In the prologue for Swift’s fourth studio album Red, she states that her experiences in love have taught her difficult lessons and frames these relationships as the ‘red’ relationships; ones that are emotional whiplash that go from “zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and explode".

This concept of a burning, all-encompassing, roller coaster ride of emotions is a theme that flickers throughout the record, but particularly in the album’s sound as a whole. Everything on the album—from the poetic lyrical masterpiece that is 'All Too Well' to the childish joy in turning '22'—is because of the record’s title track. Where Fearless and Speak Now both dabbled in country-pop, Red is a record that goes to the extremes in both its sonics and lyrics and that’s owed completely to 'Red' the song.

In conversation with Billboard, Swift stated that 'Red' was the song that brought the entire record together, pushing her out of an existing boundary and into a place where she was completely out of her comfort zone. Before writing the record’s title track, 'Red' was written alone while working alongside producer Nathan Chapman.

After writing the track, Swift pushed herself to work alongside other writers and producers to see where else they could take the record as a whole. What followed was a sweeping, genre-spanning album that incorporates everything from country characteristics to infectious pop-driven hooks to the dubstep-influenced 'I Knew You Were Trouble'.

The crux of the album rests on the imagery and themes explored on 'Red', a nostalgia-induced track that shows Swift likening the different stages of love to a series of colours: pairing blue with “losing him,” dark gray to “missing him,” and red with “loving him”. In a chat with Good Morning America, she describes writing this song: “about the fact that some things are just hard to forget because the emotions involved with them were so intense, and to me intense emotion is red".

Much like the new Maserati Swift highlights on the track, she takes us on a journey as she comes to terms with a failed romance. A lover of a good callback, the secret message of the track is one word, three letters: “SAG”, a nod to the astrological lyrics Swift used in the opening album track 'State of Grace'. Pairing 'State of Grace' and 'Red' together on the track-list is like a double-sided coin with the former serving as a warning for what happens when you allow yourself to be consumed by emotions.

Swift’s feelings towards the colour red and its connection to what she once believed love was like have shifted as she’s grown. On 'Daylight', the final track on Swift’s album Lover, she sings about her failures in love and the doubt that she’d never been able to experience true love, assuming it to feel like the intensity that the colour red brings. Instead, she finds that love doesn’t feel the way she describes on Red—instead, it's golden (“I once believed love would be (Burning red)/But it's golden/Like daylight”). 

Although it’s not a track everyone claims as their favourite one from the record, 'Red' is the metaphorical thread that ties the entire album together: thematically, sonically, and lyrically. Calling back to the album's prologue, she states: “Real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it.” She might’ve had to burn red to find it, but it sounds like she did.