Two Is Better Than One

Speaking on how the collaboration came about, bassist Bryan Donahue stated, "she had a piece in the Wall Street Journal, I think, and mentioned us, and our song, 'Hero/Heroine.' A week later, we saw a YouTube video of her covering 'Hero/Heroine' at one of her shows, and we were blown away by that. After that, we got in contact with her [...] We stayed in touch, and when we were in the studio and tracked the song, 'Two Is Better Than One', we were listening to the playback and thought it was good, it was done, but it didn't feel right. We thought it needed the opposite side of the story, the female perspective. We called her up, asked her if she'd be interested, sent her the track, she gave it a listen and she said she would do it. We were very blessed that she said yes because she made that track, and took it to that next step."^[8]

"Two Is Better Than One" was written by Martin Johnson and Taylor Swift, while production was handled by Brian Howes. The song is written in the key of C major with a tempo of 128 beats per minute.^[9]

The music video directed by Meiert Avis and Jeremy Alter, was released on December 10, 2009.^[10] The video features Erik Huffman from Survivor: China and Mika Combs from The Amazing Race 15. Swift does not appear in the video, but her vocals are still heard. It shows the story of a couple's relationship (the couple being played by Huffman and Combs). The band are shown performing in an empty hall, starting with Johnson playing guitar alone before the rest of the band members walk in and join.^[11]

A music video e-Card was also released for the song.^[12]

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"Two Is Better Than One" was met with mixed reviews from music critics. A positive response came from Michael Menachem of Billboard who stated, "Martin Johnson's falsetto complements Swift's sweet tone, and producer Brian Howes builds an orchestral arrangement around their vocals that would be well-suited to a climactic movie moment."^[13] However, a negative review came from Tim Sendra of AllMusic, which he described the track as "terrible" and "something Diane Warren would have shelved for being too trite and formulaic."^[14] Another negative response came from Gregory Robson of AbsolutePunk.net who felt that Swift's "contributions aren't as promising as one would expect."^[15] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone remarked, "For some reason, they decided to delay her entrance until a minute into the song, arguably the worst decision in the history of decisions."^[16]

"Two Is Better Than One" debuted at number 92 on the Billboard Hot 100.^[18] It fell off the following week but re-entered at number 79 and rose the following week to number 64. For the week of January 9, 2010, the song then reached its peak at number 18 on the chart.^[19] It became Boys Like Girls' first top 20 single on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming their biggest hit single to date, and Swift's eleventh top 20 single.^[20]

By December 2011, "Two Is Better Than One" had sold 1,508,000 copies in the U.S. alone, outselling other big Taylor Swift hits such as "Tim McGraw" and "Fifteen".^[6] As of November 2017, the song has sold 1.7 million copies in the United States.^[21]