Has Taylor Really Forgotten? “I Forgot That You Existed” Meaning

I Forgot That You Existed is a symbolic song that closes Taylor Swift’s reputation era and opens the Lover era. 

The song describes her indifference over a past grudge, metaphorically closing that chapter on her past and writing a new storybook that stretches into the future. 

But what is Taylor really saying in this song? Is she truly over the drama like she describes in the lyrics, or is writing this song still adding fuel to the fire? 

Here’s my complete English teacher analysis of the I Forgot That You Existed meaning, line by line. 

I Forgot That You Existed by Taylor Swift

• Title: I Forgot That You Existed 
• Written by: Ging, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift,
• Track: 1, Lover
• Pen: Glitter Gel Pen
• Lyrics from Genius

I Forgot That You Existed Lyrics Meaning: Narrative Summary

• Setting: In the present looking back at past dramas. 
• Characters: Narrator (Taylor), Subject (“you”, whom she ‘forgets existed’) 
• Mood: Shrugging. 
• Conflict: An incident where Taylor saw the subject’s true colors. 
• Inciting Incident: “something happened one magical night”
• Quest: Bury this incident and move on once and for all. 
• Symbols & Metaphors: Memory: remembering vs. forgetting, shade vs. sunshine, “schoolyard,” “whole town,” “front row” at their “show”. 
• Theme: Indifference. 
• Imagery: “Lived in the shade you were throwing”, “Your name on my lips, tongue-tied”, “Laughed on the school yard / As soon as I tripped up and hit the ground,” “Got out some popcorn / As soon as my rep started going down.” 
• Lesson: Time may not heal, but it can help you forget. 

I Forgot That You Existed Audio

What is I Forgot That You Existed  About? 

I Forgot That You Existed is the first track in Taylor’s Lover era, and symbolically closes the reputation era. 

It describes how Taylor moved on from past grudges and has “forgotten” about past beefs. 

She said that choosing this as track one was important: 

“…In picking the first song and writing the first song on this album, I wanted to complete the cycle of grieving, almost, and the cycle of when you go through some drama or some frustrating stuff in your life where a relationship ends, or you’re going through this turmoil in your life, there’s all these phases you through.

And then, when you’re really done with it, you hit indifference. The actual definition of getting over something is a shrug.”

– I Heart Radio Lover Album Release 

Who is I Forgot That You Existed About? 

As it metaphorically closes the drama of the reputation album, it’s likely about the KimYe scandals that damaged Taylor’s career and mental health. 

These events were often the subject of songs on reputation, including Look What You Made Me Do and This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. 

I Forgot That You Existed Meaning: Line by Line

First Verse Summary: I used to think about how you betrayed me all the time; it was my constant obsession. 

The first verse of the first Lover song opens with Taylor looking back on her past.

“How many days,” she asks herself, “did I spend thinking ‘bout how you did me wrong?” She’s saying she’s wasted a lot of time on this drama. 

“Lived in the shade you were throwing,” she says, “‘til all of my sunshine was gone.” Here, she uses “shade” – someone daying defamatory things – as part of a metaphor.

She metaphorically “lives” in their “shade,” which blocks out all of the sun from her world. Her whole world was darkened by this drama. 

“I couldn’t get away from ya,” she says: no matter how she tried, the drama followed her. “In my feelings more than Drake, so yeah” compares her constant rumination to the Drake song In My Feelings. 

“Your name on my lips” means that she often spoke of them and what they did to her, but “tongue-tied” means that all this constant obsession over them had her baffled. She didn’t know how to vocalize what the turmoil had done to her. But she does now.

They were there with “free rent, living in my mind,” she says. They took up all of her mental capacity, and all for free – she gained nothing from it. 

Pre-Chorus & Chorus: “Something Happened One Magical Night” 

Pre-Chorus & Chorus Summary: Something changed, and I got over it and stopped thinking about you at all. 

The chorus describes how she got over it. “Then something happened one magical night,” she says. “I forgot that you existed.” 

She simply stopped thinking about it. Something changed, and it no longer caused a constant thought spiral. What was the “magical” thing? I think we’ll find out later in the album. 

“I thought it would kill me but it didn’t” means that she was living for this obsessive grudge, and to let go of it would have metaphorically killed her. But it didn’t. 

“And it was so nice,” she says, “so peaceful and quiet.” All the chatter in her brain about this person has stopped, and her world is now peacefully silent. 

She forgot about them, but not in a hateful way: “it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference.” 

She’s neutral about it now, no longer hating them. She certainly doesn’t love them – that will never happen – but she can now just shrug it off. 

“I forgot that you…” ends abruptly without the words “you existed,” which is the perfect irony. She’s forgotten them so much that she can’t even say the words.

The words “you existed” don’t exist at the end of the chorus. 

Verse 2: “ I Would’ve Stuck Around For Ya”

Second Verse Summary: You laughed at me when I was already fragile, and I used to defend you. 

Verse two gives us a bit more exposition about how this whole drama went down. This person “got out some popcorn as soon as my rep started going down.” They were enjoying it, like a movie or a party. 

“Laughed at the school yard as soon as I tripped up and hit the ground” compares the celebrity world to a schoolyard. They’re another ‘kid’ picking on Taylor, laughing at her misfortunes. She’s metaphorically fallen to the ground – her reputation is now ‘on the floor,’ ready to be trampled on. 

This hurt so much because Taylor backed this person previously. “I would’ve stuck around for ya,” she says. She wouldn’t have left them lying on the ground as they did to Taylor. 

She really supported this person, described by “I would’ve fought the whole town for ya.” This metaphor changes the schoolyard to a town. What’s the “whole town”? Likely the same as the schoolyard: the world of celebrity and gossip. 

She would’ve “fought” for this person, and cheered them on even when no one else did. She would have come to their metaphorical “show” and sat in the “front row.” Even in an empty auditorium, Taylor would have been there as their biggest fan. 

Pre-Chorus & Chorus: “You Showed Who You Are” 

“But you showed who you are, then one magical night”

-Taylor Swift, “I Forgot That You Existed”

[Pre-Chorus]

Pre-Chorus & Chorus Summary: I found out who you truly are, and now you’re not in my life or in my mind anymore. 

In the second pre-chorus, something different happened on the “magical night”: they showed their true colors. “You showed who you are,” she says. She got to see the real them; they revealed themselves, warts and all. And it was mostly warts. 

The chorus repeats, where Taylor forgets about them even though they’ve revealed themselves to be a despicable person. 

Bridge: “Taught Me Some Hard Lessons, I Just Forget What They Were”

Bridge Summary: I learned a lot from this situation with you, but I don’t care enough about you to remember them. 

The bridge details more about what went down and how she got over it. 

They “send me a clear message,” she says. The message was who they really are, and that they really aren’t her friend. 

“Taught me some hard lessons,” she says, but “I forgot what they were.” This is satire: Taylor has not forgotten the lessons. She just doesn’t care enough about the person to remember even the lessons they taught her. 

“It’s all just a blur” means that this period in time is now a hazy memory, where she can’t recall specific details. 

This, too, is satire: she’s emphasizing just how much she’s forgotten this person, but in her emphasis, points out how much she truly remembers. 

Final Chorus: “I Did, I Did, I Did”

Final Chorus Summary: The whole situation is over, and I just don’t care anymore. 

The final chorus adds one line: “I did, I did, I did.” Why is she emphasizing that in the past she forgot? It’s rumination. At one point in time, she forgot about this whole situation. 

But the writing of the song itself is remembrance. It’s not “I forget,” it’s “I forgot.” 

Taylor still remembers, all too well. 

I Forgot That You Existed Song Meaning: Final Thoughts 

This song was supposed to metaphorically close the book on past dramas.

But as she opens her new album with a rehash of the past, all it does is bring it to the front of our minds and drag the past into the present. 

Is this a mistake? No. Taylor does everything deliberately. 

So what does I Forgot That You Existed really mean? That she didn’t forget at all. It’s still very, very fresh in her mind. 

We haven’t heard the last of this, and Taylor will never remember to forget. 

More Songs From Lover

• Lover Prologue: What It Says vs. What It Means
• Cruel Summer
• Lover
• The Man
• The Archer
• I Think He Knows
• Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince
• Paper Rings
• Cornelia Street
• Death by a Thousand Cuts
• London Boy
• Soon You’ll Get Better
• False God
• You Need to Calm Down
• Afterglow
• It’s Nice to Have a Friend
• Daylight