All Things Taylor Thread

Swift has, as she puts it, “had a lot of very… off the wall things happen” at awards shows, whether going home with so many trophies you feel embarrassed for the other performers or being interrupted on stage at 2009’s MTV VMAs, when Kanye West decided Swift’s Best Female Video nod was an insult to Beyoncé. “I’m one of the few [to have experienced that] – and the other one is in the next dressing room,” she says, gesturing towards the wall. “Did you know Beck’s here?”



Singer-songwriter Beck, target of West’s ire at this year’s Grammys, is tonight’s guest performer. So is this some kind of survivors club? “No, me and Kanye are on such good terms now, six years later,” says Swift. “It took a while... But I had to tell Beck this story earlier. I was at dinner with Kanye a week after the Grammys, he stops what he’s saying and he goes, ‘What is this song? I need to listen to this every day.’ I say, ‘It’s Beck, it’s on an album called ‘Morning Phase’, I think you’ve heard of it…’ We just burst out laughing. And he says, ‘Hey, sometimes I’m wrong.’”



Taylor Swift is experiencing a funny kind of fame. Her album ‘1989’ is a cultural milestone, a new generation’s answer to ‘Thriller’. While that album’s mega-success set Michael Jackson on course for a peculiar life, he arguably had an easier ride than Swift. She lives in a world in which her every word, move, outfit and Instagram post is dissected in real time. “I’m in the news every single day for multiple different reasons,” she says. “And it can feel, at times, if you let your anxiety get the better of you, like everybody’s waiting for you to really mess up – and then you’ll be done. A lot of the time I need to call my mom and talk for a really long time, just to remind myself of all the things that are great and all the things that matter. If you do something that defines your character to be not what the public thought you were, that’s the biggest risk.”



Swift seems preternaturally well adjusted for a 25-year-old operating under such intense scrutiny, but she’s far from her first flurry of success. Having moved her family from Pennsylvania to Nashville, she signed to RCA Records at 14 and tapped into an under-served market of teenage country music fans. “In 10 years of touring and writing albums, and having my confessional songwriting misunderstood, misconstrued, paraphrased, investigated, I’ve never wavered. This is the way I want to live my life,” she says. Does she ever think about the things she’s lost in her pursuit of a music career? She looks back incredulously. “There’s nothing I would change about my life!” You wouldn’t like to be able to walk down the street unnoticed? “Nah! I want to play stadiums.” She extends both hands as if weighing the options. “Playing stadiums... walking down the street... I’d choose playing stadiums. It’s a trade-off. There’s no way to travel two roads at once. You pick one. And if you don’t like the road you’re on, you change direction. You don’t sit there and go, ‘Oh, I wish I could have all the good things in the world and none of the bad things.’ It doesn’t work like that.”