The Meaning of Everything Has Changed By Taylor Swift

This song is about exploring love, maybe for the first time. Love at first sight comes with strong feelings — feelings so powerful that you doubt their existence.

Remember the very first time you met someone and felt an immediate attraction?

You seem to have problems speaking to them because your mind runs wild with endless possibility. Your stomach is in knots, your heart is beating fast, and all you want to do is say hello without screwing it up.

You believe first impressions are really important, and you pray to God that the first words out of your mouth are words that will win them over forever, instead of making you seem like an idiot. You’d do anything, even kill someone if you had to, but this person was going to be yours if it’s the last thing you do on Earth.

Do you know the feeling?

These feelings are the beginning of a beautiful love story — a fairy tale. Most songs aren’t written about that first meeting or the initial infatuation because these feelings are usually not strong enough to cause someone to go write a song about it.

What usually happens is they end up dating this person for awhile and rather than writing about how awesome it was, they usually write about all the things that went wrong, how they messed up, or sing about the regrets they have.

Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyways, this song stands alone in a “song world” of pain and suffering.

All I knew this morning when I woke
Is I know something now, know something now I didn’t before.
And all I’ve seen since eighteen hours ago
Is green eyes and freckles in your smile
In the back of my mind making me feel right

She wakes up still having intense feelings for this person. For the last 18 hours she can’t stop thinking about him.

They alternate singing:

I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now
I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now

This confirms that the feelings are mutual.

Reaffirmed by:

‘Cause all I know is we said, “Hello.”
And your eyes look like coming home
All I know is a simple name
Everything has changed
All I know is you held the door
You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours
All I know since yesterday is everything has changed

Without any words being necessary, there eyes foretold their future. The kind of eyes that you can’t look away from because you’re afraid you’ll never get another chance to look at them — the kind of eyes you’re afraid to look at because you could get lost in them forever.

Holding the door has a deeper meaning than someone literally holding a door. The door described is a door that leads into their hearts. The door swings open and there’s no going back now, all you can do is enter.

The guy reaffirms this by singing:

And all my walls stood tall painted blue
And I’ll take them down, take them down and open up the door for you

The color blue means sadness and the tall walls refer to how the amount of pain and sadness he’s been experienced. His willingness to take down the barriers and give love a chance comes with a high risk but he thinks she’s worth it.

And all I feel in my stomach is butterflies
The beautiful kind, making up for lost time,
Taking flight, making me feel right

Whenever you meet someone new that you are excited about you get anxious feelings in your stomach just by thinking about them. But unlike the anxiety you may get when giving a presentation to your boss, these butterflies are the kind you welcome into your life.

Making up for lost time not only signals that they are together in their hearts even when they aren’t physically together, but it refers lost time before they met. Lost time because they were in other relationships or on a different path. They can see the history of their lives in an instant and know that they had to endure all other hardships just to be ready for each other.

This is followed by the chorus:

I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now
I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now
I just wanna know you better, know you better, know you better now
I just wanna know you, know you, know you

‘Cause all I know is we said, “Hello.”
And your eyes look like coming home
All I know is a simple name
Everything has changed
All I know is you held the door
And you’ll be mine and I’ll be yours
All I know since yesterday is everything has changed

Then the last new part of the song is:

Come back and tell me why
I’m feeling like I’ve missed you all this time, oh, oh, oh.
And meet me there tonight
And let me know that it’s not all in my mind.

This kind of love is unbelievable. “Missed you all this time” is not a reference to their overnight separation but to a missing piece of their lives that they’ve finally found. All of the suffering, seeking, dreaming, waiting, and hoping is finally over. The thought of it sounds crazy but seeing each other again removes any doubt.

Then the song ends while repeating the chorus.

This song is allows us to relive thoughts and emotions experienced all the way back to the first time we remember being in love.