Songfacts®:

• A mirrorball or discoball is a spherical mirror-covered object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display. A standard piece of equipment in discothèques, it typically hangs above the dance floor to reflect light. During this folk-pop song, Taylor Swift compares herself to a mirrored disco ball hovering above a dance floor.
  
  She flaunts her confidence in her relationship.
  
  Spinning in my highest heels, love
  Shining just for you
  
  The singer can become anything she wants for the sake of romantic fulfillment,
  
  I'm a mirrorball
  I can change everything about me to fit in
  
  And she shatters like glass when her heart is broken.
  
  Shimmering beautiful
  And when I break, it's in a million pieces
• Swift wrote the song with frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, who contributed to 11 out of the 18 tracks on her previous Lover album. She described the producer as "musical family."
• The British band Elbow recorded a song titled "Mirrorball" in 2008. In their instance, Guy Garvey is singing about waking up the day after he fell in love; he steps out of his house into the street and feels like dancing underneath the moon as if it were a mirror ball.
• Taylor Swift had planned the Lover Fest concert tour in support of her Lover album. She scheduled the tour to begin on April 5, 2020, but following growing concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, all dates were either canceled or postponed. Swift wrote this song right after she found Lover Fest wasn't happening.
• When Taylor Swift wrote "Mirrorball," she hesitated over a line that cut a little too close to the bone. "Being a person in the public eye, I've really begun to realize that you are a mirror," she explained to The New York Times. "However, [people] feel about themselves and their life will be projected onto how they perceive you. That's part of why I've been able to keep my wits about me through all of this, because I know that."
  
  That realization fed directly into one of the song's most vulnerable lines:
  
  I've never been a natural
  All I do is try, try, try
  
  It's a simple admission, but one that briefly gave her pause. Swift recalled writing it and immediately wondering whether she really wanted to reveal something that candid. "I'm like, 'Actually, I feel like a lot of people feel that way,"' she said. "That always overrides my discomfort with if a line feels 'too true.' Because I don't think there's anything that's too true."