Before we were trading friendship bracelets at the Eras tour, before we were all having a Cruel Summer, before everyone was shouting, “Look What You Made Me Do!” we were Shaking It Off. It’s hard to believe, but icon Taylor Swift’s definitive foray into pop came out a decade ago today.
We’re celebrating with an exclusive excerpt from a new book about the stories behind some of our favorite songs, Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs by Annie Zeleski, coming from Thunder Bay Press on Sept. 24.
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The book follows the incomparable Swift from her humble beginnings as a teenage country singer to her record-breaking Eras Tour for “a comprehensive review of her entire songbook to date, covering all 11 studio albums and more than 200 songs that tell a dramatic story of life, love and triumph,” according to the book’s official description.
Read on to learn more about the story behind “Shake it Off.”
Swift’s second No. 1 pop hit was “Shake It Off” – and, as the title implies, it’s a song about ignoring jerks and haters and living your best life without worrying about what people might think. “I’ve had every part of my life dissected – my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music,” Swift explained. “When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it.”
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Her response to weathering such blows? Why, to shake them off, of course. On the songwriting front, Swift compared “Shake It Off” to 2010’s “Mean” – but noted she had a different, much more mature outlook thanks to the benefit of experience. “[On ‘Mean’] I said, ‘Why you gotta be so mean?’ from kind of a victimized perspective, which is how we all approach bullying or gossip when it happens to us for the first time,” she said. “But in the last few years I’ve gotten better at just kind of laughing of things that absolutely have no bearing on my real life.”
Although Swift had her lyrical ideas dialed in, the music was another story, and she headed into the studio with no melody and knowing only the “vibe” she was going for. “The second the song starts, I want it to be the song where, like, if it’s played at a wedding – and there’s this one girl who hasn’t danced all night at the reception – all her friends come over to her and they’re like, ‘You have to dance! Come on! You have to dance on this one!’”
Working with Max Martin and Shellback, Swift eventually coaxed her vision to life and wrote one of her brightest and cheeriest songs yet. Among other features is a bridge that feels like a sing-songy chant someone might do while jump-roping or playing another playground game, complete with cheeky mentions of exes and a man with great hair.
Thunder Bay Press
Throughout “Shake It Off” there’s a stomping sound that Shellback and Swift created by banging their feet in unison on a wooden floor. And Martin also used a mellotron to come up with a horn sound – an element Swift had always resisted – that became a prominent part of the music after it was re-recorded with real saxophones and other horns.
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In the end, “Shake It Off” represented a fresh start for Swift – and she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’m very well aware of what everyone says about me – every single thing,” she said. “And the difference between now and three years ago is I honestly don’t care anymore. And life is much better that way.”
Excerpted from Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs by Annie Zaleski. Text copyright © 2024 Annie Zaleski. Published in the United States by Thunder Bay Press, an imprint of Printers Row Publishing Group.
Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs by Annie Zeleski, comes out from Thunder Bay Press on Sept. 24 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
