Song
22
Red · 2012 · Track 6
Co-written
Written byTaylor Swift, Karl Johan Schuster, Max Martin
Produced byMax Martin, Karl Johan Schuster
Also released as22 (TV)
Hidden message
Ashley Dianna Claire Selena
Encoded in the album’s liner notes.
Dancing
Incidental
Movement
“Everything will be all right if we just keep dancing like we're 22”
The dance proposed as the act that holds the song's adolescent moment in place, keep dancing and the age stays. The line collapses time-as-felt and time-as-bodied: dancing here is what makes 22 still 22, the figure for staying inside a particular wave of feeling. The dance is the song's instrument for refusing to grow up too quickly.
Lore & Lyrics
turning twenty-two
“we just keep dancing like we're 22”
Angela sets All Too Well's wounded twenty-first birthday against 22's we just keep dancing like we're 22, hearing the later song spend its giddiness on the very disappointment the earlier one records.
Podcast analysis