Back to December
Details
- Stated inspiration
- From the Speak Now (Taylor's Version) prologue: "Some expected a kiss of breakup song but instead got a hand-on-heart apology, 'Back to December.'"
Hidden message
Tay
Encoded in the album’s liner notes.
“So if the chain is on your door I understand”
The chained door as the sign of a welcome withdrawn. The speaker grants the addressee the right to keep it fastened, reading the latch as the fair measure of the trust she spent.
“I watched you laughin' from the passenger side”
Watching him from the passenger side as the angle of regret; she is the passenger now, looking across at what she let go.
“I miss your tanned skin, your sweet smiles”
Among the remembered details of the lost love, the sweet smiles return as what regret keeps.
“You gave me roses and I left them there to die”
Full analytical context awaits the Back to December episode extraction.
saying sorry to the good one
“Standin' in front of you sayin', "I'm sorry for that night"”
“Years later, I still wonder how to tell you sorry” — Pink Clouding
Both songs are addressed to a man who treated the speaker well and whom she left anyway, and both are built around an apology. In Back to December she makes it to his face, and in Pink Clouding she is still working out how to say it. In both songs something he gave her is destroyed. The roses are left to die in Back to December, and the rosewood is thrown on the fire in Pink Clouding. Each song also says plainly that he was good to her, which is why the leaving can't be excused.