According to Taylor Swift, "Cardigan," off 2020's "Folklore," is about a childhood romance and the memories and lessons they leave behind. In a 2020 Twitter Live Q&A promoting the music video for the lead single off the album "Folklore," Swift explained (via Taylor Swift News), "The song is about a lost romance and why young love is often fixed so permanently within our memories. Why it leaves such an indelible mark." Swift's clarification is, in hindsight, plainly stated in the lyrics themselves, with "Cardigan" boasting lines like "But I knew you / Playing hide-and-seek and / Giving me your weekends."
The National's Aaron Dessner, with whom Swift collaborated on most of the album's 16 songs," backed Swift's "young love" explanation and also told Vulture that "Cardigan" served as a musical map for "Folklore." "It harkens back to lessons learned, or experiences in your youth," Dessner said. An accomplished musician himself, Dessner called the song's "sense of longing and sadness...[and] lower register parts" a "guide" for the sonic and lyrical stylings for the other songs on "Folkore." "We both realized that this was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of the rest of the record," Dessner revealed to Vulture.
Fans hoping "Cardigan" was about Joe Alywn may be disappointed, but her and Dessner's explanations don't rule out the possibility of it being a fan letter as well! Alas, "theorists gonna theorize."
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