Sad Beautiful Tragic (Taylor’s Version) Lyrics
Long handwritten notes deep in your pocket
Words, how little they mean when you're a little too late
I stood right by the tracks, your face in a locket
Good girls, hopeful they'll be and long they will wait
[Chorus]
We had a beautiful, magic love there
What a sad, beautiful, tragic love affair
[Verse 2]
In dreams, I meet you in warm conversation
And we both wake in lonely beds and different cities
And time is taking its sweet time erasing you
And you've got your demons and, darlin', they all look like me
[Chorus]
'Cause wе had a beautiful, magic love therе
What a sad, beautiful, tragic love affair
[Post-Chorus]
Woah, woah, woah, oh
[Bridge]
Distance, timin', breakdown, fighting
Silence, the train runs off its tracks
Kiss me, try to fix it, could you just try to listen?
Hang up, give up and, for the life of us, we can't get back
About
“Sad Beautiful Tragic” (Taylor’s Version) is a song Taylor wrote in, probably, 2011, in the middle of her tour bus after a show of the Speak Now World Tour. Some assume that the song is about Taylor Launter, but others think that it is about Jake Gyllenhaal, they both are ex-boyfriends of Taylor.
Lyrically, the song discusses a break-up and the ending of a “sad, tragic, beautiful” love affair and the feelings that come after it.
Also, Taylor told Billboard:
‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ is really close to my heart. I remember it was after a show and I was on the bus thinking about this relationship that ended months and months before. The feeling wasn’t sadness and anger or those things anymore. It was wistful loss. And so I just got my guitar and I hit on the fact that I was thinking in terms of rhyming; I rhymed magic with tragic, changed a few things and ended it with what a sad beautiful tragic love affair. I wanted to tell the story in terms of a cloudy recollection of what went wrong. It’s kind of the murky gray, looking back on something you can’t change or get back.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
“Sad Beautiful Tragic” was a song that I wrote while I was on tour. I was on a tour bus that was moving and I just started playing this really haunting, sad chorus, and it was very simple, “What a sad, beautiful, tragic love affair.” It was just reflecting on something that was lost and you can’t get it back. I went home and I called Nathan Chapman and said, “Hey, I wrote this song. Please, please, please, can we record today?” and, of course, he said, “Yes,” and we used that original demo on the [first version of] the album, because it just kind of came across so pure and raw.
— Swift via a Red (Track by Track) YouTube video.
Swift told Billboard:
‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ is really close to my heart. I remember it was after a show and I was on the bus thinking about this relationship that ended months and months before. The feeling wasn’t sadness and anger or those things anymore. It was wistful loss. And so I just got my guitar and I hit on the fact that I was thinking in terms of rhyming; I rhymed magic with tragic, changed a few things and ended it with what a sad beautiful tragic love affair. I wanted to tell the story in terms of a cloudy recollection of what went wrong. It’s kind of the murky gray, looking back on something you can’t change or get back.
The song debuted at #85 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the week ending November 26, 2021.
- 12.Sad Beautiful Tragic (Taylor’s Version)
