Taylor Swift says Grammy-nominated song “Lover” is for “the last two people on a dance floor at 3 a.m.”

Valheria Rocha“Lover” is the third Taylor Swift song to be nominated for the Song of the Year Grammy, but it’s the first she’s written alone.  In the New York Times video feature Diary of a Song, Taylor walks us through how she came up with “a song that people who were in love would want to dance to.”

Taylor got the initial idea for “Lover” — the “can I go where you go” part  — while in bed one night. 

“I got out of bed…and like, stumbled over to the piano,” she recalls. “I’d been thinking for years, ‘God, it would just be so great to have a song that people who were in love would want to…slow dance to.’ In my head, I [pictured] the last two people on a dance floor, at 3 a.m., swaying.”

“I wanted the chorus to be these really simple, existential questions that we ask ourselves when we’re in love,” Taylor continues. “‘Can I go where you go?’ is such a heavy thing to ask somebody. ‘Can we always be this close?’ has so much fear in it. But so does love.”

Taylor chose the title “Lover,” she says, because she’d always liked the word, despite never having used it “in everyday life.”

And that controversial line, “We could leave the Christmas lights up ’til January?” Taylor admits she considered using “April” instead.  But as she explains, that line’s really about how the most mundane decisions are special when you share them with someone else, as in: “This is our place/we make the rules.”

“When young adults go from living in their family to combining their life with someone else, that’s actually the most profound thing,” says Taylor.

We’ll find out if “Lover” brings home the gold when the Grammys air January 26.

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