All language subtitles for TIMES_EXCLUSIVE_-_The_Taylor_Swift_Interview

It's still such a mystery to me.

Even though I've been — I've
been writing songs for so long,

and I've started songs and finished
songs so many different ways.

They’ve gone through so many journeys.

They've happened quickly.
They've happened over time.

They've been inspired by my life,
by mythology, by fables, by books,

by movies, by characters,
by warnings, lessons.

And they never quite happen
exactly the same way.

And I still don't quite understand
how it works.

I have this very strong opinion
that when you're young,

you feel things on such a intense
and detailed

level.

There's an attention to detail

when you are 17
to 22 years old, and you're longing,

or you're reaching and grasping,
but never holding

someone's attention, or someone's
love, or someone's dedication,

and you're just —

you can't understand why you spend
all day thinking about it.

You notice everything.

You notice candle ash on the cuff
of the shirt and the button,

and it's everything that makes

the mythology of those intense
feelings that you have.

And I've always tried to, like,

without being a completely
unhinged adult,

keep that level of detail
and intensity

when it comes to trying
to describe a feeling.

I started writing songs
when I was 12.

As soon as my love for singing
and picking up an instrument

happened, songwriting
just spontaneously

started becoming the entire
cornerstone of my life.

I think the first songs

that I like, fell in love with,
was the type of songwriting

that I think folk and country
is really kind of known for.

It's like that story time structure.
Songs like “Harper Valley P.T.A.,”

or “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks, or like,

you know, any amazing
Kenny Chesney song where like,

you know, a hypothetical structure
would be, you know, first verse

little girl, you know,
learns a lesson that in the chorus

her mom teaches her about.

Then the little girl grows up,
and now she's a teenager

and she realizes, Oh, my God,
my mom was right about this.

Now, the second time
you hear the hook, that

same hook means something a little
bit different because she's, like,

grown up in her, in her life.

Then the bridge,
maybe she goes on in her life.

She has a little girl.

She imparts that wisdom on to her.

And then if you really want
to get me to cry, like, bring back

that same first line of the song
and end the song with it.

So that was the first thing
that made me think,

It's got to be country music.

[Take a deep breath as you
walk through the doors.]

That was the first type
that I really fell in love with.

But then lyricism,

I was the most

intensely impacted by emo music, right?

Dashboard
Confessional, Chris Carrabba,

Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz’s lyrics —
how they take a common phrase

and then they just twist
the knife of it, right?

Like, “I'm just a notch in your bedpost,

but you're just a line in a song."

"Drop a heart, break a name,” right?

Like, it's “Drop a name, break a heart.”

But they switched it, and I, like …
those are the kind of lyrics where

I would read the lyrics to those
songs — or the specificity of

“Hands Down” by Dashboard Confessional,
where I'd be reading those lyrics

and I'd just finish
reading a line and just go,

“Oh, my God.”

I got a publishing deal when I was 14.

I was signed by a guy
named Arthur Buenahora

at Sony, and he was just —

he just believed that
I had a perspective that mattered.

And I actually asked him
if he could please hold my songs

from being pitched
to other artists.

I was like, just give me some time
to try to get a record deal.

I'm going to try so hard.

I could almost compare it
to the Brill Building.

They have these
offices on Music Row, or

at least
they had a lot of them then,

that were like these small houses,
these, like, cottages and bungalows.

Now we have really tall buildings.

Basically, you'd go there
and there'd be three songwriters

writing in this room,
three songwriters

in this room, four
in this room, two in this room.

And I would just go to school,

then my mom would drive me downtown

30 minutes, and I would go
and I'd have a songwriting session

with someone
that I'd never met before.

But I really didn't want to

come in
unprepared. So I'd walk in with

four to five nearly finished

things, two half-finished things, 10 hooks.

Because I just never wanted people

to be like, “Yeah,
there's this, like, little kid

that thinks she can swan her way
into Music Row,

and just, like, write songs
with these hit songwriters.”

But I think one
of my favorite things about

the Nashville
music scene, country music

and the storytelling, where it was
when I arrived there —

there was almost this tradition of
sort of breaking the fourth wall,

making the song
then a part of the song,

or the writing of the song
becomes a part of the song.

And I did that in a song called
“Tim McGraw,”

where, you know, I'm
singing about this,

this kind of love lost and hoping
that person thinks of me.

And then in the bridge,
it's revealed

that I wrote this song,
and I hope he hears it.

The song “Our Song,”
which I still love so much,

it's all about this romance,
and this relationship.

And then in the end it says,

"I grabbed a pen and an old napkin /
And I wrote down our song.”

So I loved doing that.

I still kind of love doing that.

That kind of just like —
“And it was me!”

[I grabbed a pen and an old napkin /

and I wrote down our song.]

My favorite end plot twist,
I think, that I've done in

songwriting is the ending
of “The Last Great American Dynasty.”

That's my favorite one.

It is just so much fun to, like,

to tell this story about this
real woman who lived in history,

and she defied the social norms,
and she drove people crazy,

and she had a marvelous time
ruining everything.

And you talk about the house
she lived in on the coast.

And basically then in the end,
you're like,

you know,
she moved away from Holiday House.

It sat quietly on that beach,
free of women

with madness, their men
and bad habits,

and then it was bought by me.

And you're like —
every time I get to that part,

when I would sing it on tour,
I just, like, have to kind of like —

like I wanted my grin to go from
here to here, but that looks crazy.

So it's like I had to,
like, taper down my own excitement

that that —
that that hook happened.

[And then it was bought by me.]

I learned you can't ever

really tell if other people
are going to like it.

But oftentimes
when I love it to a certain degree,

that kind of tends
to match up with people.

And it could be that it doesn't

match up with the way people feel
until six, six years later.

I loved the “Reputation” album.

I was like,
“You guys say what you want.

I know what I did,
I love it, like, go with God, sorry.

Like, you can come around if you want.

It's OK if you don't.”

And then, you know, six or seven years
later, people are like, “Oh, my God.”

Like, “...Ready For It?”

People slept on that song.

[Are you ready for it?]

When we were making that song,
I just remember, like,

I wanted to headbang myself
through a wall.

I felt that when it when
we wrote “...Ready For It?”

I felt that way during — writing
“Getaway Car,”

I felt that way.

I think the first —
I think the first time I felt like,

“I don't care if people hate this
because I love it

so much,” was when I wrote the song
“Love Story” when I was 17,

sitting in my bedroom

mad at my parents

because they wouldn't let me go on
a date. With a guy who was too old,

so I shouldn't have been on a date
with him anyway.

And this is why you need to

discipline your kids,
because they might write songs.

That go No. 1.

When I wrote “Speak Now,”

I was 18 and 19, and I was

coming from this big,
massive moment that I had with

an album called “Fearless,”
and it had won Album

of the Year at the Grammys,
and it was this big —

It was the first time there was like,

this big debate over
whether I deserved to be there.

There are always going to be
little debates.

Do you know what I mean?

But this was, like, headline news.

I was like,

these discussions
can lead to a really bad place

if I don't do something
to counteract them

and to prove that, no,

it wasn't my co-writers
that did all this work.

And yes, I am the author of

this entire body of work
that I was very proud of.

I had written so many songs alone.

I love collaboration,
I love co-writers,

but it's not something
that I needed.

It’s when I started to trust myself
as an editor, because a lot of

what I'll do in a session even now,

and one of the reasons why
Liz Rose and Jack Antonoff

became people
that I loved to write with for

albums and albums, is because

I'll have this stream
of consciousness pouring out,

and Liz would sit there
with a notepad.

But when you take that away,

I just started, you know,
recording everything, right?

Recording everything
on a voice memo,

because there will be times
when I'm like,

kind of in a zone,
and I'm writing so fast

that there's no chance I'm going

to remember what that melody was
that I did,

you know, two minutes ago
that I thought was cool for the

the verse.

That was a really important
album for me in terms of —

in terms of
becoming a writer

that knew
I could trust my own intuition.

I have little phonetic things.

I love alliterations.

I love, you know, two — two words
that start with the same letter.

Love that.
I don't like to have a word end

with the same letter
that the next word starts with.

For example, in the song “Our Song,”
it was supposed to be

“When you're on the phone
and you talk real low.”

But I was like,

I don't like the ‘real low.’”

So it turned into

“When you talk real slow.”
Certain words just fly for me.

And I think one of the reasons
I like to take

either age-old, cautionary
sort of phrases

or things that you've heard in
books, films,

kind of these classic lines,
and then repurpose them,

inverting them, or redefining
them in some way, is because

I sort of love the combination
of modern vernacular

and sort of old world,
or classic, timeless speak.

So in the song “The Fate of Ophelia,”

there's a lot of sort of modern
terminology and speak

and kind of common phrases
from the way that we talk now.

But there's also like
in the bridge, it's — there's a line

from “Hamlet” that I repurposed.

[Locked inside my memory.

And only you possess the key.]

I really gravitate towards
juxtaposition and polarity

in a line, right.

So, "Hey, what could you possibly get
for the girl who has everything

and nothing all at once?" "Our
coming of age has come and gone."

You take one word
that's at the beginning of

the phrase,
and then you take its opposite.

Because ultimately, like,
we are all filled with

polarity, hypocrisy,
these kind of battling

features and factors that make up
our jagged personalities.

I have my phone,
and I have this file where

I'll just be like,
"I know I like that,” or

“I know I like
that word,” or “I know I like

that question,”

and then
when I'll go into a session —

I don't have social media
on my phone.

It looks like
I'm just endlessly scrolling,

but I'm scrolling through words —
like, the words in my file.

If we're in the middle of writing
a song, I'm searching for

a perfect line

that I thought of four years ago
at 3 in the morning.

I think the importance
for me of a bridge,

it just feels like we're painting
a picture, we're setting a scene.

We have this opportunity as a
songwriter to tell an entire story,

an entire movie
or or a very detailed description

of one scene in a movie,
or a very nuanced dynamic

between people,
or a complicated emotion,

and we have only so long to do
this.

You know,

I've written
some really long songs in my life,

but for the most part,

they're between three and a half
and four minutes.

You can start
painting the picture in the verse.

You can get to the heart of it
at the chorus.

But then the bridge can be
where you zoom back,

you walk 20 feet back,

and you see what this entire
painting was supposed to be.

You've seen brushstrokes,
you've seen the color tones,

but the bridge can be when you
step back and you feel everything

that that piece of art
was supposed to make you feel.

That's just how I feel about bridges.

I came up as a songwriter
in Nashville, where structure

is a huge part of how you
effectively tell a story, right?

You go verse, chorus, second verse,
chorus, bridge, chorus.

Maybe you repeat that first verse
if you want to —

if you want to pull at some
heartstrings, if it makes sense.

Now, that's something
that I absolutely subscribe to,

that idea that it's — you
know, structure is important.

But I think that when you write
enough songs, at least in my case,

the intuitive
part of your songwriting brain

can kind of create a new structure

that's not as classically
what you've been taught.

Like, Jack
Antonoff is a collaborator of mine

and one of my best friends.

We established
this thing that we love to do

and we call it the rant bridge.

I could point to examples like,
“Out of the Woods,” “Is It Over Now?”

“Cruel Summer.”

And oftentimes we love these rant
bridges, where it's basically like,

stream of consciousness,
endless pouring-out of emotion,

intrusive thoughts, blended with metaphor,

with discussion, with shouting — you want this rant bridge

to feel the most intense
of what that feeling is that you're

trying to,

establish
over the course of the song

and you want it to kind of
be a crescendo.

[Ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?

He looks up, grinnin' like a devil.
It's new]

We usually love those so much
that we then bring them back.

So we'll go, you know, verse,
chorus, verse, chorus, rant bridge —

sometimes, like, a

little post-coda
to that rant bridge —

last chorus,
bring the rant bridge back,

maybe with the chorus
chords underneath it. [sighs]

The “Mirrorball” bridge, this was Jack
sending me a track during Covid

and me immediately knowing that
it needed to be about how I felt

as a performer and an entertainer,

within this moment

when entertainment and art
has effectively shut down.

I'm still going to stand
on this tightrope,

I'm still up on the trapeze,

I'm still going to try

to do tricks for you.
But at the same time, you know,

being a person in the public eye,

I've really begun to realize
that you are a mirror.

Like, you are a mirror
for your fans,

for the media, for people
on the internet, for just random —

just people
who don't even really care

about your music,
but they know who you are.

However they feel about themselves
and their life

will be projected
on to how they perceive you.

[Spinning in my highest
heels, love, shining just for you.]

A public person who makes art

is a mirror ball.

And that's part of
why I've been able to keep my wits

about me through all of this.

Because I know that, and I'm really
kind of aware of that dynamic,

but I'm still endlessly fascinated

by people, by the human experience,
by why people are the way they are,

by the ways that they feel emotion.

I think that's what keeps us
connected, even though, you know,

you can make these kind of, like,
shockingly vulnerable confessions

within a song by being like,
“I've never been a natural.

All I do is try,
try, try,” and you say that at first,

and I remember

writing that and being like,
“Oh, my God, this,

this feels like —
do you want to say this?”

And I'm like, “Actually, I feel like
a lot of people feel that way.”

That always overrides my discomfort
with if a line feels too true,

because I don't really think that
there's anything that's too true.

The whole thing with “All Too Well”

was that this was a very emotional rant

that I did in, like, a soundcheck.

We were rehearsing for
the Speak Now tour.

I was very sad, in a way that,
you know, you're like,

you're 21 years old and you're
just excruciatingly —

it's just, like, you are —
sadness is you.

You are sadness.

I just — in a break,

I just started playing the same
four chords over and over again.

It's basically the same four chords

over and over again
for the whole song,

and it just became this thing
where I just started

rambling and this thing went on
for a really, really long time.

It was like more than 10 minutes
that this rambling rant went on,

and it wasn't cohesive,
and it wasn't really

that structured,
but it felt afterward like —

I think my mom
or somebody went up to

the sound guy and was like, “Did you, by
any chance, record any of that?”

And he was like, “Yeah, I did.”

And I would have
walked away from it

if he didn't
have a recording of it.

So I went back and listened to it,

and I was like, “Oh, here's
this 10-minute, like, basically

catharsis of intense emotion.”

Like there's some really angry,
scathing parts that I was like,

“Kind of going to have to make
this into a song that's a little

bit more palatable,”
because I already felt so like raw

putting that song out, as detailed
as it was.

So then it goes out into the world.

It didn't make a lot of noise,
that song

for the first six months to a year,
but then the fans,

the fans just did a thing
that they've done a few times

where this song just keeps
bubbling up.

They did this with “Cruel Summer” too,

where they're just like:
“No, we like it.

We don't care
if a label wants to put it out.

We love this one.”

So I ended up playing it on the Grammys.

[And you call me up again /
Just to break me like a promise.]

I made the mistake of kind of
explaining how the song came to be

in an interview.

It ended up being a really fortuitous
mistake that turned into being like,

“Oh, I'm so glad that happened.”

But for years the fans were like,
“Give us the 10-minute version,

give us the 10-minute version.”

And I was going back

through diaries and finding
like little fragments of it.

And I didn't have the
old thing anymore.

So I was looking through safes,
trying to find the CD,

but I had to go back and piece
together lyrics and stuff.

But it was —
that was the most extensive

restoration process
I've ever done on a song.

I don't think I'll ever experience
anything like that again.

There are so many different ways
that a song begins in my world.

I'll take an example, like,

the song “Elizabeth Taylor.”

I'm riding in the car with Travis.

I go on and on
and explaining to Travis, like,

why I love Elizabeth Taylor
so much.

“She fought for artists' rights.

She was exploited in so many ways,
and yet she kept her humanity.

She kept her humor.

She kept her passion for life.”
And I'm just going on and on.

And like her eyes were violet.
Some people said they were blue.

Some people said they were violet.
I think they were violet.

And we arrive, we get home,
he gets out of the car

and I'm just in my head.

I'm like this
intrusive melody of like,

"I'd cry my eyes violet,
Elizabeth Taylor."

And I'm just, like,
scrambling to open my

my record app on my phone.

[I'd cry my eyes violet
Elizabeth Taylor. Tell me for real]

But that's like one of those
spontaneous places

where it floats down
like a cloud in front of you,

and all you have to do is grab it.

And the song transpires from there.

It comes as if from nowhere.

That's a really fun way
that songs come about.

That's the way it happens,
most of the time.

Another way
that a song could happen

is that someone, a producer
that I love to work

with, like Aaron Dessner
or Jack Antonoff,

could make an instrumental,

send it to me —

and immediately I'll write what's
called a topline on top of it.

That's the vocal melody
and the lyrics.

Another way of writing songs

is that you're in the room
with your collaborator,

and one of you starts playing
something like, for example,

Jack starts playing this piano part,

and it turns into this song called
“New Year's Day.” That piano part

was just enough
to springboard the entire song.

[There’s glitter on the floor
after the party.]

Writing sessions is a way
that I love to write,

because you're all in the room,

everyone's bringing ideas,
everyone's chiming in.

I always apply the rule
“May the best idea win.”

I don't care
if it came from you, you or me —

if it's better, that's
what goes in the song.

And I do kind of like it when
people challenge me on something,

because I never want to be
in the room with creators

who are afraid that if
if they have a better idea,

they can't,
they can't argue with me,

because it must be my idea
that makes it through.

I'm never going to grow that way.

Well, I think that,

you know, the 2010s was a time

for women in the entertainment
industry that, like,

we don't need — we need — like,
we'll talk about it later.

We're all just still — we're
all still limping away from that.

And I think that conversations
are much more healthy now around

“There's a difference between art

and like, going
and ranting on an Instagram Live.”

Like, there's a difference.
This is a song.

This takes craft, this takes skill,
this takes expertise.

But I also am really excited

that, like, I'm a massive, Sombr
fan, of his songwriting,

and his lyrics are so intensely
confessional.

“I don't want
another man's child

to have the eyes of the girl
I can't forget.”

Are you kidding me?

Having a male artist
say stuff like that is really good

for the cause of women
to be able to say stuff.

If there's any way
we can make confessional

songwriting a little bit
more of something that isn't like —

people take that as sort of like
you were being messy or whatever.

You have to be fair

to everyone, then. Are rap beefs messy,

or are they confessional?

Like, we've got to just —

let's make it a music conversation
rather than just ganging up

on the female artists.

And I think the more male artists
that are messy,

or emotionally complex,
or confessional, or upset,

the happier I am.

I can only speak to me,

but as I've grown up,
the intensity of the sort of no-pun-

intended “message in a bottle” nature
of my songwriting has shifted

and changed into something else.

It used to be like,

“I can't tell a person how I feel,
so I'll write it in this song.”

And that was really important
for me at the time

that it was important for me.

It's also, you know, important
when you're in your early 20s,

and there's someone

you shouldn't talk to,
and you don't want to call them,

because they're bad
for you, and it's toxic. So you just —

you write it in the song,
and that's where it lives.

Like almost as a method of self-control,

or self-preservation,
or something. But,

for the “Folklore” album and
everything like that, it was really —

it wasn't as a response
to having a public life

and the intrusions that
come with that.

It was really more of just wanting
to challenge myself as a writer.

I really have always
just thought it would be so amazing

to write books,

and it's so exciting
to have the challenge of, could I —

could I get enough plot points
in a 3-and-a-half minute song

to where people felt like they read
something after they heard it,

or just take you back to that
bedtime story kind of —

“Tell me a story."

I want to be able to put my own
image on these characters.

And it was really amazing
when — it opened up my world.

I don't think my songwriting has
ever been the same after “Folklore.”

I have always had a little bit
of that sort of character

play in my songwriting since.

And I hope it never goes
anywhere, because it's really fun.

[You heard the rumors from Inez /
You can't believe a word she says / Most times,

but this time, it was true.]

I kind of like being a narrator

that's not the person I relate to.

So the narrator in “Clara Bow”
is either a studio —

like a Hollywood studio person,
or a label

executive who's sitting in my mind
behind a desk and meeting

with a brand-new starlet
who has just come to town.

The exec says: “You look like Clara
Bow in this light.

It's remarkable.

You're so special. You're amazing.

We're going to make
you just like her.”

In my mind,
that girl was Stevie Nicks, right?

So Stevie Nicks sits down.

They tell her she looks like
Clara Bow.

She's got those big moon eyes.

And, "We're going to make you
just like her.

Don't worry.

We're going to put you through
this machine and you'll be a god.”

The second verse says,
“You look like Stevie Nicks

in this light, the hair and lips.”

So in my mind, that was me that
sat down opposite that desk, right?

I sit down at a record label
and they're like:

“You look like Stevie Nicks. we’ll
make you the next Stevie Nicks.”

And basically you learn that like,
you're in this machine and they're

trying to make you into
a woman that they just idealized

and then discarded.

Like, the entertainment
industry love-bombs women, right?

“We love you.”

“We don't know who you are.
Why are you even here?”

And so in the last verse,
in my mind, it's a new artist

that sits down across from a record-label desk

and they say: “You look like
Taylor Swift in this light.

We're loving it. You've got edge.
She never did.

The future is bright, dazzling.”

And because that's also
another thing that you get

when you're a female in the music
or the entertainment industry,

movies, whatever.

It's like,

“Oh, you're like, you're like
this person that we” —

they name a big name,
and they're like, “Oh, but

you're going to be so much better.

It's gonna be so, no, no,
no, it's gonna be cooler.

You're going to be
so much better.”

Like, to offset
the comparison.

On “Red,” there was a song that I
wrote alone in a hotel room

when I was 22 years old
called “Nothing New,” where I'm —

it sounds ridiculous,

but at 22 years old,
I felt completely washed up.

I felt like maybe
the only thing that made me special

was that I was this, like,
“teen phenom,”

whatever I was looked at as.

So I wrote this song, and it includes
lines like

“How can a person know
everything at 18 and nothing at 22?”

Because when I was 18,

I had the “Fearless” album come out,
and I had my first international

No. 1s,
and everybody was like:

“Oh, this writing it, it's so true.

It's so honest.

She feels like
she deserves to be here.”

And then there was this big
upheaval of: “No, she doesn't.

No, she doesn't.

She sucks, actually.”

And it was,

it was like, it really turned
the tables on my perception of, of —

like, love can be so

quickly handed to you
and then taken away, and it's this

kind of strange thing
with fame,

and that was the first time
I ever grappled with that.

Somebody was like, “Oh, you're 22
years old, and you're saying:

’Are you tired of me?

If you're not yet,
are you going to get tired of me?’”

Because it's usually something

that you would sing
about later in life.

But the entertainment industry,
I'll tell you, there's 10 years

for every year you're in
it, but it’s fun.

Songwriting is something that,

it’s a very intimate,
tiny little thing, for me.

I have a lot of things
I like to do.

I like to bake.

I like to make art,
I like to paint,

I like to sew, I like to write
songs, and I try to keep it as

dear to me as those other things
I just named.

I have to know that there's
certain things that we have as

a tradition between me and my fans.

They love for an emotional song
to be Track 5.

There's like special things
like that, but at the same time

there's sort of

so many
of them now, which is great,

but there's corners of my fan base

who are going to take things
to a really extreme place.

There's nothing I can do about that.

There's people
who are going to try to like,

do detective work,
figure out the details.

“Who is that about? What is this?”

When it gets a little bit
weird for me is

when people act like it's
sort of a paternity test,

like, “This song's about that person.”
Because I'm like,

“That dude didn't write the song,

I did.” But that's part of it.

You have to hold tight
to your perception of your art

and your relationship with it,

and then you just kind of
have to, like — [blows] “There it goes.

Hope you like it.

If you don't now, hope you do in
five years,” and it, like —

and if you never do,
then I was doing it for me anyway.

Yeah, criticism
has been a huge fuel for me.

It's been a huge jumping-off point,
like a creative-writing prompt

or something.

There are so many songs

in my career that would not exist,
like “Blank Space,” would not exist

if I hadn't had people being like,
“Here's a slideshow

of all her boyfriends.”

And then “Anti-Hero” is a song
that I'm so proud of, still.

Like, that song doesn't exist

if I don't get criticized
for every aspect of my personality

that people
have a problem with or whatever.

[Did you hear my covert narcissism
I disguise as altruism]

My favorite thing
when I sit down with new artists

or songwriters is, I'm like:
Why are you reading your comments?

Like, that's too much of it.

Like,

that's — you're inundating
yourself with too much criticism

that doesn't really have a focus.

But I think a little bit of it,

you got to just be like,
This is part of it.

Like, don't make this
make you stop writing

or make you edit yourself
or whatever.

If it's an interesting point to you
to kind of respond to, then

that's a gift for you
to be able to write something —

maybe you wouldn't
have written something that day.

But don't, like, God.

Don't go to the, like, Notes app

and post it.
Like, write about it.

Make art about this.

Don't respond
to trolls in your comments.

That's not what we want from you.

We want your art.