• Spanish Translation

Swift told Variety:

I wrote it after the [2018] midterm elections, when there were so many young people who rallied for their candidate, whether it was a senator or congressman or congresswoman. It was hard to see so many people feel like they had canvassed and done everything and tried so hard. I saw a lot of young people’s hopes dashed. And I found that to be particularly tragic, because young people are the people who feel the worst effects of gun violence, and student loans and trying to figure out how to start their lives and how to pay their bills, and climate change, and are we going to war — all these horrific situations that we find ourselves facing right now.

Little told Variety:

We did a week in New York; that week we did ‘The Man’ and ‘ME!,’ and ‘Only the Young’ was the last one that we did. That was one where I’d actually come in with a drumbeat, and she was like, ‘Oh, I was actually just playing around with chords that could go with that,’ and then the song just quickly moved from there. Lyrically, that song has got so many gut punches in it — just really important lines, I feel. As that song was coming together and we were realizing what it was saying, it was a very emotional aura. The energy in the room was really intense. […] There’s, like, a kids’ choir, and that’s just my two daughters, stepped up over the top of each other singing harmonies with themselves. I had to do it in a way where they weren’t allowed to know that they were singing on a Taylor Swift song, obviously, because there’s a lot of secrecy involved with all this stuff.