“The Way I Loved You” by Taylor Swift

Taylor may often play the victim as far as her songs go that are centered on romance, but sometimes she can be a bit naughty also.  And such is the case, to some degree, with “The Way I Loved You”.

The narrative is premised on her currently being with the ideal dude, one that makes her “single friends… jealous” that she has him. It’s as if he’s from the days of old, being chivalrous enough to open the door for her when she is entering his car for instance.

He also knows all the right things to say and appears to be genuinely sensitive. He’s cool with both of the singer’s parents, with them apparently feeling likewise about him. Moreover he’s punctual and is not the type of dude who invades her space. Additional adjectives used to describe him include “charming”, “endearing”, “sensible” and “so incredible”.

Or simply put it’s like he’s the perfect man. And yes, the vocalist herself is quite “comfortable” in this relationship.

The Caveat

But now comes the caveat, if you will. At some point prior to hooking up with him, she rather dated some type of unhinged bad boy. And she liked it.

No, you may not know this by bearing witness to one of the many screaming matches they’ve had, which can occur at basically anytime, anywhere. But those conflicts, him ‘acting insane’, etc. gave her an adrenaline rush, so to speak. To her they were a manifestation of his love, and vice versa. Or perhaps boiling it down to layman’s terms, she had grown accustomed to the discontent but still loved dude nonetheless.

A Loveless Relationship?

So now she finds herself, at least from her perspective, in a loveless relationship. And again, this isn’t the fault of her current partner, as there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him in the least.

His only fault, if you want to put it that way, is that he’s not like the other guy. Or more specifically he is not the other guy. For in the aftermath of her previous relationship dissolving, it’s like now Taylor has come to realize that her wild and crazy ex was actually the one.

And that’s why at the beginning of this post we defined the singer’s present-day romance as the premise of this song, not even its actual subject. For as far as the thesis sentiment goes, that would be the fact that the singer is still in love with her ex. Whether she is currently dating someone or not, she would still have feelings for him.

But now being with someone different, (ideal even) has shown her just how much she does in fact miss him. For as the title is meant to suggest, she loved him in a special kind of way that can’t be replicated with anybody else.

Quick Facts about “The Way I Loved You”

This is the 10^th track on the playlist of “Fearless”, the Taylor Swift album that originally came out on 11 November 2008.

And it is the only song on the project that Swift wrote alongside John Rich, a country singer from Texas.

She conceptualized the storyline and title and brought it to Rich, someone she had been interested in working with, with the two of them then fleshing it out. And for the record this song is completely fictional, i.e. not a reflection of Taylor Swift’s true-to-life romantic background.

Taylor Swift also produced the track, accomplishing that feat alongside Nathan Chapman.

“The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)”

The year 2019 saw Taylor getting into a major tiff with Big Machine Records, the label that originally put this song out. In fact Big Machine was instrumental in launching Tay Tay’s career, being the label behind her first six studio albums.

And everything was all gravy until, in the aforementioned year, they decided to sell the masters from those albums to Ithaca Holdings, a company run by Scooter Braun.

On top of requesting to purchase the masters herself and being denied, it’s also as if Taylor Swift really doesn’t like Scooter Braun. Braun is a music-related businessman who is primarily known for being Justin Bieber’s manager.

So as a result, she decided to re-record all six of those albums herself and re-release them under her current label (as at 2019), Republic Records, where she is afforded more ownership rights. And the first album she re-recorded was “Fearless”, which was actually her second under Big Machine.

So that means if you were to, say, go to iTunes for instance and look up “The Way I Loved You by Taylor Swift”, there’s going to be two different yet official versions of the song available. The first, as dropped in 2008, would simply be entitled “The Way I Loved You”. But the re-recorded edition would rather be entitled “The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)”.

It should be noted that both versions contain the same lyrics.