"Starlight" Song Meaning

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Starlight" from her "Red" album.

Who is this song about?

FOR ETHEL is the lyric hint for this song.  It is a tribute to Ethel Kennedy about her marriage to Robert Kennedy.

Taylor says in her stories behind the songs, “Starlight is a song I wrote actually after seeing a picture of, Ethel and Bobby Kennedy when they were seventeen. I saw this picture about a year a half ago, and I didn’t know anything about like, what they were doing or what was going on in the picture, but I just thought ‘They look like they’re having the best night.’ So I wrote this song about what the night might’ve been like. And I ended up meeting Ethel and going and playing it for her and she just loved it. It was such a fun moment when she was just in love with the song and so happy about it. It’s just this adorable picture that to me, it just like brought forth all these potentials for how that night could’ve been.”

In the song Taylor talks about the first time Ethel and Robert met "I met bobby on the boardwalk summer of '45/Picked me up late one night/Out the window we were seventeen."  I think when she refers to having 10 kids "Oooh ooh, we could get married/Have ten kids and teach them how to dream, " she is making up a number, ie lots of kids.  They actually had 11 kids.

Click here for the lyrics to the song, Starlight.

She was able to attend the screening of the HBO special "Ethel" directed by Rory Kennedy in January.

Ethel Skakel Kennedy, center, subject of the documentary film "Ethel," poses with her daughter Rory, the director of the film, and singer Taylor Swift at the premiere of the film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) AP

In an interview with Vogue in January 2011 Taylor says, “The only time in my life I have ever been starstruck was meeting Caroline and Ethel Kennedy, I got to spend the afternoon with Ethel a couple of weeks ago. She is one of my favorites because you look back at the pictures of her and Bobby and they always look like they are having the most fun out of everybody. You know, eleven kids, all these exotic animals on their property. I’ve read a lot about them.”

I'm glad she got to meet one of her icons!