Songfacts®:

• Taylor Swift recorded this song as a duet with Zayn Malik for the movie Fifty Shades Darker. The song is from the perspective of the characters in the film Ana (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Jamie Dornan), who have a love/hate relationship. The song finds them ultimately yearning for each other, as Swift and Malik sing:
  
  I don't wanna live forever
  'Cause I know I'll be living in vain
  And I don't wanna fit wherever
  I just wanna keep calling your name
  Until you come back home
• Taylor Swift wrote this song with Jack Antonoff and Sam Dew. Antonoff produced the track.
  
  Antonoff is best known as the frontman of Bleachers, and lead guitarist of the pop-rock band fun. He previous collaborated with Taylor Swift on her 1989 tracks "Out Of The Woods," "I Wish You Would" and "You R In Love."
  
  Antonoff said: "'I Don't Wanna Live Forever' came together very quickly. Wrote it with Taylor and Sam Dew and produced it at home mostly on Paper Sounds…recorded Taylor at my house. Zayn sent parts from LA – we did it in a week basically. I've never had something come out that quick."
• This was the first new song Swift sang on since her 2014 album 1989. The song was released without notice on iTunes shortly before midnight on December 8, 2016 and quickly went to #1 on that tally.
• Though the song was a surprise collaboration, the American songstress and the former One Direction star already had two connections: Swift had a much documented romance with Malik's 1D bandmate Harry Styles during the winter of 2012-13, and Zayn's girlfriend, Gigi Hadid, is part of Swift's squad.
• Taylor Swift spoke about her collaborator in a behind-the-scenes video: "I've known Zayn for a really long time," she said. "I think his voice is one of those that is really rare and I think he's really special and wonderful and it's really, really amazing to get to work together."
  
  "It's amazing when you get to work with people who you hang out with because the question of 'Will we get along?' is already answered. 'Yeah, we'll get along. It's Zayn. We hang out, like, it's fine,'" continued Swift. "He's also incredibly talented and I feel really lucky to get to do this song that I'm really proud of with him."
• The moody, dark and destructive video was directed by frequent The Weeknd collaborator Grant Singer (He shot the clips for The Canadian's "The Hills", "Can't Feel My Face" and "Starboy.") It was shot at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London.
• This won for Best Collaboration at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. It marked the very first time a former One Direction member had claimed a VMA as a solo artist.