Composition
"You Belong with Me" is a country pop song with a length of three minutes and 52 seconds. According to Kate Kiefer of Paste magazine, it is "a straight-up pop song." The song is set in common time and has a moderate tempo of 130 beats per minute. It is written in the key of G♭ major and Swift's vocals spans a little below two octaves, from G♭3 to D♭5. Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly felt Swift's vocals were light and twangy while the melody was "lilting". It follows the chord progression G♭–D♭–A♭m-C♭. The instrumentation consisted of clucking banjos alongside New Wave electric guitars.
The lyrics to "You Belong with Me" alternate between narrative modes, where she speaks of herself, a male friend whom she has an unrequited crush on, and his girlfriend. Greenblatt described Swift's role as a storyteller, the song being a narrative set to music, which describes concerning about love and boys "just very hard to catch". Craig Rosen of The Hollywood Reporter believes "You Belong with Me"'s plot is "confessional" and regards scenarios themed with high school, while Swift "is the girl next door who's had her heart broken and takes refuge in music". Lucy Davies of the BBC noted, "Swift deals in the prosaic imagery of high school boys". In one verse, Swift contrasts herself with her friend's girlfriend and states, "She wears high heels, I wear sneakers / She's cheer captain, I'm on the bleachers", which Davies interpreted as the song's protagonist feeling envy towards cheerleaders, in particular, the one dating her male friend. In the choruses, Swift attempts "to persuade some boy to come to his senses and submit to her everygirl charms".
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