Taylor Swift in 'Elle': Meaning Behind 'Clean' and How Lena Dunham Inspired Her Songwriting

Swift, who dished that "Clean" and "Shake It Off" were the last two singles she wrote for 1989 detailed the inspiration behind one of the songs... finally moving on.

"'Clean' I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date-it hit me that I'd been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn't thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, Oh, I hope he's doing well. And nothing else," she said. After describing the difficulties of someone exiting your life, Swift revealed how that affected her. ""All of a sudden one day you're in London and you realize you've been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you're fine. And you hope he's fine. The first thought that came to my mind was, I'm finally clean."

Swift has clearly lived and learned when it comes to relationships. Revealing she used to believe (and write about) fairytale relationships, the 25-year-old singer now realizes it's all much more difficult than that.

"Now I have more of a grasp on the fact that when you're in a state of infatuation and you think everything that person does is perfect, it then-if you're lucky-morphs into a real relationship when you see that that person is not in fact perfect, but you still want to see them every day," she said.

But she still finds hope in love, citing friend Lena Dunham's relationship with Bleachers' Jack Antonoff as an example of true love. "I wrote ["You Are in Love" about things that Lena has told me about her and Jack. That's just basically stuff she's told me. And I think that that kind of relationship-God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful-would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times," she said.

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Taylor Swift