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Taylor Swift opens up about everything from her enemies to her love life in her first major interview of 2015. During Grammys weekend, the superstar sat down with The Telegraph to reflect on both her personal and professional lives.
Surprisingly, Swift’s chat with the outlet began by confessing her anxieties. “I worry about everything all the time,” she admits. “We could do our entire interview me telling you how many things I’ve worried about since breakfast. ‘The Neuroses of Taylor Swift’ is probably going to be the article headline.” For the record, it wasn’t, with The Telegraph instead honing in on comments Swift gives about the difficulty of having a relationship with her mega-career.
The topic actually came up several times, including when Swift shared that she was nervous that recent photos of herself and Hozier would spark romantic rumors. Of course, she was right, and Gossip Cop corrected the inaccurate speculation. She tells The Telegraph, “I just got so freaked out that people were going to say I was dating him. I started thinking, ‘I can’t let this ruin my friendships with dudes.’ I didn’t let it ruin my friendship with Ed [Sheeran] — they always said we were dating and we never were. But sometimes I get really scared.”
And then there’s the love life aspect of her music. “There was a bit of a reputation for having a lot of boy-bashing songs. Which is a sexist way of saying heartbreak songs. To trivialize someone who’s heartbroken is really cruel. But people have to simplify things. Everybody’s got busy lives, they don’t have time to form a complex opinion of me and my music,” says Swift. She continues, “I’m in a different place in my life, where love isn’t really a priority. I haven’t dated anyone in years so there’s less chatter about the serial dater thing. I’m just really excited at an awards show when they don’t make some weird joke about my dating life.”
When the interviewer asks Swift where she sees herself in five years, she “gasps” upon the realization that she’ll be 30, and candidly says, “I’ll probably still be single, let’s be honest.” The singer explains, “No one’s going to sign up for this and everything that goes with it. Like, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, want a date? Do you love camera flashes? I hope you do!’ I don’t know what’s going to happen if I’m ever content in a relationship — no idea how that’s going to work. I don’t even know if that’s possible with the life I have.”
Swift then jokingly gives a third-person prediction, saying, “In five years’ time she’ll be so afraid of everything, she doesn’t leave her house. She’s just surrounded by cats. So many cats, they’ve divided themselves up into armies and she wanders around lint-rolling the couch that no one’s going to sit on because she’s afraid to have people over.”
But what if she does find love? How will it affect the music? “If that does happen, I think I could find complexity in happiness,” says Swift. “I don’t think anything’s ever simple. Just because you’re happy in a relationship doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments of confusion or frustration or loneliness or sadness. Hopefully, if I ever find some sort of meaningful relationship, I’ll be able to still find inspiration, just through the everyday ups and downs.”
“I used to think it was important to find a boyfriend,” she tells the outlet. “But I don’t feel that it is now. I just want to have as much fun and as many adventures as possible.” Those “adventures” currently include hanging out with an all-star roster of friends, sending gifts to fans, and, yes, showing off a more grown-up image. That said, Swift notes, “My point is not to be sexy, my point is not to turn masses of people on.”
The star is quick to praise her Swifties, especially for when they mock her. “My fans make fun of me – it’s really cool. They have all these gifs of me making an idiot of myself or tripping and falling on stage. They bring humor back into it for me,” she says, adding, “I get too serious sometimes – you can probably tell – and they bring me back to like, ‘OK, I’m not really doing anything that difficult. I just need to calm down.'”
Swift’s level of interaction with her fans seems unprecedented, from inviting her admirers over to her house to sending packages of gifts she personally bought. Why put in such effort? She tells The Telegraph, “I want to make the most of this cultural relevance or success or whatever you want to call it, because it’s not going to last. I have to be as good a person [as I can] while my name matters to them. Because it’s not always going to matter to kids who are 15 and really struggling with who they want to be or [because] their friends were brutal to them at school that day. That’s actual turmoil. I have to do everything I can to make their day better while I still can.”
And, well, Swift simply finds the gift-giving to be “fun.” “If I go a week without sending something, I start to feel sad. I’m getting to know them on a person-by-person basis. When I pick people to send packages to, I go on their social media sites for the last six months and figure out what they like or what they are going through,” sshe explains. “Do they like photography? I’ll get them a 1980s Polaroid camera. Do they like vintage stuff? I’ll go to an antiques place and get them 1920s earrings. Do they work out a lot? I’ll get them workout stuff. When you actually get to know them on a person-by-person basis, you realize what you’re doing is special and sacred and it matters.’”
But none of that is to say Swift is nice all the time. In fact, she laughingly admits she’s not, saying, “No, because that’s annoying, too. And it’s not real if someone appears to never have any issues with anyone. I have my friends, I have enemies.” She even says, “When I’m with my friends, we don’t say glowing things about everybody. We’re not sitting around [being Stepford-esque], ‘You know who’s really special and wonderful?’ That’s not what we talk about – we’re normal girlfriends.”
Still, while Swift may talk about the likes of supposed enemies like Katy Perry privately, she’s not willing to do so on the record. Nor is she willing to do some other things. “‘I’m not giving them anything to write about. I’m not walking up the street with boys, I’m not stumbling out of clubs drunk. But I’m never going to talk about her in my interview. It’s not going to happen,” she tells The Telegraph. What do you think of Swift’s comments?
