Taylor Swift considers herself, above all else, a songwriter.
“That’s the element of my life that I hold most sacred,” she told The New York Times in an interview. “That’s my favorite part of my job.”
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Throughout her career, Swift has been acknowledged as a writer far and wide, including by the Grammy Awards, where four of her 35 career nominations have come for song of the year. But “Lover,” her songwriting entry at the ceremony in January (and one of four overall nominations), is different: Unlike her previous nominations in the category — “You Belong With Me,” “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off” — Swift is credited as the sole author behind the title track of her seventh album, one of the biggest releases of the year.
“I really would have wanted that song to be the one that got acknowledged more than so many things that I’ve ever made,” Swift said.
In the latest episode of Diary of a Song, where The Times breaks down the creation of today’s music, Swift reconstructs the writing and recording of “Lover,” which peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, using never-before-seen videos, cellphone recordings and interviews.
After writing “Lover” alone at a piano, late one night at her home in Nashville, Swift brought the song to her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff at a studio in New York, where they spent six hours one day building the final version. Antonoff and Swift produced “Lover” with studio help from the recording engineer Laura Sisk, moving it from piano to guitar — adding a Paul McCartney-inspired bass line and a wedding-themed bridge — in hopes of capturing what Swift called “a timeless, smoky sort-of moment between two people.”
