"Starlight" is a song that Taylor wrote about Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, while imagining the night they had a picture she saw

Explaining the song, Taylor said:

""Starlight" is a song I wrote, actually, after seeing a picture of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy when they were 17. I saw this picture and I didn't know anything about like, what they were doing or what was going on in the picture, but I just thought 'They look like they're having the best night.' And so I wrote this song about what the night might've been like. And I ended up meeting Ethel and going and playing it for her and she just loved it. It was such a fun moment when she was just in love with the song and so happy about it and it's just this adorable picture that to me, it just like brought forth all these potentials for how that night could've been."

And to The Wall Street Journal:

"I got a lot of style inspiration from the 1960s, so I'll go back and look at black and white pictures, and look at photos from the '50s and '60s, and I came across this picture of these two kids dancing at a dance. It immediately made me think of like how much fun they must have had that night. It was back in the late '40s. I ended up reading underneath that it was Ethel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. And they were, like, 17. So I just kind of wrote that song from that place, not really knowing how they met or anything like that. And then her daughter Rory ended up coming to a show a couple weeks later and I told her about the song and she was like, 'you have to meet my mom, she would love to meet you.' So that was kind of what that song was about"

Lyrics-

I said, "Oh my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night
Never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight
Like we're made of starlight

I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of '45
Picks me up late one night
Out the window, we were seventeen and crazy, running wild, wild
Can't remember what song it was playing when we walked in
The night we snuck into a yacht club party
Pretending to be a duchess and a prince

And I said, "Oh my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight

He said, "Look at you, worrying too much about things you can't change
You'll spend your whole life singing the blues if you keep thinking that way"
He was trying to skip rocks on the ocean, saying to me
"Don't you see the starlight, starlight
Don't you dream impossible things?"

Like, "Oh my, what a marvelous tune"
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight

Ooh-ooh, he's talking crazy
Ooh-ooh, dancing with me
Ooh-ooh, we could get married
Have ten kids and teach them how to dream

(Ooh, hoo, hoo)
(Ooh, hoo, hoo)
(Ooh, hoo, hoo)
(Ooh, hoo, hoo)

Oh my, what a marvelous tune
It was the best night, never would forget how he moved
The whole place was dressed to the nines
And we were dancing, dancing
Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we're made of starlight, starlight

Like we're made of starlight, starlight
Like we dream impossible dreams
Like starlight, starlight
Like we dream impossible dreams

Don't you see the starlight, starlight?
Don't you dream impossible things?