The Manuscript

(EDITOR’S NOTE: So sorry this blog has been MIA these last four months! Things got really crazy busy with graduate school and a new relationship and then the holidays, so I haven’t had a lot of time to write other than for school. But now I’m back at it and hopefully I will continue to be for the time being.)

“It’s actually a song about kind of when you’ve gotten through a really bad relationship and you finally dust yourself off and go on that first date after a horrible breakup and the vulnerability that goes along with all of that…”
— Taylor Swift, Good Morning America, September 24, 2012

“I wear heels now.”
— Hidden message in liner notes

Whenever people ask me what my personal favorite Taylor albums are, the order can change regularly, but my #1 favorite is always Speak Now, and #2 or 3 is always Red.

There are several reasons for this. As I briefly mentioned in my post on “Enchanted,” Speak Now and Red represent the bridge between her country roots and her pop superstardom, but the albums also represent her maturity into the all-time great storyteller we know her as today. When writing these albums, she was maturing into adulthood, and the intensely personal, intelligent, chaotic yet focused and deeply moving lyrics that resulted in the songs on these albums reflected this.

But on a more personal note, I became a Swiftie almost a full year into the Speak Now era/album cycle, which made Red the first era/album cycle that I was a part of from the very beginning. I remember buying the lead single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” on iTunes the second it dropped and then listening to it on my laptop, iPod, and in my mom’s car. And while I even recognized at the time that that song was never going to be a favorite of mine (I will write more about that one at a later date), I was just so excited to be a part of one of her album release cycles from the beginning and to hear new music from her that my critical brain was fully turned off at that moment.

But it was the second single from Red that made me realize the incredibly special album that was to follow, and that song was “Begin Again.”

Much like all of her songs on Speak Now, “Begin Again” was solely written by Taylor, and the instrumental backing never once threatens to distract or overwhelm from the story she is telling. In fact, it is deliberately peaceful and evocative of the feeling when you can fully begin to move on from a painful heartbreak and put yourself out there again, making it the perfect track to close out Red. And in taking an even closer look at the album’s deliberate sequencing, the song caps a trilogy of songs that close out the standard version of the album, with her Ed Sheeran duet “Everything Has Changed” and “Starlight” coming before it. I’ve called this trilogy of songs the “Conor Kennedy trilogy,” as they all serve to reflect the period shortly before the album was released, where she had her first public-facing relationship in over a year with Conor Kennedy (the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), showing how she had been able to move on from the relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal that inspired most of Red (now whether this particular song is actually about Conor Kennedy or not…well, I’ll get to that later).

So while “Begin Again” certainly worked a great Taylor Swift song in isolation, it becomes even richer and more rewarding when listened to as a part of its album, the way most of her songs are, particularly on Red and every album after. This is apparent in the first lyrics of “Begin Again,” which depict Taylor in her bedroom literally looking at herself in the mirror before meeting up with her date.

Took a deep breath in the mirror
He didn’t like it when I wore high heels
But I do
Turn the lock and put my headphones on
He always said he didn’t get this song
But I do, I do

In these first few lyrics, Taylor reveals several key things that are significant both for this song and her evolution by the end of the album as a whole: first, she is trying to break her habit of caring about what her ex thought of everything from the shoes she wears to the music she listens to, instead reminding herself that she is her own person and she only needs to care about what she wants. Even the first line, where she “takes a deep breath in the mirror,” communicates so much about her journey to get back her sense of individuality and autonomy after a relationship where she lost that (and certainly the big age gap in said relationship that she has written about much more since then contributed to that). The line about high heels is significant enough that Taylor made a point to refer to it in the hidden message in the song’s liner notes (noted at the top of the essay), and it shows just how insecure her ex was that he did not want to ever appear to be the same height or shorter than her, despite being significantly older (note: Jake Gyllenhaal is himself the exact same height as Taylor Swift but is also nine years older).

Similarly, the line about her ex not “getting” the song she is listening to is a callback to other songs from Red referring to her ex (i.e., Gyllenhaal) and his pretentious love of indie music, to the point where he would even condescend to her about her own music (as referenced in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”). By reassuring herself that she, in fact, “gets” the song she is listening to on her headphones, she is not only continuing to rediscover her sense of individuality, but she is also reclaiming the sorts of music that she loves and that inspire her in her own music and storytelling. It is also worth noting that this line comes right after she turns the lock on her apartment door while leaving for her date, which also works as a metaphor for her leaving behind her past anxieties and insecurities as she attempts to literally and figuratively move forward into another potential relationship.

Until this point, the song’s main instrumentation had been acoustic guitar and a very soft steel guitar backing, but then just a second after her last “I do,” gentle percussion kicks in and gives the song an even warmer feel than it had before. This sonically illustrates Taylor moving to her upcoming date, a scene she further sets upon describing her arrival at the cafe where she meets the man she is seeing:

I walked in expecting you’d be late
But you got here early and you stand and wave
I walk to you
You pull my chair out and help me in
And you don’t know how nice that is
But I do

Even after supposedly locking away all her hurts and insecurities from her past relationship, the first line of this verse shows how they are really still lingering, as she enters the cafe expecting the man she’s meeting to be late, inferring that her ex-boyfriend was also regularly late to planned dates (or, in some cases, wouldn’t even show up, as in “The Moment I Knew”). And yet, she is immediately put at ease as her date has, in fact, showed up early, and he gives her a friendly wave that shows how sincere and excited he is about this date. After walking over to him, he then illustrates his kind and chivalrous nature toward Taylor by pulling her chair out and helping her into it without making it a big deal. But because this was never something her ex would have done for her, Taylor makes a point to note how this man does not even realize the nice, courteous thing he is doing in this action, but she does, and it only further puts her at ease about moving on into a potential new relationship.

And it is then, once they are seated and and begin talking and getting to know one another, that the chorus comes in, which, like many of Taylor’s greatest lyrics, gives the listener a snapshot of a split-second in time while taking them inside her mind and subconscious and ultimately summarizing the entire thesis of the song:

And you throw your head back laughing
Like a little kid
I think it’s strange that you think I’m funny, ’cause
He never did
I’ve been spending the last eight months
Thinking all love ever does
Is break, and burn, and end
But on a Wednesday in a cafe
I watched it begin again

While Taylor does reveal more about their specific conversation in the subsequent verse and bridge of the song, it is this brief instance, in which she makes her date laugh in a very genuine, sincere, and innocent way, that comes to symbolize and encapsulate the date. And the specific way she describes this ends up having several deeper meanings. First, as she says in the next lyric, her ex-boyfriend never found her to be funny (this same fact is also addressed in Red era songs “I Bet You Think About Me” and, most bitingly, “All Too Well [10-Minute Version]”), and so she is noticeably taken aback when a man now actually finds her to be funny. Secondly, she describes him as throwing his “head back laughing like a little kid,” which signifies a youth that serves as a strong indicator of him being around the same age as her, or even younger. This is likewise a stark contrast to the wide age gap of her previous relationship that haunted her for years afterward.

But it is the following lyrics that make the song’s already clear thesis even more explicit: that this date has helped Taylor rekindle her previous romantic idea of love that had been ripped apart by her previous relationship and the fallout and grieving that happened from its ending. While for most of Red, the hopeless romantic traits of previous songs like “Our Song” and “Love Story” and “Mine” were not present, here Taylor finds herself rediscovering those songs’ sentiments and embracing them once again. Just as she would later close Reputation with a quiet, gentle song focused on a moment in time that saw her meditating on the possibilities of love after being put through intense, traumatic events, she closes Red in the same way: reclaiming her idealistic view of love and romance to end Red on a hopeful note.

Now, to address something I mentioned earlier in this essay: while the placement of “Begin Again” on Red immediately after “Everything Has Changed” and “Starlight” frames it as being about Conor Kennedy, the song predates her romance with him. She is known to have written and recorded the song in December 2011, while her relationship with Kennedy didn’t start until more than six months later. The timing of when she created “Begin Again,” as well as the deliberate choice of words Taylor uses in this song, specifically the references to “the last eight months” and “a Wednesday in a cafe,” have led multiple Swifties to conclude that the song was written about a first date she went on with Will Anderson, the lead singer of the band Parachute, in December 2011 that was spotted by paparazzi. This would have been around eight months after the official end of her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, and it would have happened on a Wednesday in a Nashville cafe. And while this has never been directly confirmed by Taylor herself, I still think it helps to understand the song’s genesis and how it works differently by itself versus in the context of the album.

Following this first chorus, the song continues and Taylor takes us further into her conversation with her date:

You said you never met one girl who had
As many James Taylor records as you
But I do
We tell stories and you don’t know why
I’m coming off a little shy
But I do

And it is here that Taylor further draws a direct contrast between this date and her ex-boyfriend, by specifically pointing out that, while her ex-boyfriend seemed to constantly criticize her taste in music, she and her date both have a deep love for similar types of music, specifically that of singer/songwriter James Taylor. And this specific mention of James Taylor here is particularly significant given that Taylor herself was named after James Taylor, and he has been such a musical inspiration to her that she invited him to perform his song “Fire and Rain” with her on stage at Madison Square Garden on the Speak Now World Tour in November 2011, just over two weeks before her date with Will Anderson and this song’s genesis (multiple Swifties have also flagged an old tweet from Will Anderson with a link to the James Taylor song “Mexico”).

Following this, Taylor and her date begin to tell stories from each other’s pasts, and he notices her obvious shyness in this exchange, not knowing why exactly she is coming off this way. And here is where the repeated lyrical motif of “I do” pays off. Up until now, the use of “I do” had been a way of Taylor reasserting her own individuality and knowledge of what she likes and what she wants. But this use of “I do,” and the last one of the song, is noticeably different in how it serves as a further acknowledgment of her anxieties regarding her past relationship, particularly within the context of a conversation centered around their respective pasts. Once again, her ex-boyfriend is haunting her even as this date is showing to be different in all the right ways.

The chorus then repeats, with the notable change of “And” to “But” before “you throw your head back laughing like a little kid.” While this may seem like a small change, it recontextualizes her date’s aforementioned laugh to be a response to her slight shyness and how that’s impacting the stories she’s telling. And rather than being rude or insensitive, it shows a sweetness and naiveté that is another refreshing change from Taylor’s previous boyfriend, and it once again serves as a way of chipping away at her anxieties and insecurities and allowing her to be fully herself with him.

Just then, after a sweet and calming instrumental break, highlighted by a sweet violin solo, Taylor leads the song into the bridge, which indicates the end of the date as they leave the cafe:

And we walked down the block, to my car
And I almost brought him up
But you start to talk about the movies
That your family watches every single Christmas
And I want to talk about that
And for the first time
What’s past is past

As in most of Taylor’s songs, the bridge here contains the true crux of “Begin Again”. Just as the date approaches its end, Taylor is at a point where she is preparing to talk to her date about her last relationship and the severe impact it had on her, as that would provide him the real explanation for her shyness. But just as she is going to broach this subject, her date begins to talk about Christmas movies he watches with his family (an appropriate topic, given that her date with Will Anderson that inspired the song happened during the 2011 Christmas season). The warm, light-hearted topic of Christmas movies (and family holiday traditions, more broadly) is one that naturally speaks directly to Taylor’s love of Christmas and family-oriented nature, and her desire to continue on this point of conversation rather than talk about the pain of her previous relationship ends up marking the true turning point for her in moving forward from that pain. As she says in the final line of the bridge, “…for the first time, what’s past is past.” She has now fully recovered her optimistic view of love (i.e., “watched it begin again”) after eight months of living in a brokenhearted, pessimistic worldview of it, and can finally move forward toward a brighter, more romantic and fulfilling future.

And as the chorus repeats for the final time, Taylor changes “But” to “‘Cause” before “you throw your head back laughing like a little kid,” once again changing the context of that lyric to show the impact that his particular form of laughing (and appreciating her sense of humor) has on her. Here, she is describing how this laugh ultimately symbolizes his sweet, wholesome nature and how, ultimately, that is what can allow her to put the pain and hurt of her previous relationship in the past and move forward. Being able to bond over meaningful things with another person and have them appreciate you for who you are is something that she has not experienced, and just the very reminder that it can happen with another person, even if the date does not ultimately lead to a relationship, makes this date, on this day, in this location, with this person, something of incredible significance. So when she closes the song by restating for the last time that she watched love begin again “on a Wednesday, in a cafe,” it feels like a genuinely earned sentiment, closing the song and the standard edition of the Red album in a warm, sweet, comforting, rewarding fashion.

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Almost exactly a month before the release of Red, Taylor released “Begin Again” as the second official single from the album (and the third single of the era as a whole counting “Ronan,” that heartbreaking masterwork of a song that will be covered in-depth here later). As I said at the top of this essay, hearing “Begin Again” for the first time made me realize how special the album to follow was going to be. While “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” did its job in both announcing the album’s central theme of heartbreak and announcing Taylor as someone not afraid to go into pop with both feet in (it became her first #1 hit for a reason, after all), “Begin Again” truly showed the album’s emotional vulnerability, its epic, ambitious, genre-spanning nature, and top-notch lyrical prowess far more than its preceding single did.

And while “Begin Again” was never going to be one of the most commercially successful singles from Red, it did do respectfully well on the Billboard charts, debuting and peaking at #7 on the Hot 100 and #10 on the Hot Country Songs chart, purely on the strength of its digital downloads in the peak iTunes era. And while the song never did cross over to pop radio, it ended up showing impressive staying power on country radio, ultimately peaking at #3 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in March 2013 behind songs from The Band Perry (who Taylor brought on stage with her during the 1989 World Tour) and Taylor’s first musical muse Tim McGraw. That same month, the single became certified Platinum.

And although the release of “Begin Again” as a single came to be seen by some as a cynical play by her then-label Big Machine to show that she was still a country artist despite her foray into pop, Taylor did her due diligence to promote the song as a single and give it its due in the spotlight. She first did this by releasing a full-fledged music video for it the day after the Red album’s release. This video, while not telling the song’s narrative in a straightforward fashion, nevertheless captures the song’s themes of potential new romance and moving forward, and ends up becoming an interesting cross between Taylor’s “Back to December” music video and Richard Linklater’s 2004 masterwork Before Sunset. Taylor herself described it as love letter to the city of Paris (or, as she would come to call it in 2019 during a different era, the “City of Lover”), and it more than captures that, and the result is one of her most interesting and underrated music videos:

She also showcased the song live whenever she could during the Red album rollout. In her first live performance of “Begin Again,” on the campus of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, that was taped for VH1 Storytellers, she followed the show’s format to a “T” by explaining the inspiration for the song and what it means to her thematically both in the context of the album, her career, and even her love life. This performance (and her whole Storytellers special generally) is one of my favorites from her:

She then followed that up with three other memorable live performances: first, as part of one of her formerly regular appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she performed in the middle of a four-song set. Second, she played it in a very memorably staged performance at the 2012 CMA Awards, playing fully off the Paris imagery of the music video to lovely effect. And third, she performed it as part of a private concert at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, which was filmed and released on her official YouTube page. You can check out all of these performances below:

After the start of her Red Tour in March 2013, it was no surprise that “Begin Again” became a part of the regular setlist. In contrast to much of the rest of the show, she rightly chose to perform this song in a stripped-down arrangement, playing it acoustically sitting on her stool on the B-stage with her band providing soft accompaniment in the background (and, of course, images of Paris on the screen behind her). Having been lucky enough to see the Red Tour at Soldier Field in August 2013 (my first Taylor concert), this performance was one of the quiet highlights of that show. And while it is a shame that there is still no professionally recorded film or audio from this tour, there is a fairly solid video that combines clips of various performances from the tour to document how “Begin Again” was performed throughout. While it can be shaky at times and the sound quality isn’t the best, it still gives a great idea of how the song was showcased on the tour:

Following its last performance on the Red Tour in December 2013, “Begin Again” has only been played three times by Taylor live since. While it failed to make a surprise appearance on the 1989 World Tour, it did make one at her Minneapolis stop on the Reputation Stadium Tour in August 2018 as the Surprise Song, which must have been exciting for everyone in that building:

And then, as was to be expected, she performed in the Surprise Song set a couple times on the Eras Tour. The first time, at one of her Houston shows in April 2023 just weeks after her breakup with Joe Alwyn went public, she played it on guitar, which was widely interpreted by Swifties as her communicating that she had moved on from that relationship, little did they know the true nature of the rebound she was in at that time. Still, it was a great performance:

Although my personal favorite performance is the one that happened more than a year later when, to no one’s surprise, she made a point to play “Begin Again” as a Surprise Song at one of her shows in Paris, this time on piano. The reaction from the crowd when she mentions filming the music video in Paris is one of pure joy and pride from the French Swifties that makes me happy every time I hear it. And, to cap it off, after she plays the entirety of “Begin Again” (a rarity after she began performing mashups in the Surprise Song set), she sings a small portion of her song “Paris” from Midnights, capping a performance that, like the music video itself, is a beautiful love letter to Paris and the Swifties based there. It’s never not a joy to watch: