f for the guy naruto running behind the reporter
The Rolling Stone Interview: Taylor Swift
By: Brian Hiatt for The Rolling Stone Magazine Date: September 18th 2019
In her most in-depth and introspective interview in years, Swift tells all about the rocky road to ‘Lover’ and much, much more.
Taylor Swift bursts into her mom’s Nashville kitchen, smiling, looking remarkably like Taylor Swift. (That red-lip, classic thing? Check.) “I need someone to help dye my hair pink,” she says, and moments later, her ends match her sparkly nail polish, sneakers, and the stripes on her button-down. It’s all in keeping with the pastel aesthetic of her new album, Lover; black-leather combat-Taylor from her previous album cycle has handed back the phone. Around the black-granite kitchen island, all is calm and normal, as Swift’s mom, dad, and younger brother pass through. Her mom’s two dogs, one very small, one very large, pounce upon visitors with slurping glee. It could be any 29-year-old’s weekend visit with her parents, if not for the madness looming a few feet down the hall.
In an airy terrace, 113 giddy, weepy, shaky, still-in-disbelief fans are waiting for the start of one of Swift’s secret sessions, sacred rituals in Swift-dom. She’s about to play them her seventh album, as-yet unreleased on this Sunday afternoon in early August, and offer copious commentary. Also, she made cookies. Just before the session, Swift sits down in her mom’s study (where she “operates the Google,” per her daughter) to chat for a few minutes. The black-walled room is decorated with black-and-white classic-rock photos, including shots of Bruce Springsteen and, unsurprisingly, James Taylor; there are also more recent shots of Swift posing with Kris Kristofferson and playing with Def Leppard, her mom’s favorite band.
In a corner is an acoustic guitar Swift played as a teenager. She almost certainly wrote some well-known songs on it, but can’t recall which ones. “It would be kind of weird to finish a song and be like, ‘And this moment, I shall remember,’'” she says, laughing. “‘This guitar hath been anointed with my sacred tuneage!'”
The secret session itself is, as the name suggests, deeply off-the-record; it can be confirmed that she drank some white wine, since her glass pops up in some Instagram pictures. She stays until 5 a.m., chatting and taking photos with every one of the fans. Five hours later, we continue our talk at length in Swift’s Nashville condo, in almost exactly the same spot where we did one of our interviews for her 2012 Rolling Stone cover story. She’s hardly changed its whimsical decor in the past seven years (one of the few additions is a pool table replacing the couch where we sat last time), so it’s an old-Taylor time capsule. There’s still a huge bunny made of moss in one corner, and a human-size birdcage in the living room, though the view from the latter is now of generic new condo buildings instead of just distant green hills. Swift is barefoot now, in pale-blue jeans and a blue button-down tied at the waist; her hair is pulled back, her makeup minimal.
gave you so much, but it wasn’t enough.
“The moments of my true story on that album are songs like “Delicate,” “New Year’s Day,” “Call It What You Want,” “Dress.” The one-two punch, bait-and-switch of Reputation is that it was actually a love story. It was a love story in amongst chaos. All the weaponized sort of metallic battle anthems were what was going on outside. That was the battle raging on that I could see from the windows, and then there was what was happening inside my world — my newly quiet, cozy world that was happening on my own terms for the first time. . . . It’s weird, because in some of the worst times of my career, and reputation, dare I say, I had some of the most beautiful times — in my quiet life that I chose to have. And I had some of the most incredible memories with the friends I now knew cared about me, even if everyone hated me. The bad stuff was really significant and damaging. But the good stuff will endure. The good lessons — you realize that you can’t just show your life to people.”
— Taylor in Rolling Stone magazine about the “good parts” of reputation
mood
I’m always in the pilot seat, trying to fly the plane that is my career in exactly the direction I want to take it. But there was a time when I just had to throw my hands up and say, “Guys, I can’t. I can’t do this. I need you to just take over for me and I’m just going to disappear.” (x)
i hate two boys
lmfao "trump is like the guy on wizard of oz when you pull back the curtain and it's a really small dude" that was so funny, I give her that one
Knew bein ugly would come in handy 😌
We bless the rains on Cornelia Street, memorize the creaks in the floor
but then something happened one magical night; i forgot that you existed
TAYLOR SANG CORNELIA STREET ALL TOO WELL AND RED TONIGHT TAYLOR DECLARED ITS THE FALL SEASON WHIP OUT YOUR SCARVES AND PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES BITCHES
“So there’s a song that I wrote on this album alone. And I wrote this song actually when I was in the bathtub! So, anyway, just for context. A lot of the time, I write songs about nostalgia, and a lot of memories. I like to go back over memories. You know, I use songs almost like photographs, so that I can go back and remember a time, and remember exactly what it was like to experience it. And uh, this is definitely one of those nostalgia songs.”
— Taylor before Cornelia Street at the City of Lover concert
You made us proud 💖
Taylor Swift + most autumnal songs 🍂
when taylor swift said "where are the wise men? darling i'm scared" we all felt that