Songfacts®:

• Taylor wrote this song for the British movie One Chance, which charts the true story of British tenor Paul Potts' journey from amateur opera singer to stardom via the television program Britain's Got Talent. The tune plays during the movie's final credits.
  
  The movie impresario Harvey Weinstein credited Simon Cowell for getting Taylor involved in the soundtrack. He told the Daily Mail: "Simon knows her through the One Direction connection and he thought she'd be touched by the film, and he was right because she was."
• Taylor penned the song with Jack Antonoff, who is guitarist for the band Fun. His other co-writing credits include Sara Bareilles' hit single, "Brave."
  
  This was Swift and Antonoff's first collaboration. They have since evolved into one of pop music's most successful producer-artist duos, working together on all the pop princess' albums since then.
• Rather than writing about Potts' rise to fame, Swift based the song on what she really feels the movie is about. "I'm very inspired by the concept of love. And this movie is, in a lot of ways, a love story," she explained. "You're expecting to go in and see a movie of someone who makes his dreams come true, but what you don't realize is you're actually being told a story of the love his wife … has for him."
  
  Swift added: "That was the story that hit me and really affected me. I wanted to tell a story musically from that perspective."
• Antonoff hinted in a tweet that the song was inspired by a director from the 1980s. "Very inspired by Taylor Swift & LOVE working with her," he tweeted. "Hear the John Hughes in it?"
• Speaking to BBC's Newsbeat, Swift revealed that her management and label bosses were reluctant to allow her to write and record the song. "I had to fight to do this because I try to take a break in between albums and try and give people a minute to not hear me on the radio," she explained: "I had to go around and ask people, 'Can I please, please put something out?' even though we're supposed to be going quiet."
  
  The song was released a year after Swift dropped her fifth studio album Red.
• Swift included "Sweeter Than Fiction" as a bonus track on the Target Edition of 1989 (Taylor's Version), released on October 27, 2023.
• Taylor Swift performed "Sweeter Than Fiction" live for the first time on July 6, 2024, when she played it during her The Eras Tour stop at Amsterdam's Johann Cruyff Arena.