How Taylor Swift Uses Storytelling to Make us Feel Everything

No single artist of the last few decades has had as much widespread success as Taylor Swift. No one’s fanbase is bigger or more loyal, no one’s songs are more popular, and no one else can make us feel such unfiltered joy and cathartic sorrow in the same single moment.

But why? Why has this single singer-songwriter captured a generation, and how has she tapped into the human experience so successfully? Why do we relate to her when her life of celebrity is, inherently, unrelatable?

The answer is quite simple: it’s because of storytelling.

Cover image for Swiftly Sung Stories' lesson: "How Taylor Swift Uses Storytelling to Make Us Feel Everything." A black classroom chalkboard features an open notebook and quill pen.

Taylor Swift isn’t just a prolific singer-songwriter, she’s a master storyteller. Almost everything she creates uses narrative storytelling to draw us in and immerse us in her world, which then becomes our world.

But how, exactly, does she do it?

Let’s go through how Taylor uses narrative structure, vivid imagery, point of view, and other storytelling devices to create unforgettable songs, and how you can use these things to make your writing come alive, too.

🍎 This is Lesson 4 in my 9-part series: Taylor Swift 101 🍎

What is Narrative Storytelling?

Classroom chalkboard graphic illustrates the differences between narrative and storytelling. On the left, a chalk timeline explains narrative: a series of events that happen. On the right, a chalk circle of arrows explain storytelling: both the series of events that happened, and the emotions that you felt during those events, and the lessons you learned from the events. Part of Swiftly Sung Stories' lesson on Taylor Swift's storytelling secrets.

Writers and critics often praise Taylor Swift as a “narrative storyteller.” But what does that actually mean?

In simple terms, a narrative is the sequence of events that happen in a story, while storytelling is how those events are communicated.

Narrative storytelling, then, is the art of telling a story with a clear sequence: this happened, then that happened, and this is how it ended.

Taylor’s genius lies in how she approaches both the narrative (the events themselves), and the storytelling (the way she presents them).

But you don’t have to be Taylor Swift to be a narrative storyteller. In fact, you already are.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Narrative storytelling isn’t just for writers; it’s how humans naturally make sense of the world. We link events together to find meaning, and we build stories around those events to understand our experiences.

Take a simple example: imagine you once missed a train and spent hours cold, hungry, and disconnected while you waited for the next one. After that, you always arrive early to stations, airports, and meetings.

Classroom chalkboard depiction comparing narrative vs. storytelling. On the left, a timeline illustrates a narrative: you were running late, missed your train, phone died, etc. On the right is the story you tell yourself about the narrative: being late means you'll be miserable, and being on time will mean you stay comfortable. Part of Swiftly Sung Stories' lesson on Taylor Swift's storytelling secrets.

The narrative is: you missed your train, you were miserable.

The story you tell yourself is: being late leads to suffering; being early brings comfort.

The events are what happened, and the story is how you interpret those events – the emotions you felt, the lessons you learned. Combine both, and you create a complete emotional picture.

This is exactly what Taylor does. She takes small, specific events – a scarf left behind after a breakup, a partner not showing up to a birthday party – and spins them into emotional, vivid narratives we can all feel.

✏️ Exercise: Think of a significant event that happened to you recently. Recount the events in order, then tell the story to yourself, or to a friend. What’s the narrative, and what’s the story?

Taylor’s Version of Narrative Storytelling

Taylor builds her songs around real experiences – heartbreaks, triumphs, moments of vulnerability – and crafts complete narrative arcs from them.

Take All Too Well (10-Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version). She doesn’t just say, “I loved him, we broke up, and now I’m sad.” It would be a pretty ineffective story if she only said that!

Instead, she walks us through the entire journey: how it began, the warmth of early romance, the subtle cracks forming, the devastating unraveling, and the lingering memories, symbolized by the infamous scarf.

Classroom chalkboard graphic illustrates a the narrative storytelling structure that Taylor Swift uses, represented by a roller coaster ride. In the beginning, the roller coaster starts climbing, giving backstory, introducing characters, and explaining the central conflict. In the middle, the roller coaster continues inching toward the peak, with escalating conflict, rising emotions, and more exposition. In the end, the roller coaster enters free fall, with an emotional climax, resolution, and lessons learned. Part of Swiftly Sung Stories' lesson on Taylor's storytelling secrets. — A basic 3-act structure helps Taylor create narratives that we can really relate to.

She uses classic storytelling structure: building characters, escalating conflict, heightening tension, and landing with an emotional climax. Her stories always have a beginning, middle, and end, which gives us the complete picture for maximum emotional impact.

But she doesn’t simply recount events. She immerses us in the story, using setting, dialogue, imagery, metaphor, and symbolism to create a vivid emotional landscape.

Before the All Too Well short film ever existed, the song itself already felt cinematic. Taylor zooms in on specific memories – walking through the door, dancing in the kitchen light – and zooms out to reflect on what they mean now, after the love has faded.

This technique pulls us inside the story. We’re there, standing on the stairs, feeling the chill of autumn, basking in the refrigerator light. We’re there when love leaves, and heartbreak settles in.

That’s Taylor’s superpower: taking small, personal moments and painting them so richly that we see ourselves in them.

In the end, what she gives us isn’t just a story; it’s an emotion we recognize in our own hearts.

✏️ Exercise: Think of a Taylor Swift song that has a clear beginning, middle, and end (like Love Story, the last great american dynasty, I Knew You Were Trouble, etc).

How does the story begin? What happens in the middle? How does it end?

Storytelling Devices in Taylor’s Songs: How She Builds Worlds

Classroom chalkboard graphic illustrating Taylor Swift's Storytelling tools. Six graphic posters mounted to the chalkboard display graphic representations of point of view, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, simile and anecdote.

Taylor doesn’t just relay a series of events: she creates a world in which these events happen.

Every writer lives by the commandment of show, don’t tell. This means that in our writing, we should use descriptive language instead of saying things outright. Taylor does this particularly cleverly, using vivid language and details to evoke emotion without labeling the emotion itself.

Here are some of the most important storytelling devices she uses to draw us into her narrative world and feel all the feelings, and how you can use them, too.

To make her narratives even more powerful, Taylor leans on a variety of literary tools. Let’s explore some of the most significant devices.

Point of View 👀

Taylor usually narrates her stories from a first-person perspective, using “I” instead of the third-person “she”. Using this point of view takes away any distance between herself and the story, allowing the audience to be drawn in more easily.

Even in stories she has explicitly told us are fiction (like the folklore triangle of betty, august, and cardigan), she still uses first person, and this is intentional.

This works well for her, as one of the big draws of Taylor Swift’s music is Taylor Swift herself. We think we know her (we don’t), and a lot of it comes down to this use of point of view. We assume all of her songs are about her, which builds intrigue and fosters a relationship with her audience.

It’s much easier to connect emotionally to a person telling a story about themselves, versus a person telling a story about someone else whom you don’t know.

Examples:

In Delicate, Taylor sings: “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.” The song wouldn’t be nearly as relatable if it were: “her reputation’s never been worse, so you must like her for her.” It would add a layer of distance between the narrator and the story.
betty, which Taylor has told us is about a trio of fictional characters, says, “I’m only seventeen, I don’t know anythin’.” Taylor is obviously not 17, and she knows quite a lot about life and love. But what allows us to really connect to this song is her narration as if it’s from her perspective.
The Last Great American Dynasty begins in third person: “Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train.” But by the end, it’s from Taylor’s point of view in first person, and we learn that she’s deliberately drawing parallels between Rebekah and herself. Had she not drawn that parallel, and brought the story back to herself, it’s unlikely this song would be as emotionally impactful.

✏️ Exercise: Read the lyrics to Love Story, replacing “I” with “she”, and “you” with “he.”

How does the meaning and emotional impact of the song change? Does it feel different when not told from the first person point of view?

Imagery 🍁🍂

Imagery is simply descriptive language that conjures an image in our mind, and it’s one of the most significant tools Taylor uses to invoke emotions. When you think of a Taylor song, there are likely specific images that pop into your mind, and that’s very purposeful.

Taylor uses imagery tactfully. She doesn’t just say, “it was autumn and the leaves were falling down.” Instead, she says, “autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place.”

This paints a cozy portrait that makes everything seem perfect, which serves to contrast with the devastation that comes later in All Too Well. This simple line makes the joy seem more joyful, and makes the heartbreak feel more gut-wrenching.

Here are some more examples of Taylor’s incredible use of imagery, which all serve one purpose: to make us feel.

In Speak Now, instead of saying, ‘a wedding,’ she describes it as “a white veil occasion.”
In Teardrops on My Guitar, instead of saying, ‘he made me cry,’ she says, “he’s the reason for the teardrops on my guitar.”
In But Daddy I Love Him, instead of saying ‘I’m carefree now,’ she says, “I’m runnin’ with my dress unbuttoned”.
In You’re On Your Own, Kid, instead of saying ‘a long time passed and I grew up’, she says, “From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes.”
In right where you left me, instead of saying ‘I feel stuck,’ she says, “Dust collected on my pinned-up hair”.
In Dress, instead of saying ‘you’ve made quite an impression on me’, she says, “there’s an indentation, in the shape of you.”
In You Are in Love, instead of saying, ‘now you guys spend weekends together,’ she says, “Morning, his place, burnt toast, Sunday.”

✏️ Exercise: Think of a Taylor Swift song that makes you particularly emotional. What imagery pops into your head when you hear it? Are there any particular lyrics that conjure specific imagery? What does that imagery feel like, and what emotion does it evoke?

Symbolism 🪞

Symbolism is repeatedly using an image, an object, or an idea to represent a big idea or emotion. This adds depth and complexity, which helps to convey Taylor’s emotions in her lyrics.

The classic example is the scarf in All Too Well, which symbolizes the memory of their relationship, and the only evidence that it actually happened now that it’s over. He can try to erase her, but he can’t wipe her from his memory completely, because he still has that scarf.

Here are some more examples of howTaylor uses symbolism:

In Tim McGraw, the country singer symbolizes the memory of their relationship, the good times they’ve spent together, and the love they share.
In Red, the color symbolizes intense feelings of romance and infatuation.
In Getaway Car, the car symbolizes serial monogamy: running away from a relationship by hopping straight into a new one.
In Cornelia Street, the street symbolizes their love and their relationship. “I’d never walk Cornelia Street again” means ‘I’d never find love again if I lost you.’
In Maroon, the deep red color symbolizes intense passion and regret.

✏️ Exercise: Think of your favorite Taylor Swift music video. Is there any recurring symbolism? If so, what is the symbol, and what do you believe it represents? (This is not an exact science, and there are no wrong answers!)

Metaphor 🪩

A metaphor describes something by calling it something else. “You’re a rockstar,” for example, means that you’re really doing great at whatever you’re doing.

The difference between a metaphor and a symbol is sometimes tricky to distinguish, and it can sometimes be both – it’s not an exact science! But symbols are usually used repeatedly to represent a big idea or feeling, while a metaphor is usually on a sentence level to convey a single meaning.

Taylor loves using metaphors to convey emotion, and she does it brilliantly. Here are some examples:

“The rubies that I gave up” in Maroon are a metaphor for something valuable that the speaker sacrificed. She hasn’t just lost something inconsequential – she’s lost something significant.
“In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you,” in evermore, the cracks of light are a metaphor for hope. It helps us imagine our speaker in a dark emotional place, slowly moving into a brighter frame of mind.
“I’m an Aston Martin you drove straight into a ditch” in imgonnagetyouback uses the luxury car as a metaphor for the speaker’s innate value and worth, and the crash is a metaphor for how he ruined her emotionally.
In “My house of stone, your ivy grows, and now I’m covered in you” from ivy, the invasive plant is a metaphor for the subject’s increasing grasp on the speaker’s heart and soul. The “house of stone” is a metaphor for an impenetrable heart, which has been made cold and hard by past heartbreaks.

✏️ Exercise: Think of a favorite pet or person in your life . How could you describe them using a metaphor? (For instance, I often call my cat a loaf of bread).

Does the metaphor evoke more emotion than their name? Does it change how you think of them?

Simile

A simile uses “like” or “as” to compare two things. “You’re like a rock”, for example, compares you to a rock that is sturdy and impenetrable.

Taylor uses similes to evoke emotion and draw us into her narrative world. Here are some examples:

In Breathe, the “Music starts playing like the end of a sad movie”. This paints the picture of credits rolling, with the score swelling over this sad, devastating ending of a relationship.
In Mean, “You, with your words like knives” compares the subject’s words to weapons, which have wounded our speaker deeply.
In imgonnagetyouback, the “Lilac short skirt, the one that fits me like skin” describes a tight-fitting skirt as “skin”. This conjures a sexy, confident vibe.
In Cruel Summer, “I cried like a baby” compares her emotional state to that of an infant: she’s vulnerable and delicate.

✏️ Exercise: Identify another Taylor simile. Replace the comparison word with a different word. How does it change the meaning? Why do you think Taylor chose this particular simile?

Anecdote

An anecdote is simply a short story about something someone did, but it has to have a point or a lesson.

Taylor often inserts these mini-snapshots into her lyrics to make it more relatable, or to help us understand why she feels the way she feels. These smaller stories also help us to feel like we’re getting an inside look at her real life, and real things that have happened.

Here are some of the best examples:

“You said if we had been closer in age, maybe it would’ve been fine, and that made me want to die” in All Too Well (the 10-Minute Version, which is chock-full of anecdotes). This small snapshot of a conversation, and words that he said, show us how belittled she felt, and how careless the subject really is.
In We Are Never Getting Back Together, Taylor pulls in a small anecdote about a phone call: “Ugh, so he calls me up and he’s like, “I still love you”, snd I’m like, “I just, I mean, this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together, like, ever”. This shows her frustration over his behavior, and helps us see why they’re “never, ever, ever getting back together.”
In The Tortured Poets Department, she tells us about this small moment: “at dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that was the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding.” She’s so head-over-heels for this person that even the idea of marriage makes her heart explode.

✏️ Exercise: Tell yourself an anecdote about something frustrating that happened in your life, or in your friends’ lives, in the past few weeks.

What lessons did you/they learn? What emotions did you/they feel? What does this illustrate about you or them?

Character Development in Taylor’s Songs

Taylor has a knack for building complex, deep characters in only a few lines. We immediately relate, we feel their feelings, and we’re a passenger on their emotional rollercoaster.

‘But that’s easy,’ you may be saying, ‘because the main character is always her, and we already know her and her life story.’ Not true!

One of Taylor’s signatures is her autobiographical songwriting, but we can’t assume that every song she sings is from her perspective. She’s writing lyrics, not non-fiction.

The one thing that is true throughout all of her songs, however, is that they stem from real emotions. English professors will tell you to write what you know, but that doesn’t mean you have to experience a situation to write a narrative about it. It means to use your real, experienced emotions to fuel your stories.

Taylor’s characters are experiencing loss, big changes, insecurities, heartbreak, self-doubt, triumphs, deep love, regret, and rumination. You’ve experienced all those things, too, which is what makes it relatable.

We can’t directly relate to Taylor Swift, with her private jet, massive mansions, celebrity friends, and billions of dollars. But we can relate to her feelings of vulnerability, grief, anger, being scared, feeling empowered, and losing love.

These are the universal emotions she uses to build her characters, brick by brick, and why they feel so much like us.

Here’s exactly how she does it.

Classroom chalkboard graphic explaining Taylor Swift's use of character development in her storytelling. Three posters illustrate the most important ways Taylor develops characters: using backstory, which gives us crucial context, writing deep and complex characters, which helps them resonate with our own human experience, and writing character arcs, in which her characters grow and change, making them more real and relatable. Part of Swiftly Sung Stories' lesson on Taylor Swift's storytelling secrets.

Backstory

Taylor usually begins her narratives with crucial backstory. This helps us imagine her characters and what they’re going through.

We get to see how this entire conflict began, and we’re therefore invested in how it ends for our central characters.

Examples:

Begin Again starts with: “Took a deep breath in the mirror / He didn’t like it when I wore high heels / But I do.” We see that our speaker is nervous, illustrated by the deep breath, and we also learn why: she’s just come out of a controlling relationship. Will she find love again? Will she trust again?
this is me trying begins: “I’ve been having a hard time adjusting / I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting.” Our speaker is in a very rough emotional space. Their once brilliant life, compared to shiny car wheels, is now stagnant and rusted. This leaves us invested: will they get to a more stable place? Will they be okay?

✏️ Exercise: Begin reading the lyrics to the last great american dynasty at the 2nd verse: “Rebekah gave up on the Rhode Island set forever.”

Pretend the first verse and chorus don’t exist. Without Rebekah’s backstory, how do you feel about her now? Does the meaning of the song change?

Depth & Complexity

Taylor has a way of painting complete characters with very few words. Her central characters have goals, dreams, flaws, motivations, and challenges they need to overcome. This helps us to really imagine them, root for them, and feel the emotions they’re feeling.

Examples:

In Dear John, both the speaker and the subject are fully fleshed out. The speaker isn’t just a young girl who fell for a manipulative older man: she’s also optimistic but in denial, blames herself for falling for him, ignored important advice, and finally finds the courage to take a stand. The subject, John, is older but not more mature, is mercurial, holds grudges, gives empty apologies, and has a pattern of seducing and manipulating young girls.
In Ours, the speaker is self-aware: no one likes her boyfriend. She can list all of his red flags, but ignores them, insisting that “people throw rocks at things that shine.” We can see her delusion, but she’s hard-headed: this love is right.

✏️ Exercise: Read the lyrics to I Can Fix Him (No, Really, I Can). How does Taylor portray the subject? What makes this mess of a person deep and complex?

Character Arcs

Throughout the length of a song, Taylor shows us how her characters grow and change. Through their responses to the central conflict, we get to see how they’ve evolved.

This makes them dynamic, reflecting how people are in real life, and helps to see ourselves within her characters.

Examples:

In Blank Space, our speaker begins as an all-powerful, confident temptress, who could “show you incredible things” and “make the bad guys good for the weekend”. But as the narrative goes on, she slowly devolves into “Screaming, crying, perfect storms” and a “rose garden filled with thorns.” We finally learn that her worldview (though this song is satire) is “boys only want love if it’s torture.”
Never Grow Up narrates a complete character arc, with the speaker talking to her younger self as the subject. In act one, the subject is innocent, where “everything’s funny” and “you’ve got nothing to regret.” In the second act, she’s grown into a petulant teenager who is embarrassed by her mom, wanting nothing more than to be independent. In the third act, she’s being dropped off to live on her own for the first time. She learns what it’s like to be without the comforts of home and family, and realizes that growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be.

✏️ Exercise: Read the lyrics to Clean. How does the narrator grow and change from the beginning of the song to the end? Where does she begin, and where does she land?

Why Taylor’s Stories Resonate

We haven’t lived Taylor’s life. We haven’t had very public heartbreaks, bought a historic Rhode Island mansion, or had our first Grammy’s moment stolen by Kanye. So why do we relate to her music so much?

It’s because of how she tells her stories. She takes one central emotion that she’s felt, then builds an illustrative narrative around it to help us feel exactly how it happened.

Using a simple narrative structure, she builds her stories brick by brick. She introduces her characters, gives us their backstories, and makes them come alive with relatable conflicts and desires. We become invested, because we see ourselves in them.

She uses storytelling devices like imagery, metaphor and anecdotes to paint a picture of what this story feels like. We’re further drawn in, because we’re in that moment with her, with “autumn leaves falling down” or “weeping in a sunlit room.”

She illustrates how her characters grow and change, which brings them to life, and helps us see ourselves within them. We identify with them and we root for them, because we are them.

Taylor’s storytelling brilliance isn’t mysterious or hard to crack. What’s mysterious is how she became so good so quickly! But you can use the same methods to make your stories resonate, too.

In the end, whether she’s telling the story of a lost scarf, a missed birthday party, or a crumbling romance, Taylor Swift reminds us that the stories we tell — and the way we tell them — are what make us human.

✏️ Final Exercise: Pick an emotion you’ve felt (joy, anger, resentment, or anything else), and tell the story of how you came to feel that emotion. What happened, who was there, and what did it feel like? What lessons did you learn?

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ Next Lesson: Taylor’s Signature Songwriting Style & What Makes it Effective