"The Best Day" is an understated It is built on gentle acoustic guitar
strums. The
musicologist James E. Perone remarked that "The Best Day" features a
country rock arrangement that recalls the music of the American rock band
Eagles. The song uses the
'50s progression, I–vi–IV–V, which is associated with many American pop songs from the 1950s; Perone argued that this quality lended "The Best Day" a timeless feel. Swift wrote "The Best Day" as a tribute to her parents over the years; the focus of the song is her mother, and her father is mentioned in the
middle eight. There is also a mention of Swift's brother Austin with the lyrics saying, "inside and out he is better than I am." In the liner notes of
Fearless, the secret message in the song's lyrics is "God Bless Andrea Swift". Set in fall, the song narrates Swift's relationship with her mother, featuring memories when she was three, five, and 13. The narrator mentions moments they spent together involving paint sets, pumpkin patches, and window-shopping. The lyrics feature many imagery associated with fall, such as "the pumpkin patch", "tractor rides", and "the sky is gold". Consistent with
Fearless frequent references to
fairy tales, "The Best Day" mentions
Snow White and princesses in the lyrics.
GQ opined that Swift might have been inspired to write the song by an incident in middle school. Swift was rejected by a group of friends to go to a local mall together, and after her mother took her to the same mall, she saw the said friends at a
Victoria's Secret store. Swift recalled that her mother later took her to the
King of Prussia Mall to stay away from such friends, "My mom let me escape from certain things that were too painful to deal with." In
Pitchfork, Hazel Cills observed that the song is told from an
underdog perspective, which continued on many of Swift's later songs. ==Reception==