Out of the Woods: 10 Details about the Taylor Swift Song

Taylor injects memories into her lyrics the same way they cross our minds: in pieces. Memories can come out of the blue or be prompted by an outside source, but they cross broken and powerful in the way they can ignite a fire in your gut. There are two personal "realities", the situation in front of you, and the one in your head, and they function together.

Taylor's latest album, 1989, is her expected merge into pop music. The sounds aren't going to be anything revolutionary, just catchy. Her lyrical ability crosses over well, and she is still the romantic storyteller.

Rumours are swirling, likely from her history of finding inspiration, that this song is about her short-lived relationship with One Direction's Harry Styles. Both these stars are watched by audiences from afar, and it's a para-social relationship similar to a film except that the fans fill in the blanks with their own stories and experiences. Taylor Swift's songs don't tell us the whole story, but the fact that it's a story told about someone alive and known, adds to the ongoing drama, and feeling of connection.

In a recent interview about this song, Taylor shed light on it's creation when she said she was aiming for the feeling of being in a new relationship. The beat of the song, the synth, and the lyrics fit perfectly into the memory montage she's trying to project. The chorus, with it's fast pace like a beating heart combined with racing thoughts, could fit into the mind of anyone in a doomed relationship.

Taylor is no stranger to the romantic pull. In an interview she stated that she wanted capture the "fragility and anxiety" of love and relationships. Our romantic ideology is strong in the tragedy, from Romeo and Juliet to The Fault in Our Stars, the stories of love that thread through our culture are about living in the moment because love can be gone in the next. This is why Taylor sings on specific romantic moments.

Lyrically, Taylor builds a scene in poetically broken sentences, leaving only the images that are important. We imagine her in her memories while she sings the song. She sings about the woods, a place of beauty if you have a trail to follow, or a place of confusion if you don't. She sings about "looking" at each other, a sign of acknowledgement, body language observation, and adoration when you're in love.

She uses specific symbols like his necklace hanging around her neck, and the use of a polaroid camera. All of these things carry meaning, some meaning we're not privy to, like how she felt while wearing his necklace. The polaroid camera is an excellent symbol for living in the moment. Instant pictures resist the duplication by the digital, promote the one-of-a-kind feeling, and are discreet. That may be exactly how she feels about her relationships.

The thing about moments is that they turn into experiences once we have time to reflect on them, when the heart slows down, and you're left with your thoughts and consequences. This song is all about reflection, she sings "looking at it now" right before the memory, and we know the time has come for her to piece the entire relationship together and make sense of it.

Taylor receives a ton of flack in the media because of her history in relationships. There's nothing wrong with the way she dates, no matter who, where, when, why, or how many. We are carved by the other, and relationships are a way of acknowledging that part of being human.

Taylor released "Into the Woods" on Itunes and Just Jared on Monday Oct. 13th 2014.