All You Had To Do Was Stay Lyrics
The love they gave away
And people like me wanna believe you,
When you say you changed,
The more I think about it now, the less I know
All I know is that you drove us off the road,
Had me in the palm of your hand
Why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?
Stay, now you say you want it back,
Now that it's just too late, well
Could have been easy,
All you had to do was stay
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay.
But I don't know what to say.
I been picking up the pieces of the mess you made,
People like you always want back,
The love you pushed aside,
But people like me are gone forever,
when you say goodbye.
Had me in the palm of your hand
Why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?
Stay, now you say you want it back,
Now that it's just too late, well
Could have been easy,
All you had to do was stay
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay.
You ended it.
You were all I wanted.
But not like this, not like this, not like this.
Had me in the palm of your hand
Why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?
Stay, now you say you want it back,
Now that it's just too late, well
Could have been easy,
All you had to do was stay
All you had to do was stay,
Had me in the palm of your hand
Why'd you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?
Stay, now you say you want it back,
Now that it's just too late, well
Could have been easy,
All you had to do was stay
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay,
All you had to do was stay.
This is how Taylor explained the creation of the song in her interview with The Times:
There’s a song on my album called “All You Had to Do Was Stay.” I was having this dream, that was actually one of those embarrassing dreams, where you’re mortified in the dream, you’re like humiliated. In the dream, my ex had come to the door to beg for me to talk to him or whatever, and I opened up the door and I went to go say, “Hi,” or “What are you doing here?” or something—something normal—but all that came out was this high-pitched singing that said, “Stay!” It was almost operatic. So I wrote this song, and I used that sound in the song. Weird, right? I woke up from the dream, saying the weird part into my phone, figuring I had to include it in something because it was just too strange not to. In pop, it’s fun to play around with little weird noises like that.
In this song Taylor points out that no matter what she does, she cannot indeed make anyone “stay”; that decision is always up to the other person and therefore out of her control.
This particular guy’s indecision (breaking up and then wanting to get back together) put the final nail on the relationship’s coffin.
Completing what plays like a three-song cycle that begins with “Style” and “Out of the Woods,” “All You Had to Do Was Stay” sees the man who was unwilling to commit (Swift has implied that this one, too, is about Styles) come crawling back to her. He may “want it back,” but—as Swift sings with a nearly audible wagging finger—“It’s just too late.” While perhaps not as memorable as the other two songs, the track gets points for attitude.
The fifth track in Taylor Swift’s album 1989 is another song about Swift’s trouble with mantaining a lasting relationship, despite of her best efforts.
One vibe that I get with this song is that she was always giving more in the relationship than he was-she was doing all the work and that's why all the guy had to do was stay, which he couldn't. So then when he comes back to her wanting another chance, she can't accept it because she's done pulling more than her weight in that relationship.