Songfacts®:

• Marjorie Finlay was Taylor Swift's opera-singing maternal grandmother who died when Swift was in her early teens. This tender, poignant song explores complex grief and regrets of things not done together prior to a loved one's death.
• I should've asked you questions
  I should've asked you how to be
  Asked you to write it down for me
  
  Even after her passing, Swift still feels the presence of her grandmother.
  
  What died didn't stay dead
  You're alive, you're alive in my head
  
  Swift said his song is about her "grandmother, Marjorie, who still visits me sometimes... if only in my dreams."
• And if I didn't know better
  I'd think you were singing to me now
  
  The outro features a recording of Marjorie Finlay singing opera in the background. Swift explained that her mother found some old LPs of her grandmother singing opera. She sent the vinyl to her producer Aaron Dessner, and he added Marjorie's voice to the song.
• Swift famously believes 13 to be her lucky number and she frequently sneaks in references to the number in her music. This tribute to her grandmother, who died when Swift was 13, is the 13th track on Evermore. "Epiphany," the 13th track of Evermore's sister album, Folklore, finds Swift honoring her military veteran grandfather Dean.
• Taylor Swift told Apple Music's Zane Lowe her grandmother died when she was away in Nashville trying to interest record labels with her demo CD. "I think that one of the hardest forms of regret to work through is the regret of being so young when you lost someone that you didn't have the perspective to learn and appreciate who they were fully," she explained. "You didn't have that. I'd open up my grandmother's closet and she had beautiful dresses from the '60s. I wish I'd asked her where she wore every single one of them. Things like that."