The song by Taylor Swift is her third single of Fearless, an album released in late 2008 amidst the worst global economic recession since the thirties. Not that the album is concerned with contemporary issues, it is an insular world of timeless pop optimism. Swift, who writes and cowrites the songs, has a seemingly effortless ability to capture the emotional confusion of adolescence and transform it into breathless pop miracles. The songs shimmer with quality, with the absorption of an American tradition of solid pop songwriting and Nashville narrative clarity. The songs that she writes and are comfortable and safe as the "typical Tuesday night" that is the setting for "You Belong With Me", but that shouldn't belie her skill of trancending banalities.
Lyrically, the song begins conversationally, you are drawn into the story by the normality she portrays. It feels unforced and genuine; the story has a sort of universal appeal, like John Hughes films. Taylor Swift likes a boy, the boy has a girlfriend. Swift unpicks from this story an evocation of adolescent longing that is never cloying, in lesser hands, the song would have dragged down into melodrama. The line "dreaming of the day, when you wake up and find that what you're lookin' for has been here the whole time", with the "be my baby" drum beat underneath it as nearly everything other layer in the song drops away, should be embarrassing. It reads embarrassingly. But the sentiment is so honest and feels so right in the build up to the chorus that it's pretty much like "You had me at "I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like' ."
The dramatic tension of the prechorus is then built up even further by her singing the line "If you could" quieter in the lead up to the chorus. This pre chorus two second segment, with the dropped drum beat on the "if you" and the multi track vocals allow the chorus to come out in glistening pop perfection.
And that's exactly what it the chorus is, catchy, propulsive, as all the tension in the verse is released with the guitars and the cymbals and overlayed vocal harmonies. The chorus is an indelible statement of pop intent, almost irresistibly perfect. But it is the lyrical restraint, as she sings "why can't you see?", you aren't sure how this story is going to end. Hopefully well.
I mean basically the story is pretty trite, but it is the details in it. The way she describes his "worn out jeans", with the use of slide guitar that comes in prominent in the second verse, as if she was cautious in the first verse not to appear too country but now is allowing the story to set into its direct middle american appeal. But who can't relate to "you've got a smile who could light up this whole town"? Its a nice sentiment in a song that is replete with them. And I am not even discussing the video.
"Hey what chu doing with a girl like that?" Taylor Swift seems all about the fun, she is careful with the boy next door. She doesn't want to tell him her real feelings, because she is worried about getting hurt. At this point, you are pretty convinced there is going to be a happy resolution to this story.
After the second chorus, Taylor Swift inserts Guitar Solo into the ProTools tracking. Always a good move. I don't know what it necessarily means in the song. If the guitar solo meant to punctuate the emotional impact of the song, it doesn't. (That occurs of course in the middle eight) It seems to serve the purpose of allowing a little break between the chorus and the middle eight. As always Taylor Swift conforms to the genre, the guitar solo, while not a neccessity in a good pop song, in a pop country hit with serious cross over appeal sort of needs to show its guitar roots.
So the middle eight comes, and it is emotional.
"Oh I remember you driving to my house in the middle of the night
I'm the one who makes you laugh when you know you're about to cry
I know your favorite songs and you tell me about your dreams
I think I know where you belong. I think I know it's with me."
Taylor Swift never resolves the story though, it is left open. She is a pretty ambiguous song writer. Of course, in the video there is a lyrical conflict with the whole "driving to my house" considering the guy is literally the guy next door. But I don't really want to discuss the video. It its own thing. It is the nuances in the song-- which is basically just a gawky teen country pop song for suburban mall structures, a song that should just fill up space but is filled with enough warmth and luminescence that its popular appeal is justified -- that have left me like in complete Taylor Swift fan boy zone, not out of any sort of physical attraction to her.
