Taylor's interview on Hits Radio UK (April 29, 2019)
Gethin: Good morning, Taylor. Thank you so much for being on Hits Radio. Listen, you are Taylor the tease aren't you? How do you keep such a big secret and not tell anyone? That's what we want to know.
Taylor: It's really, really hard. With keeping secrets in terms of, like, song titles and album stuff. You know, it's actually, like, a testament to how much I can trust my friends because I played everything for all of my friends and they never said anything. We were doing—you saw how many dancers were in that video and not a single person on the video shoot talked about doing it. We did it over a month ago, so you really can trust people it turns out.
Dave: I got this thing that you might have just sent them all letters or maybe threatening them beforehand just to be sure they don't tell anyone anything.
Taylor: You know, threatening probably doesn't work as well as just being like, "Hey guys, can you please not tell people about this?"
Gemma: The videos, Taylor. We were saying your songs are always fantastic but when you see them alongside the music video they're like wow, stunned out, fantastic. With regards to that, do you come up with the concepts or is it kind of a joint effort with your team. How do you come around with your videos? Because they're always so good.
Taylor: Well thank you for saying that. I wrote this treatment and sent it to Dave Meyers and we then got together and just kind of thought about, "How can we make the best visual effects out of this?" And every single choice was essentially to foreshadow something that will happen in the course of the album. So everything in that video is basically an Easter egg. It takes a lot of time to plan that but it's really fun too because the fans have trained me over the last couple of years. When I was sixteen and I put out my first album I put codes in the lyric jacket of the CD. I capitalized certain letters. I was like, "I wonder if they'll figure out that it spells out a code," and they did immediately and they were like, "We love this, this is so fun." And from then on I've known that they like to play games with music. They like for it to be sort of a scavenger hunt or little Easter egg foreshadowing moments. So that makes it fun for me because I like for music to be, you know, as much of an event as possible. Yeah, so that's why I do that.
Dave: You know, everyone's obsessed in the UK at the moment with Line of Duty and of course globally, Game of Thrones. I know you're a big fan of Grey's Anatomy.
Taylor: I just watched the new episode and fully cried the whole time.
Dave: Don't say anything because of the spoiler situation. But what else do you watch at the moment because I know you've probably completed Grey's Anatomy by now. I feel like you watch (...) You named a cat after it.
Taylor: I'm not gonna spoil anything for you but I just will say I think it's the most beautiful episode they've ever done and that the score and the visual effects and the acting is like—I just think It's the greatest show of all time and I'm so excited for you to see this episode.
Dave: How'd you do that? You just gave us a load of information but not give us any information. You're the best at not spoiling things.
Taylor: Thank you. I've gotten pretty good at being cryptic by keeping secrets about an album that isn't out yet. But basically I love Killing Eve as well. I love Flea Bag. Those are my favorite things right now.
Gethin: Flea Bag is good. Well I reckon your next single is coming out 13th of July because there were 13 clouds and 7 briefcases. I don't know what the 8:30 clock means but we'll carry on to try to find out. This song is gonna be on everyone's playlist this summer. Taylor Swift, thank you so much for joining us on Hits Radio Breakfast this morning.
Taylor: Thank you, and Gemma congratulations on your new (...)
Gemma: Oh, thank you Taylor. Thank you so much.
Dave: Thank you, Taylor Swift.
Taylor: Awesome. Bye guys.
