“Sparks Fly” was written when Taylor was sixteen, after playing with her crush Jake Owen in a bar in Portland, Oregon. Due to the demand from fans after a performance of the song was uploaded to YouTube, Taylor decided to rework it and put it on Speak Now. The hints that the track is about Jake are more noticeable in the original lyrics.

Swift shared on her website: "The song ‘Sparks Fly’ is about falling for someone that you maybe shouldn’t fall for, but you can‘t stop yourself because there’s such a connection, there’s such chemistry. This is a song that I wrote a few years ago and had been working on it ever since in the last two years and just honing in on little lyrics and changing them, so it’s really been awesome to see it change over the years."

Fast forward to 2023, she played this song on her “Eras Tour” as a surprise song, accompained by her guitar. However, to introduce the song, she announced her long-awaited album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), saying the following:

“I’ve been planning something for a while. You know how I love to plan things and you know how I love to surprise you with the things I’ve been planning. It’s my love language with you. You know. I plot, I scheme, I plan and then I get to tell you about it.
Rather than me speaking about it, I though I would just show you”