Taylor Swift Reveals Inspiration Behind Speak Now's Key Songs

By now, Taylor Swift has made it pretty clear that on her upcoming Speak Now album, she's not pulling any punches — especially when it comes to her exes or Kanye West or even mean-spirited members of the media, for that matter.

In fact, there's so much dirt dished on Speak Now that you practically need a scorecard to keep up with it all, and luckily, now you have one. In a new interview with Yahoo! Music, Swift gets in-depth about several key songs on the album — though, really, she prefers to think of each track in different terms.

"Every single song is like a road map to what that relationship stood for, with little markers that maybe everyone won't know, but there are things that were little nuances of the relationship, little hints," she said. "And every single song is like that. Everyone will know, so I don't really have to send out e-mails on this one."

In the interview, Swift described first single "Mine" as "a confession of some sort" about a real-life situation where a would-be boyfriend (rumored to be "Glee" star Cory Monteith) attempted to take their burgeoning relationship to the next level.

"This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie," Swift explained. "After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn't talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, 'Yes!' Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw."

Swift said "Back to December" — which is reportedly about her breakup with "Twilight" heartthrob Taylor Lautner — is her first apology song ("Up until now, I haven't really felt like I really needed to apologize to someone ... it's just necessary"), and "Speak Now" takes its inspiration from a friend's real-life dilemma about interrupting a childhood sweetheart's wedding.

"One of my friends ... the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she said. "And my first inclination was to say, 'Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be."

"The Story of Us" was born out of a recent run-in with an ex (Lautner? Joe Jonas?) at an awards show, and the "terribly, heartbreakingly awkward" silent war the two parties embarked on that night. "Enchanted" was inspired by a meeting in New York with a mysterious man who captured Swift's heart and how she hopes to continue the relationship.

"I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of 'I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you,' " she said. "Using the word 'wonderstruck' [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that's a word which that person used one time in an e-mail ... so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know."

Finally, Swift talks about "Innocent," the song she wrote about West and subsequently premiered at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. She calls it her most "important" song, because it helped her finally put West's VMA interruption behind her.

"You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don't ... but then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual, raw feelings, that doesn't benefit anyone," she said. "As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can't really control any of that. It's just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you've got to find a balance for."

Which song are you most looking forward to on Speak Now? Let us know in the comments!