Songfacts®:

• Taylor Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Reading, Pennsylvania. This song starts off with the image of the tree swing in the woods during her childhood.
  
  Please picture me in the trees
  I hit my peak at seven
  Feet in the swing over the creek
  I was too scared to jump in
  
  Swift reflects during the rest of the track on her memories of a childhood friend who was unhappy at home. She recalls innocently believing that by plotting an escape to her Christmas tree farm, her traumatized friend's problems would be resolved.
  
  And I think you should come live with me
  And we can be pirates
  Then you won't have to cry
• The song's storyline of two childhood friends echoes Swift's Lover track "It's Nice to Have a Friend," where the two pals grow up together and eventually marry.
• Taylor Swift wrote the song with Folklore co-producer Aaron Dessner. The National multi-instrumentalist co-wrote 11 of the tracks with Swift and called on bandmate Bryan Devendorf for this song's drum programming.
• This was the second song that Swift and Dessner wrote for Folklore following "Cardigan."
• Dessner described "Seven" to Rolling Stone as "a nostalgic, emotional folk song." He added: "Even before she sang to it, I felt this nostalgia, wistful feeling in it, and I think that's what she gravitated towards."
• Passed down like folk songs
  Our love lasts so long
  
  Here, Swift alludes to the title and concept of Folklore by comparing the way folk music is passed down generation through generation to her recollections of a childhood friendship. Dessner told Vulture he considers it to be one of the most important lyrics on the record. "That's what this album is doing," he said. "It's passing down," he explained." It's memorializing love, childhood, and memories. It's a folkloric way of processing."
• "Seven" is used in a pivotal scene in the season 2 finale of the Netflix series Heartstopper, featuring the lesbian couple Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell). Responding on Twitter to a fan who thought the show must have a big budget to use a Taylor Swift song, the show's music supervisor Matt Biffa wrote: "No, she just thought the scene was beautiful and we were then able to make it work."