I’ll Be the Princess: Romantic Narratives in “Today Was A Fairytale”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The fairytale fantasy is a theme that runs throughout Taylor Swift’s discography. In fact, one of her breakout hits, “Love Story,” incorporates this motif into its hook at the end of the chorus. Perhaps her most extensive use of this theme, however, is in “Today Was A Fairytale.” The sole writer on the song, Swift wrote it during the Fearless era and later suggested it for the soundtrack of Valentine’s Day, a movie where she and Taylor Lautner played a high school couple amongst an ensemble cast of love stories. In addition to being an appropriate song for today, it is a way into Swift’s exploration and evolving use of fairytale imagery.

Prince Charming

Lyrically, this song is not one of Swift’s most complex. She starts out by plainly stating the elements of her metaphor: “Today was a fairytale, you were the prince / I used to be a damsel in distress.” The titular opening lyric is repeated throughout the song—evidently, the metaphor is crucial to the speaker’s perception of events. The speaker is characterized as a young woman overcome with emotion at the prospect of a new romantic muse. The word “[t]oday” indicates that she is focusing on this microcosm of events as an entire “fairytale” while she reflects on her date. Swift’s use of the past tense throughout the song suggests that this one encounter is a full story in itself. The speaker idealizes the muse, imagining him as “the prince” she has always longed for. Her admission that she “used to be a damsel in distress” suggests that the “prince” has come and saved her from her fate, disrupting her life and routine in a positive manner.

These lyrics are echoed but with a pessimistic twist in “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.” The “prince” becomes “The Heartbreak Prince” and “the damsels are depressed” instead of “in distress,” a state from which they cannot easily be rescued. Swift’s reinterpretation of these concepts in that song retroactively gives “Today Was A Fairytale” a sense of childlike naivete.¹

Mundane and Magical

The speaker juxtaposes the fantastical concept with mundane details: “You took me by the hand and you picked me up at six” and “I wore a dress / You wore a dark gray T-shirt.” The date started off on time and according to plan, perhaps unlike her prior experiences that left her “in distress.” Despite his casual clothing, she still considers him a “prince,” noting the color of his “dark gray T-shirt.” The speaker similarly downplays her own appearance: “You told me I was pretty when I looked like a mess.” She insinuates that the muse thinks of her with the same unconditional awe as she does him, seeing her beauty regardless of the state she is in. Why she might look “like a mess” is unclear; what seems more plausible is that this is an indicator of the speaker’s insecurity, despite looking forward to the date. Swift similarly combines royalty with a disheveled appearance in “Long Live”: “for a moment, a band of thieves / In ripped up jeans got to rule the world.”

In the pre-chorus, Swift slows down the melodic rhythm to mimic the meaning of the lyrics: “Time slows down / Whenever you’re around.” The speaker finds a power in her attraction to the muse and with it an ability to manipulate her perceptions of time and reality. Swift slides the note down on the word “around,” simulating the bending of time with the melody. She leans into this surrealism in the chorus: “can you feel this magic in the air? / It must have been the way you kissed me / Fell in love when I saw you standing there.” The word “magic” appears throughout Swift’s discography, in the context of fairytales and otherwise, but here it is used as a direct appeal to the muse to see if he feels the same as the speaker. She reinterprets the phrase “love at first sight” but with added mundanity; the muse is simply “standing there.” He hasn’t gone above and beyond in any outstanding capacity. Rather, her own feelings are propelling her forward. For the speaker, love equates to “magic” equates to “fairytale”—it’s a hopeless romantic ideal. Their kiss was “magic,” the source of powerful emotion growing between them.

Picture Perfect

In the second verse, the speaker goes on about how perfect the muse is: “Today was a fairytale, you’ve got a smile / That takes me to another planet / Every move you make, everything you say is right.” Not only is their connection all-powerful and transformational, it is even transportational, beyond the limits of the “planet.” She is awe-struck by the simplicity of the muse’s beauty in his “smile.” The speaker’s insistence that everything about him is “right” reveals that he is following the script of her ideal story; he fits perfectly into the romantic narrative that she has always imagined for herself.

She finds meaning and a sense of self-understanding through her infatuation: “now it’s getting so much clearer / Nothing made sense ‘til the time I saw your face.” The speaker’s newfound sense of purpose in the excitement of her new feelings of attraction is slightly undermined by her vague language. “Nothing” and “it’s” are nondescript terms that firmly root this song in the exaggerated context of a teenager in love, which has a certain charm as a narrative concept but lacks some depth.

One More Chapter

The bridge starts off like the pre-chorus but is then extended (just like the effect of time being frozen): “Time slows down / Whenever you’re around / I can feel my heart / It’s beating in my chest / Did you feel it? / I can’t put this down.” The phrase “beating in my chest” is a simple and straightforward statement, but with the climactic melody arc it packs a real punch. The speaker creates a visceral image of being aware of her heartbeat in the context of love, a feeling that is physically overwhelming but in a positive way, as opposed to fear or anxiety. She displays vulnerability in asking the muse how he feels in return. Notably, this song directly addresses the muse, despite the content being more typical of how someone might gush about a crush to their friends. The speaker’s honesty characterizes her as both youthfully optimistic about love and possessing the emotional maturity for open communication of her feelings.

The final lyric of the bridge ties the whole concept of the song together again. As a phrase, “I can’t put this down” is associated with reading and wanting to find out what happens next in a story. The speaker’s date was a “fairytale,” a storybook that she can’t stop reading; she frames her own life as a narrative that keeps her on her toes.² For Swift, the fairytale as a lyrical conceit has changed shape over time. In her early songwriting, it frames the ideals and expectations of the “Love Story”: “You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess.” Despite that song invoking the Romeo and Juliet metaphor, these characters are not royalty. Rather, Swift imbued this narrative setting with her own idealization of fairytale imagery, rewriting the story so that it has a happy ending.

In later songs, Swift uses the concept of royalty to discuss triumphs and pitfalls in her career:

• “Long Live”: “How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you”

• “Castles Crumbling”: the opposite sentiment to “Long Live”

• “New Romantics”: “I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me”

• “hoax”: “My kingdom come undone”

In “Blank Space,” Swift applies the fairytale fantasy to her sarcastic commentary on relationships: “You’re the king, baby, I’m your queen.” Nevertheless, she takes a more genuine approach to this language once again in reputation’s “King of My Heart.” The “Bejeweled” music video also follows a fairytale narrative, where Swift’s character ends up without a prince but with a castle. With that in mind, “Today Was A Fairytale” offers a sweet perspective on love stories that also lays the groundwork for Swift to later return to the concept with a more critical eye. Still, this song serves as a time capsule of emotion for celebrating the simple and exciting early stages of infatuation.

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1. Although she recalls a rude awakening in the same vein in “White Horse”—”I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairytale”—that song suggests that the issue was not the fairytale but rather the specific love interest.

2. Swift used this same lyrical concept in two other previously unreleased songs from the same era. "Timeless": "The kind you don't put down" and "When Emma Falls in Love": "she's the kind of book that you can't put down."