The song “22” is kind of an idea I got while I was on a plane, and I ran into the studio with Max Martin and Shellback and I was like, “You guys, listen to this!”, and they loved it too, so we worked on it. I wanted to write a song about what my summer had been like, with my friends, with that kind of attitude of like, “We are in our 20s and we don’t know anything and it’s awesome,” it’s kind of fun to embrace that. And, I gotta say, that’s probably one of the biggest choruses on the record.

— Swift via a Red (Track by Track) YouTube video.

In addition to “it feels like a perfect night” originally being “it seems like a perfect night,” a photo has surfaced of the page on which Taylor wrote the song, with these different lyrics written:

Sometimes it hits me
We’re moving quickly
Toward something hazy
A future I can’t see
Let’s break the old rules
While we’re still 22
You look like bad news
I gotta have you

These lyrics were likely part of the original bridge, since the final two lyrics carried over into the studio version.

The song debuted at #52 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the week ending November 26, 2021. The original version of the song peaked at #20 in 2012.