Taylor Swift's "Enchanted" Lyrics History Involves Owl City

May 04, 2024

When it comes to Taylor Swift's songs, “Enchanted” walked so “All Too Well” could run. The six-minute romance epic from her 2010 album Speak Now proved that Swift had the storytelling skills and gravitas to write her famous 10-minute breakup anthem for Red, which Rolling Stone named as one of its Best Songs of All Time. That said, “Enchanted” didn’t get its own moment in the sun until it experienced a TikTok resurgence in 2021. As a result, it was the only song from Speak Now to be given a permanent spot on the Eras Tour setlist, and “Enchanted (Taylor’s Version)” landed in the Billboard Top 20, giving the song new life. However, the lyrics have a surprising history and rumored inspiration behind them.

In a 2010 interview with Yahoo!, Swift explained that she wrote “Enchanted” after meeting someone in New York who captured her heart, expressing her hopes to continue a relationship. “I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you,’” she said. Even her use of the word “wonderstruck” in the chorus was a very intentional message. “That's a word which that person used one time in an e-mail,” she said. “So I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

That person is reportedly “Fireflies” singer Owl City, a.k.a. Adam Young. As custom with her music, Swift has never directly confirmed who “Enchanted” was written about, but the song’s secret message in the Speak Now booklet is simply “Adam.” Young got wind that it was reportedly about him and released a cover of “Enchanted” on his blog in response, infusing it with his auto-tuned touch.

Young kept most of Swift’s lyrics the same, but he did amend some to reflect his perspective on their almost-romance, like adding her first name to part of the chorus. In the outro, Young responded directly to Swift’s pleas in her iconic refrain, “Please don’t be in love with someone else, please don’t have somebody waiting on you,” by giving her an answer. “I was never in love with someone else, I never had somebody waiting on me,” he sang. “‘Cause you were all of my dreams come true, and I just wish you knew, Taylor, I was so in love with you.”

While Owl City’s cover affirmed that he also had strong feelings for Swift when they met, she never responded to his rendition, confirming that their relationship never continued beyond the song itself. Regardless, Young is proud to be the subject of one of Swift’s most underrated and unapologetically lovestruck songs. “I met Taylor in New York... she came to a show of mine back then and I got to meet her and I was a little bit starstruck,” he told Rappler in 2015. “And then lo and behold, she had written a song called ‘Enchanted’ that I kind of figured out was about me, which was really cool, really honored that someone would write something like that.”

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