Taylor Swift sat down for her first print interview in four years as part TIME’s cover story honoring her as its 2023 Person of the Year. Over the course of a lengthy discussion with Sam Lanksy that took place in the fall, Swift opened up about her career trajectory, “The Eras Tour,” her relationship with Travis Kelce, and more.
Here’s what we learned…
Time Magazine: We’d like to name you Person of the Yea-
Me: Can I bring my cat. https://t.co/SOhkYKSTwG
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 6, 2023
Swift feels as if 2023 was the “breakout moment” of her career
“I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years. I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away. It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”
“This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been. Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question: ‘Are you not entertained?’”
“The Eras Tour” required extensive physical training
“Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud. Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs… Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones. Learning choreography is not my strong suit.”
Swift also quit drinking — with the exception of Grammys night.
With “The Eras Tour,” Swift wanted fans to get their money’s worth
“They had to work really hard to get the tickets. I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.”
“I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed. That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.”
After playing a run of shows, Swift doesn’t leave bed the next day
“I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there. It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.”
It’s not lost on Swift that “two horrendous things” in her career ultimately proved to be “two great catalysts”
“The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity. The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”
“I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots… Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me… You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard. I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life.”
“With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion. I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold. I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.'”
Swift has since adopted a new mantra
“Nothing is permanent. So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art. But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”
Swift and Travis Kelce have been a couple for a while
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”
“I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in. There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the-camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once. I’m just there to support Travis. I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”
Swift is proud to be a part of what she refers to as “a three-part summer of feminine extravaganza” alongside Barbie and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour”
“To make a fun, entertaining blast of a movie, with that commentary. I cannot imagine how hard that was, and Greta made it look so easy.”
“[Beyoncé] is the most precious gem of a person—warm and open and funny. And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices…
“There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé. Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion. If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine, women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward— Girlhood, feelings, love, breakups, analyzing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We’ve been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right? And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”
Swift teases reputation (Taylor’s Version)
“It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure. I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, Sick snakes and strobe lights.”
The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be “fire,” she promises.
“I’m collecting horcruxes,” she says of her re-recording project. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”
