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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2014 4:51:32 GMT
"The last couple of years have been about defining life on my own terms," the pop star explains in People's 40th anniversary issue. "Being on my own, prioritizing my girlfriends, my family and my music above everything else and trying things I never thought I'd try. It's a really liberating and freeing time." Swift's new music is a reflection of her current state. "Emotionally speaking, 1989 is not a heartbreak record. My music is derived from what's happening in my personal life, and I haven't had my heart broke," the singer-songwriter tells the magazine. "You're not going to her, oh, like, 'boyfriend dissing.'" In a candid interview during a London stop on the press tour for her new album 1989 (pre-order it now here), the Grammy winner opens up about replacing headlines about boyfriends and breakups with a new focus on her chart-topping career – including her smash single, "Shake It Off." "I made the decision to spend time on my own and figure out who I am," she says of embracing the single life. "When you take the other person out of the scenario and you're walking through life on your own, you end up figure out what you actually like without anyone else's input." Although she has famously explored what she calls "crazy love" in her past work, 1989 is different. "Emotionally speaking, it's not a heartbreak record," Swift, 24, tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. "My music is derived from what's happening in my personal life, and I haven't had my heart broken." "When I'm deeply hurt by something, I usually respond by writing exactly how I feel about it in a song," she says, "but I just haven't been devastated in the last couple of years." Instead, the "freeing time" Swift has experienced lately has led her to take her music in a new direction. "My music before this has been very guitar-heavy, live drums, it's had a very acoustic sound at its core," says Swift. "This is a sound that's based in synth pop and keyboards and automated drums and vocal layering." "I'm not going to compromise the happiness and independence that I've found for just anybody. The idea of a date gives me a partial panic attack!" the seven-time Grammy Award winner says. "It includes 40 paparazzi cameras shooting through windows at us, and that's not relaxing or alluring for me. That makes me want to crawl under the couch and hide! But I'm fine! I have two cats. That's all I need." "It would take an astonishing human for me to even consider getting back into a relationship. It would take something really, really, really, really different—a kind of a one-in-a-million person for me to face all that," she adds. "I don't have any kid of idea who I'd want to be with, because I don't have any pieces missing from my life right now. I'm not looking for anything to complete. I think that's a nice place to be."
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Post by Admin on Oct 12, 2014 5:39:06 GMT
Taylor Swift's 1989 is almost no longer a secret. However ahead of its Oct. 27 release date, Swift treated a few more lucky fans to one of her #1989SecretSessions. On Saturday (Oct. 11), the "Shake It Off" singer shared a collage of snapshots from the fan-attended listening session held in London. She wrote, "The London #1989SecretSessions were as outrageous and hilarious and sweet as I dreamed they'd be. #fundon." She previously held these album preview meet-ups in New York City and Los Angeles. In an interview on BBC America's The Graham Norton Show, which aired Friday (Oct. 10), she revealed how she recruited the lucky Swifties who attended the private listening parties. "I found them on the Internet," she said, adding, "I would go online and I would look at their Instagram pages, or their Twitter or their Tumblr or whatever and I just kind of watched them for months and months." While fans have been listening to 1989's lead single, "Shake It Off," on repeat, they will soon be treated to a new track from the release. She will drop the song "Out of the Woods" next week. "To clarify, what is coming in the next few days is a new song that I think best represents #1989. It is NOT my next single. #ShakeItOff," she shared ahead of its debut.
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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2014 4:47:53 GMT
Taylor Swift released this behind the scenes video of when she lured people into her several homes to force them to listen to her new album and eat homemade cookies. She called these events the #1989SecretSessions. Besides the obvious stuff happening like fans being really excited to meet Taylor Swift, we learned that Taylor bakes in a ’50s style apron while wearing a turtleneck and heels. She puts the cookies into the oven HERSELF. She uses a British flag patterned oven mitt to take the hot tray out of the oven. She serves said cookies to everyone. She lets people play with her cat.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2014 4:45:33 GMT
In addition to being 2014's probable best-selling album, Taylor Swift's 1989, out next week, could be crucial to salvaging the record industry's holiday shopping season in a terrible sales year. Week after week, the biggest music stars have put out what appeared to be blockbuster albums, selling up to a few hundred thousand copies in the first week, then quickly dropping out of the Top 10. Album sales have been down 14 percent all year, and single sales have dropped 13 percent, according to Nielsen Soundscan. "She will be the big fish," says Ish Cuebas, vice president of music merchandising for national record chain Trans World Entertainment. "The overall release schedule this year has been weak compared to last year. The big title last year for the fourth quarter was Eminem — Taylor will more than make up for Eminem." In October, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Lady Antebellum and Florida Georgia Line were supposed to lead a country stampede into kicking off the crucial fourth quarter — but all have sold fewer copies than expected. "One of the things that the industry was counting on was country," says a source at a major record label. "The early returns are definitely a little disappointing. It does put more pressure on Taylor." One of the key reasons for the sales drop is the industry's shift from selling CDs and downloads to streaming and subscription services such as Spotify and YouTube. Streaming jumped 42 percent by mid-2014, according to Nielsen Soundscan. But album sales still bring in more money than streaming, and it's unclear whether YouTube ad revenue and $10-a-month subscriptions to services such as Spotify, Beats Music and Rhapsody will make up for the sales drops. "The industry is going to go through a rocky couple of years as it makes that transition," says a source at another major record label.
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Post by Admin on Oct 26, 2014 4:35:36 GMT
This year, no new title has cracked the one-million-sales mark — a symbolic milestone — and album sales over all are down 14 percent from the same period last year. According to Billboard magazine, “1989” is projected to sell at least 800,000 copies in its debut week. It was the culmination of a long transition in her music toward pop and came as little surprise to her fans or the industry at large. But the break with country was definitive. The first single, “Shake It Off,” was a hit on Top 40 radio and went straight to No. 1, yet it was largely ignored by country programmers. While Ms. Swift’s record company, Big Machine, had sent country stations special remixes of some of her earlier pop-leaning songs, no such effort was made with “Shake It Off.” The biggest hurdle for the success of “1989” may simply be the slumping world of music retail, with downloads now joining CDs as a declining format. Spotify and other streaming services, while growing in popularity, are not tracked in the same way as sales, and so far, the revenue those outlets generate has not made up for the drop in the number of albums sold. Even if “1989” sells only 800,000 copies in its first week, that would more than double the next-biggest showing of the year, when Coldplay sold 383,000 copies of “Ghost Stories” in May. Big albums are expected later this year by One Direction, Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar, but Ms. Swift’s release is expected to be the most popular by far.
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