A Simple Name? “Everything Has Changed” Meaning
Everything Has Changed (Taylor’s Version) is a gorgeous duet about love at first sight.
With so much of the Red album in Taylor’s post-breakup breakdown, this song is a lighthearted and refreshing respite from the gloom.
But all is not what it seems; she’s still cautious after having her heart broken. What’s going on with her in this moment of instantaneous love (or lust)?
Here’s my full analysis of the Everything Has Changed meaning, line by line.
Everything Has Changed (Taylor’s Version)
- Title: Everything Has Changed (Taylor’s Version)
- Track: 14, Red (Taylor’s Version)
- Written By: Taylor Swift & Ed Sheeran
- Pen: fountain
- Secret Message: “Hyannis Port”
- Lyrics via Genius
Everything Has Changed Lyrics Meaning: Narrative Breakdown
- Setting: The day after the first time meeting a new love
- Characters: Narrator (Taylor), love interest (Ed Sheeran)
- Mood: Hopeful & brand new
- Conflict: It might not be real; it may be all in her mind
- Inciting Incident: Meeting this new person
- Quest: Get to know him better, cautiously
- Symbols & Metaphors: knowing, “a simple name,” “held the door,” “walls,” “butterflies”, “home,” change
- Theme: The world looks different through the eyes of new love
- Imagery: “green eyes and freckles and your smile,” “you held the door,” “your eyes look like comin’ homе,” “all my walls stood tall, painted blue,” “ all I feel in my stomach is butterflies / The beautiful kind”, “dust off your highest hopes”
Everything Has Changed (Taylor’s Version) Lyric Video
What was the Hidden Message for Everything Has Changed?
The hidden message for Everything Has Changed was “Hyannis Port,” which is the location of the famous Kennedy compound in Massachusetts.
Who is Everything Has Changed About?
It’s likely about Connor Kennedy, with whom Taylor had a brief romance with around the time of writing Red.
The song describes “green eyes and freckles,” which accurately describes Connor, as well as the hidden message “Hyannis Port” pointing at his family’s estate in Massachusetts.
What is Everything Has Changed About?
Everything Has Changed is about how love can change you in a split second. It’s the miraculous feeling that the world around you has gotten better simply because you’ve gotten better: you’ve found comfort.
Taylor explained: “It’s about this moment that both people are having where they see each other and, all of a sudden, the world looks different ‘cause everything changed.”
Everything Has Changed Meaning: Line by Line
Verse one opens with Taylor’s point of view. It’s the morning after she’s met this new person, and she’s thinking about what she knew yesterday vs. what she knows today.
“All I knew…is I know something now…I didn’t before.” This is playing with knowing vs. feeling.
Knowing that you know something is a bit of an oxymoron; either you know something or you don’t. But you can know that you feel something, and that’s what she’s really saying here: she’s certain she’s feeling something new and refreshing.
“All I’ve seen since eighteen hours ago” is his face in the back of her mind. She’s stuck on him, with his “green eyes and freckles and…smile” projected in her mind’s eye.
What emotion is this exactly? Infatuation.
🧣Do you really know Red? Try the Red TV Lyrics Quiz! 🧣
Pre-Chorus: “I Just Wanna Know You Better”
The chorus (sung by both) plays with different versions of “knowing,” both knowing vs. feeling and knowing vs. denial (“no”).
The cadence parses these phrases into three groups that mean totally different things.
- “I just wanna know you better” means exactly that – she wants to get to know him better.
- “You better know,” which means he’d better know what she’s feeling. It also implies that he’d better know how fragile she is before she gets in any deeper. It’s risky.
- “Know”, which when sung aloud, sounds exactly like “no.” What is she saying “no” to? “You.” She’s in denial that this is actually happening – it’s knowing vs. feeling.
The pre-chorus is audibly saying what her infatuated mind is thinking: going around in loops, thinking about him, thinking about thinking about him, and wondering where this is all going.
Chorus: “Your Eyes Look Like Comin’ Home”
The chorus is from both of their points of view. All they “know is we said ‘hello’” is describing love at first sight.
“Your eyes look like comin’ home” is both beautiful imagery, a simile (“eyes look like”, which actually means their eyes feel like home), and a metaphor (home as a place of belonging and acceptance).
“All I know is a simple name” could refer to the person’s name. They’ve just met, so all they know about each other is their name. But it could also refer to the “simple name” of calling it what it is: love. Or at least, love at first sight.
“Everything has changed” means that their entire outlook on life and love – including their past heartbreaks, trials and tribulations – has changed. Maybe this is the love that will make it all worth it in the end.
“All I know since yesterday” means they haven’t known this long; hardly long enough to really “know” anything. It means they feel like everything has changed.
Verse 2: “My Walls Stood Tall, Painted Blue”
Verse two begins with the male perspective, which contains an extended house metaphor.
“All my walls stood tall, painted blue” begins the metaphor of physical walls as emotional walls. If someone has walls up, it means they keep other people out (see previous uses of metaphorical walls in Enchanted and Story of Us).
The walls “painted blue” means that they’re tinged with heartbreak and loss (similar to the use of colors as emotions and blue as loss in Red).
But – he says – “I’ll take ‘em down…and open up the door for you.” He’ll dismantle the walls to let her in. He’ll even “open up the door” to this new love, welcoming it inside his house.
The female perspective uses a butterfly metaphor to describe this nervousness of starting something new. “All I fell in my stomach is butterflies,” she says, which represents the anxiety of taking down the walls and letting someone in.
But they’re not regular butterflies, they’re “the beautiful kind’, makin’ up for lost time / Takin’ flight”. This is a good kind of nervousness that could justify all the times you’ve felt lonely and heartbroken (“makin’ up for lost time”).
“Takin’ flight” symbolizes both their relationship taking off, and this exciting feeling of “flying.”
Bridge: “Come Back and Tell Me Why”
“Come back and tell me why” is urgent – they want to meet again. But what do they want to hear from each other? Why they’re “feelin’ like I’ve missed you all this time.”
This is both ironic – it’s only been eighteen hours – and symbolic of the “lost time” they’ve spent getting their hearts broken by others.
“Meet me there tonight” begs the question: where?
“All this time” is where they meet; they want to turn back the clock, turn back time, and replace their past relationships with this one.
“Let me know that it’s not all in my mind” is the central conflict: is this real? Did it really happen? Do they “know” this is for real, or are they just feeling that it might be real?
This is similar to the central conflict of All Too Well, swirling around the themes of unreliable memory, denial, and tangible evidence.
Final Chorus & Outro: “All My Days, I’ll Know Your Face”
In the outro, they tell one another to “dust off your highest hopes.” This references Holy Ground, where the lost love story had “dust on every page.”
They’re saying they can wipe the slate clean, and renew the hope for real love that was once done and dusted.
“All I know is a new found grace” means that they get a second chance; a do-over. Having grace means forgiving – forgiving your past, forgiving your partner, and giving grace to misunderstandings that might arise.
“All my days, I’ll know your face” means that even if this doesn’t work out, they will always remember this moment when they met, and the connection they shared.
“Everything has changed”, but the most important change reflected in the lyrics is her hope. Her optimism has risen from the grave, and for the first time in a long time, she believes in love again.
🧣Do you really know Red? Try the Red TV Lyrics Quiz! 🧣
Everything Has Changed Lyrics Meaning: Final Thoughts
We know that this relationship that Taylor likely wrote the song about didn’t last, but this song sees her rise from the metaphoric grave of heartbreak, and be open to loving again.
Even if she gets crushed again, she’s beginning to give “grace” to these moments of falling and feeling.
If Holy Ground has allowed her to look back on a relationship with fondness, Everything Has Changed sees her look forward to the wonderful things to come.
More From Red (Taylor’s Version)
- Red Prologues: Original vs. Taylor’s Version
- State of Grace
- Red
- Treacherous
- I Knew You Were Trouble
- All Too Well [10 Minute Version]
- 22
- I Almost Do
- We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
- Stay Stay Stay
- The Last Time
- Holy Ground
- Sad Beautiful Tragic
- The Lucky One
- Starlight
- Begin Again
- The Moment I Knew
- Come Back…Be Here
- Girl at Home
- Better Man [From the Vault]
- Nothing New [From the Vault]
- Babe [From the Vault]
- Message in a Bottle [From the Vault]
- I Bet You Think About Me [From the Vault]
- Forever Winter [From the Vault]
- Run [From the Vault]
- The Very First Night [From the Vault]
