I said, "Oh, my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight
Like we're made of starlight
[Verse 1]
I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of '45
Picked me up, late one night out the window
We were 17 and crazy, running wild, wild
Can't remember what song it was playing when we walked in
The night we snuck into a yacht club party
Pretending to be a duchess and a prince
[Chorus]
And I said, "Oh, my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
[Verse 2]
He said, “Look at you, worrying too much about things you can't change
You'll spend your whole life singing the blues if you keep thinking that way"
He was trying to skip rocks on the ocean, saying to me
"Don't you see the starlight, starlight?
Don't you dream impossible things?"
Like, "Oh, my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
[Bridge]
Ooh-ooh, he's talking crazy
Ooh-ooh, dancing with me
Ooh-ooh, we could get married
Have ten kids and teach 'em how to dream
[Guitar Solo]
[Chorus]
Oh, my, what a marvelous tune
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
[Breakdown]
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we dream impossible dreams
Like starlight, starlight
Like we dream impossible dreams
About
This 1940’s themed song was inspired by Ethel and Bobby Kennedy.
Starlight is a song I wrote actually after seeing a picture of um, Ethel and Bobby Kennedy when they were seventeen. I saw this picture about a year a half ago, and I didn’t know anything about like, what they were doing or what was going on in the picture, but I just thought ‘They look like they’re having the best night.’ And, um, and so I wrote this song about what the night might’ve been like. And um, I ended up meeting Ethel and going and playing it for her and she just loved it. It was such a fun moment when she was just in love with the song and so happy about it and um, it’s just this adorable picture that to me, it just like brought forth all these potentials for how that night could’ve been.
–Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift also briefly dated Conor Kennedy earlier in 2012, who is also rumored to have part in inspiring this song.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
Swift explained at the December 2012 Ripple of Hope Gala dedicated to the Kennedys:
It’s inspired by a photograph that I saw, and it’s a black and white photo. I saw it about two years ago, and this was before I knew anything extensive about, you know, Robert Kennedy and Ethel. I just saw this picture of these two young kids dancing at a dance, and below, it said ‘Ethel and Robert Kennedy, 1945, at age seventeen.’ And I wrote this song, just based on what I saw in the picture.
She also told The Wall Street Journal:
I get a lot of style inspiration from the 1960s, so I’ll go and look at black and white pictures, and look at photos from the ‘50s and '60s, and I came across this picture of these two kids dancing at a dance. It immediately made me think of like how much fun they must have had that night. It was back in the late '40s. I ended up reading underneath that it was Ethel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. And they were, like, 17. So I just kind of wrote that song from that place, not really knowing how they met or anything like that. And then her daughter Rory ended up coming to a show a couple weeks later and I told her about the song and she was like, 'you have to meet my mom, she would love to meet you.’ So that was kind of what that song was about.
- 2.Red
- 3.Treacherous
- 5.All Too Well
- 6.22
- 7.I Almost Do
- 10.The Last Time
- 11.Holy Ground
- 13.The Lucky One
- 15.Starlight
- 16.Begin Again
- 19.Girl at Home