It's been a turbulent but exciting week for Taylor Alison Swift, as the singer returned with her new single 'Look What You Made Me Do', the record-breaking video at the MTV VMAs – and then faced the inevitable lyrical analysis to see who she's been taking pot-shots at now.

Of course, Swift's entire career has been built up around writing songs about her ex-lovers and her life experiences, so she should be used to it now.

But while she may have wanted to be excluded from this narrative, one which she have never asked to be a part of (thank you very much), we've decided to delve into her discography to unearth some of the surprising stories behind her past hits…

1. 'Mean' won a Grammy by getting angry with a critic

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During the 2010 Grammys, Taylor performed a cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Rhiannon' with Stevie Nicks. The performance might not quite have gone to plan, and it was critically panned with critics claiming that Tay was off-key throughout.

However, it was one critic, Bob Lefsetz, who made things personal. Writing on his blog The Leftsetz Letter, Bob went on a massive rant about the state of music, before going in on Taylor's performance. "[W]hat I am interested in is the impact. Because now, everybody knows that Taylor Swift can't sing," he wrote before asking, "In other words, did Taylor Swift kill her career overnight?"

Taylor took particular issue with these statements, and through this the song 'Mean' was born. "Some days I'm fine and I can just brush it off and go about my day, but some days it absolutely levels me," she said in an interview with Parade Magazine about the criticisms thrown at her. "All I can do is continue to try to work hard every single day and feel everything. I think it's important to feel things because I then write songs about that."

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Expanding on this, Taylor told Entertainment News that she understands that criticism is a part of her job, but that there are different levels. "There's constructive criticism, there's professional criticism - and then there's just being mean. And there's a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person," she said.

Of course, 'Mean' would go on to win the Grammys for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song.

So, while Mr. Leftsetz may not have wanted to be a part of of this particular narrative, it seems that his review has had a lasting impact.

2. 'Better than Revenge' takes a pot shot at Joe Jonas's girlfriend

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While 'Better Than Revenge' is the most Avril Lavigne that Taylor Swift has ever sounded, the song is more direct than anything the 'Hello Kitty' singer has managed.

Allegedly, the song was written after Taylor broke up with Joe Jonas, and is aimed at Camilla Belle, an actress who quickly started dating Jonas following the split. The song drags Belle to hell and back, practically calling her a slut with the lyric, "She's an actress, whoa/ But she's better known for the things that she does/ On the mattress."

Taylor kept pretty tight-lipped about the song until an interview with The Guardian back in 2014. "I was 18 when I wrote that," she said. "That's the age you are when you think someone can actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realise no-one takes someone from you if they don't want to leave."

3. 'Enchanted' is an ode to Owl City's Adam Young

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While Taylor's third album, 2010's Speak Now, was a more grown-up affair than its predecessor, the record still had its moments of fairytale narratives that littered Fearless. One such song is 'Enchanted', a six-minute melancholic and wistful epic that charters that buzz of excitement when you first meet someone.

As with a lot of Taylor's music, it was actually based on a real experience, too. "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on email or something before, but I had never met him," she told Yahoo! Music. "[I]t was this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you're not in love with somebody… [It's] that pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all you have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will."

Continuing, she went on to explain that she started writing the song immediately. "It feels good to write exactly what your thoughts were in a certain moment," she said.

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But who was the guy in question? Well, it was none other than Owl City's Adam Young, who confirmed the meeting on Valentine's Day in 2011. "You are a true princess from a dreamy fairy tale, and above all, I just want you to know. I was enchanted to meet you too," he wrote, before attaching his own lyrics that corresponded to Taylor's. Very sweet.

Taylor loved the song so much that she wanted to name her album after it. Speaking to Reuters, however, Scott Borchetta, the CEO and founder of Taylor's label Big Machine Records, said that he'd advised her against it. "We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs," he said. "I looked at her and I'm like, 'Taylor, this record isn't about fairy tales and high school anymore. That's not where you're at. I don't think the record should be called 'Enchanted'."

On tour with her last album 1989, Taylor performed a mashup of 'Enchanted' and 'Wildest Dreams'.

4. 'Speak Now' is about Kellie Picker's teenage crush

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'Speak Now' tells the story of a woman who interrupts someone's wedding only to run off with the groom. Now, we're pretty sure that this hasn't *actually* happened in Taylor's life (surely we'd have read about it, right?).

While ruining someone's wedding isn't generally recommended, Taylor said that she was actually inspired to write the song after she heard her friend Kellie Pickler talking about an ex-boyfriend. "She was telling me a story about her childhood sweetheart-crush guy," she told E! News. "They were together in high school and then went their separate ways. I understood it as they were going to get back together."

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Continuing, she added: "She comes in and tells me that he's getting married. He had met this other girl who was a horrible person. She made him stop talking to his friends, cut off his family ties, and made him so isolated. And randomly, I was like, 'Oh, are you going to speak now?'" Handy that.

The song, however, is a bit more instructed than initially thought. Taylor said that she was then inspired by a dream she had where one of her ex's married another woman. Writing on her website, she explained how "[f]or me, I like to think of it as good versus evil".

5. 'Shake It Off' saw Taylor kick a beat on wooden planks to see off haters

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For her fourth album, Taylor said that she felt an inherent need to switch up her style (reference) and head in a different direction. The result was the Max Martin-executive-produced masterpiece 1989, a record cemented in pop and '80s throwbacks.

The album's lead single 'Shake It Off' was announced via a live stream on Yahoo! where Taylor unveiled the video at the same time. The song, like 'Mean', is angled at the singer's 'haters'. However, this time rather than getting bitter, Taylor got better.

"I've had every part of my life dissected - my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music," she told Rolling Stone. "When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it. And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off."

Mark Romanek Big Machine Records

Did you know, however, that some of the percussion in the song was actually created by Taylor and co-producer Shellback banging their feet against wooden planks? Similarly, the choir you hear singing at the end of the song is actually Taylor, Max Martin and Shellback all singing together.

The video for the song was shot two months prior to its release, and security on set was tight to prevent leaks. The video's director Mark Romanek said that it was like shooting a commercial for Apple. "A series of measures are put into place," he told Vulture. "Badges and wristbands. Aggressive nondisclosure agreements must be signed. Scary legal announcements regularly made to cast and crew. Cell phones confiscated at the door. We selected a pretty remote sound stage and even placed boom boxes all around the perimeter blasting heavy-metal music, in case you could faintly hear the song during shooting."

Luckily for Swift and Romanek, the song and video were kept super secret. In fact, Taylor's album 1989 only leaked two days before its release, which is pretty good going.

6. The 'Blank Space' mansion went down in flames – literally

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Released as the second single from 1989, 'Blank Space' actually knocked Taylor's own song 'Shake It Off' off the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100, making her the only female to ever actually replace herself at No.1 on the chart.

The song was written in a session with Max Martin and Shellback, and was a response to the tabloid fodder that follows Taylor around constantly. In fact, the song began as a joke. "[I wanted to] write this completely satirical song about the fictionalisation of my personal life, and just kind of poke fun at it," she said to Yahoo. She later touched on this in an interview with GQ, saying, "You take your creative license and create things that are larger than life."

Continuing on this theme, Taylor told NME that it was actually a song that had been brewing for years. "It was one of those things where I would be writing lines years before I ended up constructing the song," she said. "I'll be going about my daily life and I'll think of, like, 'Wow, so you only have two real options in relationships, like, it's gonna be forever or it's gonna go down in flames', so I'll jot that down in my notes."

The pen click you hear at the end of the chorus was actually included in Taylor's very early sketches of the song. In the voice memos attached to the deluxe edition of 1989, you can hear Taylor performing the song for the first time for producers Max Martin and Shellback. Just after the click, Martin can be heard saying, "That's awesome, that's so annoying, I love it. Everyone's going to kill you."

In fact, 'Blank Space' was the third song that Taylor played for Martin and Shellback. After playing them the song, they said: "This is the very first thing we are working on today!"

Some scenes for the video for the song were shot at Winfield Mansion in New York's Long Island, and was actually built by the family who started Woolworths. In the video, Taylor can be seen burning her ex-lover's clothes. Ironically, in 2015 the mansion was subject to an actual fire, mirroring Taylor's lyrics about "going down in flames".

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