Those Ice Bucket Challenge videos are getting pushed farther and farther down in your Facebook feed, but Taylor Swift is still soaking wet as she graces the cover of the new Rolling Stone. In jeans and a white tank top, Swift looks over her shoulder as she poses on the beach with her back mostly to the camera. Her hair is wet after a romp in the surf, and her thumbs are hooked in the back pockets of her Levi's.
In the accompanying feature story, the "Shake It Off" singer discusses one thing she doesn't do on camera, which is take it off. "There's someone whose entire job it is to figure out things that I don't want the world to see," Swift tells Rolling Stone. "They look at your career, they look at what you prioritize, and they try to figure out what would be the most revealing or hurtful. Like, I don't take my clothes off in pictures or anything — I'm very private about that. So it scares me how valuable it would be to get a video of me changing. It's sad to have to look for cameras in dressing rooms and bathrooms. I don't walk around naked with my windows open, because there's a value on that."
1. She was in a serious accident with (presumably) Harry Styles. Swift sings in "Out of the Woods," "Remember when you hit the brakes too soon/Twenty stitches in a hospital room." She confessed that the lyric was inspired by a snowmobile accident she was in with an ex (presumably One Direction's Harry Styles) when they were both sent to the hospital. How did the duo keep their wreck out of the news? "You know what I've found works even better than an NDA?" she says. "Looking someone in the eye and saying, 'Please don't tell anyone about this."
2. She has a lady nemesis. Swift's song "Bad Blood" is directed at another female artist who crossed her. "For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, 'Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?'" But soon after that, all was revealed. "She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me," Swift reveals, without naming names. "I was like, 'Oh, we're just straight-up enemies.'"
3. She's a Shoshanna. "I could label all my girlfriends as Shoshannas, Jessas, Marnies or Hannahs," Swift says of Girls, revealing that she identifies with Zosia Mamet's character. "Shoshanna gets excited about things, she's really girly. And when she was in a relationship that was very comfortable, she made the decision to get out and go experience new things on her own. And now she's becoming more sure of herself and taking life head-on, in a way I can relate to. Even though I've never accidentally smoked crack at a warehouse party and run pantsless through Brooklyn." Series creator Lena Dunham disagrees, pegging Swift as "Hannah, minus the horrid sexual behavior. Or Marnie, if she wasn’t an asshole."
4. She's loving the single life. "I feel like watching my dating life has become a bit of a national pastime," she says. "It's not bad that I'm not hopelessly in love with someone. It's not a tragedy, and it's not me giving up and being a spinster. Although I did get another cat."
5. She lives in Peter Jackson's old NYC pad. Swift paid $15 million for her apartment (and $5 million for the unit across the hall) but apparently it was no small feat to see the place. Rolling Stone reveals that the apartment used to belong to Peter Jackson, and his actor friend had been staying there. "Sir Ian McKellen," Swift says. "I think once you're Gandalf, you can always just stay in Peter Jackson's house."
6. Caladium Seguinum. Swift has an antique lamp in her home with "Caladium Seguinum" inscribed on it. Though she took Latin in high school, Swift says she doesn’t know what the phrase means. Rolling Stone's reporter looked it up, and it's hilarious: "It turns out it's a homeopathic remedy for male impotence."
7. She is trying to get Selena Gomez to move to NYC. "Project Selena," she calls it. "I think I can do it."
8. She loves Kendrick Lamar. Surrounded by a swarm of paparazzi and rabid fans, Swift grabs her earbuds. "You want to know a trick to immediately go from feeling victimized to feeling awesome?" she says -- Lamar's "Backseat Freestyle" is her go-to.
9. She's super paranoid. "Don't even get me started on wiretaps," Swift says. "It's not a good thing for me to talk about socially. I freak out." Not only does she worry about paparazzi, she also guards her music fiercely: she'll only play her new tracks on her cell phone, through headphones.
10. The security surrounding Swift Inc. is "terrifying." Says Jack Antonoff, who co-wrote several songs with Swift: "just having her songs on my hard drive makes me feel like I have Russian secrets or something. It's terrifying." Her super-secret "Shake It Off" video shoot was code named "Project Sparrow," the casting for said shoot was called "Project Cardinal," and one fan who posted a photo of her invitation on social media? "She was quickly uninvited, then presumably renditioned to whatever CIA black site holds Swift's enemies," the article states.
11. She loves metaphors. File this under things we already knew, but this article is still chock-full of them. Among the most delightful: A lonely whale and the single life; a man wearing a cat on his head and fame; a blazing bonfire and talented friends; rabbits and music genres.
