Preview – I Knew You Were Trouble (Taylor Swift)

[Music video spoken part:]

I think--I think when it's all over,
It just comes back in flashes, you know?
It's like a kaleidoscope of memories.
It just all comes back. But he never does.
I think part of me knew the second I saw him that this would happen.
It's not really anything he said or anything he did,
It was the feeling that came along with it.
And (the) crazy thing is I don't know if I'm ever gonna feel that way again.
But I don't know if I should.
I knew his world moved too fast and burned too bright.
But I just thought, how can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you?
Maybe he knew that when he saw me.
I guess I just lost my balance.
I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him.
It was losing me.

Once upon a time a few mistakes ago
I was in your sights, you got me alone
You found me, you found me, you found me
I guess you didn't care, and I guess I liked that
And when I fell hard you took a step back
Without me, without me, without me

And he's long gone when he's next to me
And I realize the blame is on me

'Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
'Till you put me down, oh
I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble

No apologies. He'll never see you cry,
Pretends he doesn't know that he's the reason why
You're drowning, you're drowning, you're drowning.
Now I heard you moved on from whispers on the street
A new notch in your belt is all I'll ever be
And now I see, now I see, now I see

He was long gone when he met me
And I realize the joke is on me, yeah!

I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
'Till you put me down, oh
I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble

And the saddest fear comes creeping in
That you never loved me or her, or anyone, or anything, yeah

I knew you were trouble when you walked in
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
'Till you put me down, oh
I knew you were trouble when you walked in
(you were right there, you were right there)
So shame on me now-ow
Flew me to places I'd never been
Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble
Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble

I knew you were trouble when you walked in
Trouble, trouble, trouble
I knew you were trouble when you walked in
Trouble, trouble, trouble

[Music video spoken part:]

I don't know if you know who you are until you lose who you are.

IT'S ALL OVER= If something is over, it has finished. Using ALL here is emphatic, so this phrase means: It has completely finished.

COMES BACK IN FLASHES= When something comes back in flashes, you have memories from the past, almost instant scenes, like watching photographs. A flash is a sudden and very short strong light, so memories that are flashes are also very short and sudden.

YOU KNOW?= This phrase doesn't really mean anything but it is very often used in conversation as a gap filler, to say something while you are thinking of what to say next. In this use, it is not correct to say "do you know?" because it is not really a question.

KALEIDOSCOPE= /kəlaɪdəskəʊp/ A device producing a nice visual effect where you can see many different colour mixing and moving around creating fancy patterns (see picture). So we use it as a figure of variety, a mix of many different things.

THE SECOND I SAW HIM= The first instant I saw him.

BURNED TOO BRIGHT= If a candel burns bright, the flame is intense and so the light is also intense, but at the same time that intensity is going to make the candle die quickly. So she is comparing a candle the boy's life: he lived things intensely but got tired of them quickly, so her relationship with him was intense but she knew it wouldn't last for long.

THE DEVIL= A devil is an evil spirit, the opposite of an angel. THE Devil is Satan, the chief of all devils.

BALANCE= A state of physical or mental equilibrium, which gives you stability and serenity.

ONCE UPON A TIME= This is how we begin fairy tales (stories for children).

I WAS IN YOUR SIGHTS= You wanted to get me. ("your sights" is your field of vision... or of interest)

I GUESS= I suppose.

WHEN I FELL HARD= When you fell very much in love with me.

HE'S LONG GONE= He left a long time ago.

THE BLAME IS ON ME= It is my fault, my mistake.

TROUBLE= Problems.

WHEN YOU WALKED IN= When I first saw you, when you appeared in my life. "To walk in" literally means "to enter in a place walking".

SHAME ON ME= We say this expression when we did something very wrong and now we regret it and feel sorry. He says "shame on me" because when he first saw her she knew she would be trouble, so he should have stayed away from her. But he didn't, and know he is deep in trouble, so he is sorry about what he did. It is more common to use this expression to tell other people when they do something wrong: "Shame on you!"

FLEW ME TO PLACES= (You) took me on a trip by plane. Also, these "places" may be actual places or may be new experiences or sensations, which is the idea here.

I'D NEVER BEEN= I had never been.

'TILL YOU PUT ME DOWN= Until you humiliated me (by leaving me).

PRETENDS= To pretend is to make people believe what is not true.

DROWNING= /draʊnɪŋ/ If you are drowning, you can’t breathe because you are underwater. Here it is used metaphorically meaning that you are having a terrible time.

I HEARD... FROM WHISPERS ON THE STREET= I got that information from people talking about you, from rumours. YOU MOVED ON= You forgot about the past and started to have a new life (so in this case, you forgot about me and started dating a new girl).

NOTCH= A mark. He is suppose to make a new mark on his belt every time he seduces a girl or something, so if you are only a new notch in my belt, that means that you were never important for me, because you were only one more girl, another victim.

BELT= A complement worn around the waist (see picture)

I SEE= I understand.

REALIZE= If you realize something, you come to understand it and know what is happening.

THE JOKE IS ON ME= I am the one losing.

This expression is more often used when we are talking about a practical joke. You do something wrong or naughty (or evil) to someone because you think it is funny and you will have fun, but then the result is unexpected and the person suffering the bad consequences of that is not them, it is you, so "the joke is on you", your bad actions backfired. In this situation she is simply thinking of the result (they had fun but then she was the one who lost and was hurt), but she doesn't imply that she wanted to hurt him in the first place.

CREEPING IN= Moving closer, like an insect with many legs. Also it suggests fear, like something scary is approaching.

Taylor explained the backstory to the tune before playing it to Good Morning America viewers. "It's a song that is one of my favorites on the album, because it sounds just as chaotic as the feeling was when I wrote it," she said. "It's a song about being frustrated with yourself because here you are heartbroken and you knew when you first saw this person, you saw all these red flags and you went for it anyway. So, shame on me."

Speaking with Cosmopolitan magazine, Taylor admitted to having gone into a relationship knowing it was the wrong thing to do. "I think that idea of love I hope for is that you learn a lesson and you don't have to learn it twice," she said. "But the song 'I Knew You Were Trouble' is about when I knowingly made the same mistake twice. I couldn't resist it ' there's that temptation to push yourself into a risky situation with someone who is going to hurt you, and that's what that song is about: not trusting your own instincts and ignoring all the red flags."

Swift spoke to The Boot about the inspiration for the song. "I've written about 'shame on you, you broke my heart,' but I've never written about 'shame on me, you broke my heart. I knew when you walked in, you were going to be complete bad news and I ran toward you anyway. I believed you anyway. I fell for you anyway, even though every red flag was going up every step of the way,'" she said. "We find ourselves where we are in that situation where we want to think we're the exception. We want to think we can change someone, tame a lion, or make a bad guy good ... But nine times out of ten we end up looking back going, 'Shame on me. Should have seen that one coming!'"

Taylor plays a girl in the video who gets caught up in a torrid love affair with Carney's tattooed bad boy and falls prey to his wicked ways. "She's not a full bad girl," Carney explained to MTV News. "She's someone who's drawn in by the temptation and the thrill of it all, but at the same time, she's halfway: She's got one foot in and one foot out. Whereas, I'm kind of both feet in, I guess. But there's enough charisma with the character that it kind of pulls her in."

This song was rumored to be about Swift's tumultuous split with John Mayer, but she cleared the air at the 2013 MTV VMA's when she turned her ire on another ex: One Direction's Harry Styles. Accepting her award for Best Female Video, she quipped: "I also want to thank the person who inspired this song because he knows exactly who he is, because now I've got one of these." The cameras hovered on Styles and his smirking band mates.

According to one source, Swift penned the track after seeing images of Styles kissing model Emma Ostilly in New Zealand. She confirmed the song's inspiration when talking with The Sunday Times magazine about her raunchy performance of the song at The Brit Awards, which Styles also attended. She said: "You're balancing the analytical side of your brain which is telling you where to go and how to go there, with the other side of your brain, which is saying 'Feel everything you're singing, and show it on your face. Feel everything exactly as you felt it when you wrote the song'."
Swift was then asked how she felt performing the song knowing Styles was there, to which she replied: "Well, it's not hard to access that emotion when the person the song is directed at is standing by the side of the stage watching."