple friendship came to be, Swift said her acquaintance with the daughter led to an introduction to the mother. “I had read up on Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, and I asked Rory if it would ever be possible for me to meet her mother. She said, ‘Here’s her number.’ Ethel was kind enough to have lunch and spend a few hours talking with me, and ever since then I’ve been so inspired by how full of life she is and the way she tells her story.’’
February 2012: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor writes Holy Ground.
[Taylor to Daily Motion (video interview)]: "The song ‘Holy Ground’ was a, a song that I wrote about the feeling I got after years had gone by and I finally appreciated a past relationship for what it was, rather than being bitter about what it didn’t end up being. And I was sitting there thinking about it after I’d just seen him and I just, I was just like, “You know what, that was good.” It was, it was good, having that in my life, and I wrote the song and I immediately heard Jeff Bhasker’s production. I hadn’t ever worked with Jeff, but he has done some amazing work. I, I love what he’s done on Fun’s record, and I love his diversity. He’s just so talented, and so I called him and I said “I wrote this song. I really want you to work on it with me.” And I played it for him and he was like, “Let’s go! This is great!” And, and he did such an amazing job on it."
March 2, 2012: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor writes Nothin' New and The Lucky One, both in Perth, Australia. They have similar themes and were allegedly inspired by Joni Mitchell and Kim Wilde.
The ‘Lucky One’ is a song I wrote while I was in Australia. It kind of talks about some of my fears through telling the story of other people that I was inspired by. More than their stories being told, I’m pretty much singing about what I’m scared of in that song, ending up kind of caught up in this whole thing and lonely and feeling misunderstood and feeling like when people think you’re lucky that you’re really not. It kind of expresses my greatest fear of having this not end up being fun anymore, having it end up being a scary place. Some people get there, some people end up there. It’s a story song and it’s something I’m really proud of because it kind of goes to a place that I’m terrified of. [...] There’s the microscope that’s always on you. The camera flashes, the fear that something you say will be taken the wrong way and you’ll let your fans down. You’re scared of a lot of things for a lot of the time, but the trade-off of being able to get on a big stage and sing your songs — it’s worth it."
April 11, 2012: Taylor has a writing session in LA with Dan Wilson. The first song they write is Treacherous. and Come Back... Be Here in two days.
[From Taste Of Country] “I wrote ‘Treacherous’ with Dan Wilson, and we came up with a way to say, you know, ‘This is dangerous and I realize that I might get hurt if I go through with this, if I move forward with you. But… but I want to.’ You know? It’s like that kind of conflicted feeling of it being a risk every time you fall in love — especially with certain types of people. [Laughs] That was a song that I’m really proud of, because it’s got this bridge that sounds like a second chorus. It’s got all these big vocals, and it’s kind of the intensity of that moment when you’re deciding to let yourself fall in love with someone.”
[From a Dan Wilson Interview] “With Taylor, we had been kind of circling around, very much aware of each other’s work for a while. We figured out these two days to work together and she came to my studio super excited and said, “I had an idea in the car.” And she sang me the first three or four lines of it and said, “I want to call it ‘Treacherous’ and maybe the chorus can go like this.” And we were writing the song in 10 minutes and she was just so full of excitement.”
The drums are credited to Wilson in the Treacherous Demo, not to Aaron Sterling like in the final version.
April 12, 2012: Taylor and Dan Wilson write Come Back... Be Here. Taylor posts a picture on Instagram with the caption "Recording for the next album. So happy." They are recording the demos for Treacherous and Come Back... Be Here.
[Red Release Party] "It’s a song I wrote about this guy that I met. You know, you meet someone and then they just kinda happen to go away and it’s, like, long distance all of a sudden. And you’re, like, ‘b-b-but, but, come back, be here!’ So it’s a song that I wrote about having distance separate you, which is something I face constantly."
A description of Come Back... Be Here Studio Demo (not in circulation): "3:55 minutes long. A gorgeous bare-bones studio demo with drums, acoustic guitar, and Taylor's rough vocals with a few pretty harmonies added." I bet this demo was recorded with the Treacherous one, just Taylor and Dan.
The dress Taylor is wearing is the same she wore during a date with Harry Styles a few days before.
Mid to late April 2012: Taylor meets Max Martin and Shellback. The first song they write is Message In A Bottle. While in the middle of recording it, a friend of an ex walks in the studio asking if Taylor and his friend were getting back together: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together was born.
It’s a definitive portrait of how I felt when I finally stopped caring what my ex thought of me. He made me feel like I wasn’t as good or as relevant as these hipster bands he listened to…So I made a song that I knew would absolutely drive him crazy when he heard it on the radio. Not only would it hopefully be played a lot, so that he’d have to hear it, but it’s the opposite of the kind of music that he was trying to make me feel inferior to. She also sarcastically explained the song as a “really romantic song… Touching and sensitive… To my lovely ex boyfriend.”
Speculation:
It is not confirmed but the friend of the ex seems to be Adam Levine from Maroon 5, a very old friend of Jake. Maroon 5 were in the same studio in LA (Conway Studios) to wrap up their album Overexposed.
April 23, 2012: [from her Twitter] "Sitting in my kitchen. Listening to music. Don't want to go to bed. Was in the studio tonight. Writing tomorrow. Should go to bed. Ok I will."
Speculation:
Taylor was in LA that day, so I think that the songs she recorded were Holy Ground and The Lucky One, which have the same credits.
No idea about the song written the day after, if she ever did.
It's also possible that this was the writing session with Max Martin and Shellback.
May 14, 2012: Taylor meets Ed Sheeran for the first time, after his concert in Phoenix, Arizona: they write Run, their first song ever.
"I met up with him at one of his shows and we wrote some songs that day."
May 15, 2012: Taylor and Ed tweet about Run.
May 17, 2012: Taylor has lunch with Mark Foster from Foster The People in Beverly Hills, CA. They write Forever Winter.
May 18, 2012: Aaron Sterling tweets that he had just finished playing drums in Treacherous and Come Back... Be Here.
Dan Wilson confirms that the songs were recorded a few weeks after being written.
May 27, 2012: Taylor and Ed write Everything Has Changed.
[MTV News] "We, for real, were sitting on my trampoline in my backyard cause we had been writing a song and I was like, ‘Hey, I just got a trampoline. You want to see it?’ And so, he brought the guitar for some reason. We ended up writing an entire song out there. For portions of the song, we were bouncing around, ‘cause it’s a trampoline and it’s fun, and the combined maturity level of both of us is 8 years."
"She pretty much had the verse, bridge and chorus done but we argued about that one chord. She didn’t like that but I forced it upon her!"
May 28, 2012: Taylor and Ed arrive in Santa Monica, CA. They start recording Everything Has Changed and Run at Ruby Red Productions with Butch Walker and Jake Sinclair.
May 29, 2012: Gary Lightbody joins Taylor in the studio thanks to Ed. The two of them plus Jacknife Lee write and record The Last Time in less than 9 hours, produced by Lee in his studio in Topanga, CA. The album version is the very first attempt. Gary will also provide background vocals for Everything Has Changed.
[Taylor to NPR] The idea was based on this experience I had with someone who was kind of this unreliable guy. You never know when he’s going to leave, you never know when he’s going to come back, but he always does come back. My visual for this song is, there’s a guy on his knees sitting on the ground outside of a door. And on the other side of the door is his girlfriend, who he keeps on leaving — and he keeps coming back to her, but then he leaves again. He’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m going to do this to you.’ And she’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m asking you this: Don’t do this again.’ And she’s wondering whether to let him in, and he just wants her to give him another chance, but she doesn’t know if he’s going to break her heart again. It’s a really fragile emotion you’re dealing with when you want to love someone, but you don’t know if it’s smart to.
[Gary Lightbody to Rolling Stone] It was so fast. She works really fast. She’s extraordinary. We actually did that song, wrote it and recorded it in a day. And that was the version of it on the record, which is very rare. Normally you write and record something with somebody and then down the line they’ll record it, if you’re lucky. With her, the whole thing was done in nine hours. I hope we can do it again sometime!
June 1, 2012: [From a Lover Journal] After the Walmart Shareholders Concert held in Arkansas, Taylor returns to LA and while on the plane she writes 22, which she brings to a writing session with Max Martin and Shellback.
[Interview with Ryan Seacrest] I wrote that about my friends, like finally I’ve got this amazing group of girlfriends and we tell each other everything, we’re together all the time. And I think that was kind of the marker of me being 22, like having all these friends and there’s all these question marks in your life, but the one thing that you have is that you have each other.
June 2, 2012: [From a Lover Journal] Taylor brings the chorus of I Knew You Were Trouble to Max Martin e Shellback. Both 22 and I Knew You Were Trouble are recorded during this week.
[Interview with MTV] Taylor said that she brought the melody from piano to Max Martin and Shellback, who worked with her to “infuse a little bit of dubstep” and “make it sound as chaotic as that emotion felt.” She regarded it as one of the most adventurous songs from Red.
Early June 2012: Jacknife Lee talks about some bombastic songs written with Harry Styles, requested by the label.
The date is not confirmed but it's the only week where Harry was free (1D were on tour).
July 4, 2012: Taylor performs Starlight for Ethel Kennedy.
Somewhere during the writing process: Babe with Pat Monahan from Train (recorded, probably 2012), The Very First Night with Espionage (2012), Unknown Song with Ryan Adams, Unknown Song with T-Pain (I can't find the source), Unknown Song written in New Zealand (mid March 2012, mentioned by herself on Amazon Music).
Other Songs: Both Of Us, Safe & Sound, Eyes Open, they were all written and recorded in 2011. Ronan was written in October 2011. None of them were meant for Red.
End of the writing process: "The singer also revealed that she wrote "30 to 35?" songs for the album and but whiddled it down to 16 tracks."
Random Notes:
Red (Album Version), Begin Again and Starlight are produced by Dann Huff. While Red and Begin Again have the same credits, Starlight has other mixers, musicians and so on. My guess is that Dann Huff was called after January 2012 to work on Red because Borchetta didn't like the two demos (Swift Facts), then he worked on Begin Again and Starlight, which were written the month before. I bet that the guitar in the Starlight Demo was played by Chapman because in the Starlight credits you see "Electric Guitar Solo - Conceived by Nathan Chapman, Played by Dann Huff", which I think confirms Huff's involvement at a later date.
Last edited: December 17, 2021. Thank you to everyone who provided extra info, ily ♥
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