"The Lucky One" Song Meaning

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

Who is this song about?

"The Lucky One" cover art, courtesy of taylorswift.com

It is about Taylor's fears and stories of people she has been inspired by. She doesn't explicitly say who is the main person in the song.  (*When I met Taylor I asked her how many people this song was about, she said three and there are three verses, Coincidence? I think not.)  I think it is about many people.  It could be about Joni Mitchell, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn etc.  Who do you think it is about specifically?

The subject of the song starts out being "The Lucky One", The camera flashes make it "look like a dream/You had it figured out since you were in school/So overnight, you look like a 60s queen/Another name goes up in lights/Like diamonds in the sky..."  But end up not being happy even though "they tell you that you're lucky but you're so confused/cause you don't feel pretty, you just feel used." She talks about how they have known when to disappear, to enjoy their life more.  Then she talks about how she has become "The Lucky One".

Click here for the lyrics to the song, "The Lucky One." 

Taylor says in her Paint the World Red website, "The 'Lucky One' is a song I wrote while I was in Australia.  It kind of talks about some of my fears through telling the story of other people that I was inspired by.  More than their stories being told, I'm pretty much singing about what I'm scared of in that song, ending up kind of caught up in this whole thing and lonely and feeling misunderstood and feeling like when people think you're lucky that you're really not.  It kind of expresses my greatest fear of having this not end up being fun anymore, having it end up being a scary place. Some people get there, some people end up there. It's a story song and its something I'm really proud of because it kind of goes to a place that I'm terrified of."

Being famous can be fun at first, but people have ended up in a scary place over time. Taylor says, "Everybody's got their way of dealing with it. And for me, sometimes it's surrounding myself with my friends and venting, sometimes it's staying up at the piano until four o'clock in the morning, sometimes it's watching TV and forgetting about all of it, sometimes it's calling my mother up and crying. Sometimes you have a really bad day."

Your life is constantly also analyzed.  Taylor said, "There's a lot of trade-offs. There's the microscope that's always on you. The camera flashes, the fear that something you say will be taken the wrong way and you'll let your fans down. There's the fear that you'll be walking down the street and your skirt will blow up and you'll be in the news for three months."

Right now it's worth it for her, right now. Taylor says,  "You're scared of a lot of things for a lot of the time, but the trade-off of being able to get on a big stage and sing your songs — it's worth it."  She hasn't ended up like the girls in the song and she knows when her time is up she is going to leave.

She is wise to know when to get out of it, when it's not fun anymore.  She has a very good head on her shoulders.

Taylor told Katie Couric on the Katie show October 26, 2012 "I just feel like there will be a time when I'll probably kind of step a bit backwards from it.  I think that it's important to really live in the moment while you're here, but I also think it's important to know when it's time to walk off stage."

I for one hope it is not anytime soon, but I'm glad that Taylor has a good head on her shoulders and can see that she needs to be happy to keep doing what she does and not get caught up in it.