"Fifteen" is a song written and recorded by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her second studio album, Fearless (2008).

Inspired by Swift's high-school freshman year, the lyrics narrate how she and her friend Abigail Anderson, both at 15, experience teenage heartbreak and realize life aspirations.

Music critics lauded Swift's songwriting for creating a catchy sound and using storytelling with vivid details to earnestly portray teenage experiences; many picked it as an album and career highlight.

Roman White directed the music video for "Fifteen", which uses a green screen and features Swift reliving high-school memories with Anderson in a garden.

[1][2] Continuing the romantic themes of her first album, Swift wrote songs about love and personal experiences from the perspective of a teenage girl to ensure her fans could relate to Fearless.

[4] Swift and the producer Nathan Chapman recorded over 50 songs for Fearless, and "Fifteen" was one of the 13 tracks that made the final cut.

"[10] She said that the song both reflected her and Abigail's experiences with first love and heartbreak[9] and offered a cautionary tale to her intended audience of teenage girls entering or already in their freshman year of high school.

[18] The song's refrains have Swift cautioning young girls to not fall in love easily and acknowledging that she came to the realization of being able to accomplish more than dating a football team member.

[24] Terauds and Tom Gardner of The Daily Gleaner wrote that "Fifteen" was musically and thematically reminiscent of Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" (1975).

[a] Elysa Gardner of USA Today and Chris Richards of The Washington Post opined that its adolescent sentiments are genuine and authentic, as opposed to the general music by other teenage artists,[29][30] a sentiment that was corroborated by Leah Greenbelt of Entertainment Weekly ("When she sings about sexuality, she sounds like a real teen, not some manufactured vixen-Lolita")[31] and Craig Mathieson of The Age ("[The song] is high-school angst that rings truer than most eruptions of mall-boy emo").

"[33] Elysa Gardner, the Telegram & Gazette's Craig S. Semon, and The Guardian's Alexis Petridis added that the track showcased a precociousness.

[37] In The Village Voice, Josh Love selected "Fifteen" as a standout for showcasing Swift's "sharp, unsparing" talent for portraying high-school romance as "neither as fairy tale nor tragedy, but instead as the mixed-up cycle of fun and frustration it really is", compared to other "ridiculously idealized" country songs.

[24] Semon was impressed by Swift's ability at 18 years old to look back at her early teenage years with mature hindsight,[34] but Petridis thought that it was "a bit creepy" to see an 18-year-old reflecting through "wizened-but-wise eyes", writing: "You applaud her skill, while feeling slightly unsettled by the thought of a teenager pontificating away like Yoda.

[15] Jody Rosen, in a review for Rolling Stone, selected "Fifteen" as a demonstration of Swift as "a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture".

[39] He also thought the song contained Swift's "peculiar charm": "Her music mixes an almost impersonal professionalism—it's so rigorously crafted it sounds like it has been scientifically engineered in a hit factory—with confessions that are squirmingly intimate and true.

"[39] In a less enthusiastic review, Jonathon Keefe of Slant Magazine agreed that the lyrics, particularly those in the bridge, made it clear why Swift's music resonated "so strongly with her audience", but he criticized the vocals in the outro as "noticeably, consistently flat by anywhere from a quarter to a half pitch".

[23] Aidan Vaziri of San Francisco Chronicle ranked it twelfth on his top 12 singles of 2009 list, commenting, "Damn it if this song isn't too sweet, too vulnerable and just too real to ignore.

And create this world, somewhere you walk in on this desolate desert and you start to sing about all these great memories you have... of everything you love blooming around you, and so we literally grew this garden around her", White said.

[60] The video begins with Swift, barefoot and clad in a white sundress, approaching a tall, arched doorway which materializes in the middle of a barren landscape.

After the landscape deteriorates, the video transitions to reality, where Swift, wearing a black trench coat, stands in the rain, across the street from a high school.

thought the video was "sweet" and said, "And while the visuals here—Taylor walking in and out of various animated scenes—are certainly nice to look at, they nevertheless take a back seat to the country star's cuteness.

Prins argued that this persona was "built on a highly marketable gendered, raced and classed identity" that typified "post-racial white nostalgia and post-feminist irony".

[72][73] Kate Galloway, an academic in popular music, opined that Swift performed "Fifteen" live with "imperfect" vocals.

[16][82] Nicole Frehsee of Rolling Stone favored Swift's performance of "Tim McGraw" at the August 27, 2009 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Frehsee described the entire concert as an "elaborate spectacle that doesn't slow down, even when the singer hauls her acoustic guitar into the audience to play a sweet, stripped down set of tunes including 'Fifteen'.

[83] Swift performed the song during her 1989 World Tour in place of "You Are in Love" on selected dates, such as the shows in Indianapolis and Atlanta.

"Fifteen (Taylor's Version)" was well received by critics, who praised Swift's more mature vocals as adding depth to the song.

NME's Hannah Mylrea called it one of Swift's most moving songs, while also remarking that lines such as "Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday / But I realised some bigger dreams of mine" cut deeper 10 years later.

[107] Alexandra Pollard of The Independent expressed similar sentiments, saying that there was "an added layer" to "Fifteen (Taylor's Version)" and songs like it on the album.

[108] Writing for Gigwise, Kelsey Barnes wrote that "the small vocal changes in 'Fifteen (Taylor's Version)' which means so much more when you think about her now, at 31, and all of the fans that have grown up alongside her since then", saying that Swift's age could be heard and felt "in the best way".