Long handwritten note 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
We both wake in lonely beds, different cities
And time is taking its sweet time erasing you
And you've got your demons, and darling, they all look like me
[Chorus]
'Cause we had a beautiful magic love there
What a sad, beautiful, tragic love affair
[Bridge]
Distance, timing
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
Taylor wrote this song on a ukulele on her tour bus after a show of the Speak Now World Tour, reflecting on a relationship that was “sad, beautiful and tragic.” It is speculated that it is about Taylor Lautner, but there is some reason to believe it could possibly be about Jake Gyllenhaal.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
Swift explained the meaning of the song to 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.
- 2.Red
- 3.Treacherous
- 5.All Too Well
- 6.22
- 7.I Almost Do
- 10.The Last Time
- 11.Holy Ground
- 12.Sad Beautiful Tragic
- 13.The Lucky One
- 15.Starlight
- 16.Begin Again
- 19.Girl at Home
