More about: Taylor Swift

‘You Belong With Me,’ Swift’s third single from Fearless, is a track inspired by unrequited love that eventually became the anthem for the self-described girls-next-door everywhere.

The country-pop banger came to fruition after Swift overheard a heated conversation between a friend while on the phone to his girlfriend. Immediately she came up with the lyric “You’re on the phone with your girlfriend, she’s upset, going off about something that you said,” which instantly became the throughline of the song. The secret message, “Love is blind so you couldn’t see me,” defines what the song is: an ode to someone who can’t see the faults because they are loving too deeply. 

Growing up in the mid-to-late 2000s, a lot of people felt seen by Swift. Her ability to be universal in her lyrics is what garnered her such a feverish fanbase from the start because she felt like a counterpart; she was as awkward as we were, she felt left out of big friend groups, and she crushed on boys from afar and wrote about them in her diary. In a conversation with BMR, she stated: “I ran that into the storyline — that I’m in love with him and he should be with me instead of her. It just became this whole picture. It was really fun for us to write the line, “She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts.” ‘You Belong With Me’ exemplifies the thoughts and feelings any 16-year-old has when they feel bitter that they aren’t being seen by the person who they care about. It’s not to suggest those feelings are correct— the uncool, nerdy girl battle against the popular girl is a deeply overdone trope — but back then those two juxtaposed images is what was pushed on People Magazine and websites like Perez Hilton. 

Swift received flack for pushing the ‘other girl’ narrative in songs like ‘You Belong With Me’ and ‘Better Than Revenge,’ but many forget that being a teen girl in the late 2000s was a moment where the girl vs. girl mentality was not just encouraged, but celebrated. In a 2011 profile for the New Yorker, a journalist went out of their way to frame Swift as an ‘innocent Bambi when compared to other young 20-something women in the industry, implying that the “Lohans and Winehouses” were unhinged and messy. The journalist lists the many things Swift doesn’t do (drinking, clubbing, trips to rehab) and mentions Demi Lovato and Britney Spears as examples of those who have suffered a great deal because of the industry and press. With the line "She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts", Swift plays into that mentality as well; acknowledging the difference between dressing and how that alone suggests the type of woman that you are. It’s in these dichotomies where ‘good’ or ‘bad’ can never really thrive — the good never feel like they can make mistakes and the bad feel like they can never shed the ones they’ve made.

In her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, audiences got a glimpse into how pursuing and pushing a perfect persona was debilitating for Swift. In the doc, she says, “The main thing that I always tried to be was a good girl — I became the person who everyone wanted me to be.” Although many have criticised Taylor for leaning in and embracing the victim narrative, it's imperative to remember that songs like ‘You Belong With Me’ were penned by a teen in an environment where the media was not kind to women in Hollywood. After being in the industry for so long, the good girl complex is difficult to shed when you’ve been praised for being different from other girls (and for being different from other female artists). 

Whether she's writing songs for the girl-next-door or not, Swift has always been able to make listeners feel seen through her storytelling. The discourse around ‘You Belong With Me’ has thankfully shifted from nitpicking Swift for conforming to a narrative that was constructed long before she even arrived in music to celebrating the track for what it is: a euphoric, over-the-top, pop song that is still sung as loudly now as it was on the Fearless tour in 2010.

When looking back at ‘You Belong With Me’ and its release, we can all fall back on the memories of who we were as teens; navigating a mix of confusing and enthralling feelings when you are young and have a silly and innocent teenage crush.

Fearless (Taylor's Version is out now).

More about: Taylor Swift