Warren wanted a Beach Boys thing for this one, and Carl Wilson and Billy Hinsche came in, with Carl arranging the vocal parts. The other harmony vocalists (credited as the "Gentlemen Boys") were Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, Zevon's longtime backers Waddy Wachtel and Jorge Calderon, and Linda Rondstadt/Stone Poneys guitarist Kenny Edwards.
Took a deep breath in the mirror
He didn't like it when I wore high heels, but I do
Turned the lock and put my headphones on
He always said he didn't get this song but I do, I do
Walked in expecting you'd be late
But you got here early and you stand and wait
I walk to you
You pull my chair out and help me in
And you don't know how nice that is, but I do
And you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
But on a Wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
You said you never met one girl who
Had as many James Taylor records as you, but I do
We tell stories and you don't know why
I'm coming off a little shy, but I do
But you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
But on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
And we walk down the block to my car
And I almost brought him up
But you start to talk about the movies
That your family watches
Every single Christmas and I won't
Talk about that
And for the first time
What's past is past
'Cause you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
Then on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
Then on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
He didn't like it when I wore high heels, but I do
Turned the lock and put my headphones on
He always said he didn't get this song but I do, I do
Walked in expecting you'd be late
But you got here early and you stand and wait
I walk to you
You pull my chair out and help me in
And you don't know how nice that is, but I do
And you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
But on a Wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
You said you never met one girl who
Had as many James Taylor records as you, but I do
We tell stories and you don't know why
I'm coming off a little shy, but I do
But you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
But on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
And we walk down the block to my car
And I almost brought him up
But you start to talk about the movies
That your family watches
Every single Christmas and I won't
Talk about that
And for the first time
What's past is past
'Cause you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end
Then on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
Then on a wednesday in a café I watched it begin again
Lyrics submitted by horseheadsonata
Begin Again Lyrics as written by Taylor Alison Swift
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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He certainly did earn that reputation.
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This song is def a twin to "Unfair" (a song she has been quoted as saying is about falling in love with someone who is already in a relationship) so it is presumably about the same person. Given the references to buying an apartment and not being able to see her love interest "after tonight," it's most likely that she's moving away and she'll "wait a day to break the bad news" (i.e. notifying him that she's leaving once she's already gone).
And, of course, the fact that she sees in him a fellow "idealist" and "dreamer" (terms commonly given to people with the INFP personality on the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)) portends that she'll always be left wondering if they would've been perfect together.
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This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Swift opens Red with "State Of Grace," while she closes the set with this song. Swift explained to Billboard magazine that she saw the two tracks as the bookends, as both were about a "significant and kind of damaging relationship."
"I never like to put two happy songs in a row or two of the same kind of sadness in a row," she added. "It's just about establishing a flow and playing it over and over again so it sounds like that's the order of things. It's a gut-feeling thing."
Taylor Swift's parents must have thought pretty highly of James Taylor as well. They named their now-famous daughter after the singer-songwriter.
Chatting about the moving-on theme of the song, Swift told Marie Claire: "Even after [a relationship] explodes into a million pieces and burns down and you're standing in a pile of the ash of what it once was, thinking, 'Why did I have to meet this person, why did this have to happen?' . But then, when you make eye contact with someone across the room and it clicks and, bam, you're there. In love again."
Regarding whom Taylor is singing about, she does give some clues by referencing her new guy's strong ties to his family ("You start to talk about the movies that your family watches every single Christmas)," his shyness, and their shared love for James Taylor.
Taylor previewed this Country ballad on the September 24, 2012 episode of ABC's Good Morning America. The song finds the Country-Pop star singing about a girl embarking on a first date after getting over a bad relationship. The new guy turns out to have a lot of qualities that her ex didn't have. She explained: "It's actually a song about when you've gotten through a really bad relationship and you finally dust yourself off and go on that first date after a horrible break up. And the vulnerability that goes along with all of that."
The song's music video was filmed in Paris in late September 2012 and finds Taylor turning a corner with a sophisticated-looking photographer. Swift described the clip to MTV News as, "a love letter to Paris, cause it's just the city and this story line of somebody moving on and finding yourself again."
Taylor personally chose the model that stars as her love interest in the visual. She told MTV UK News presenter Laura Whitmore that she was sent the audition tapes of twenty different male models, before selecting Vladimir as he had "good acting instincts” and "a really sweet and endearing charm to him.”