Have you listened to folklore and thought đ that you could thematically pair some of the songs together?! Well, taylor decided to split the album into themed chapters, the first one includes six songs and is called âthe escapism chapter.â âšđ Check it out here: taylor.lnk.to/escapism
Excited to announce the City of Lover Concert! We filmed my show in Paris in September and thought itâd be fun to share it with you đMay 17 at 10p ET on ABC and available the next day on Hulu and Disney+!Â
In the new Taylor Swift documentary, âMiss Americana,â which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Thursday night, thereâs a montage of derogatory commentary about the singer that has appeared onâŠ
In the new Taylor Swift documentary, âMiss Americana,â which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Thursday night, thereâs a montage of derogatory commentary about the singer that has appeared on cable shows over the years. One of the less nasty remarks: âSheâs too skinny. It bothers me.â
As it turns out, it eventually bothered Swift, too.
In one of the most revealing and surprising segments of the Netflix film, Swift talks for several minutes about having struggled in the past with an eating disorder.
After being pictured facing a phalanx of photographers after she emerges from her front door, Swift is heard in voiceover saying that âitâs not good for me to see pictures of myself every day.â Although she says âitâs only happened a few times, and Iâm not in any way proud of it,â Swift admits there have been times in the past when sheâs seen âa picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or⊠someone said that I looked pregnant ⊠and thatâll just trigger me to just starve a little bit â just stop eating.â
Swift elaborated on what sheâs gone through with that in her interview with Variety for this weekâs cover story, saying that it was difficult for her to speak up about it for the documentary.
âI didnât know if I was going to feel comfortable with talking about body image and talking about the stuff Iâve gone through in terms of how unhealthy thatâs been for me â my relationship with food and all that over the years,â she tells Variety. âBut the way that Lana (Wilson, the filmâs director) tells the story, it really makes sense. Iâm not as articulate as I should be about this topic because there are so many people who could talk about it in a better way. But all I know is my own experience. And my relationship with food was exactly the same psychology that I applied to everything else in my life: If I was given a pat on the head, I registered that as good. If I was given a punishment, I registered that as bad.â
In the quiet of a hotel suite, she goes into greater detail on how formative an effect that one early tabloid torpedo had on her. âI remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine,â she says. âAnd the headline was like âPregnant at 18?â And it was because I had worn something that made my lower stomach look not flat. So I just registered that as a punishment. And then Iâd walk into a photo shoot and be in the dressing room and somebody who worked at a magazine would say, âOh, wow, this is so amazing that you can fit into the sample sizes. Usually we have to make alterations to the dresses, but we can take them right off the runway and put them on you!â And I looked at that as a pat on the head. You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body.â
She hesitates. âI think Iâve never really wanted to talk about that before, and Iâm pretty uncomfortable talking about it now,â she says quietly. âBut in the context of every other thing that I was doing or not doing in my life, I think it makes senseâ to have it in the film, she says.
Wilson, the director, is proud of Swift for taking up the subject with such candor. âThatâs one of my favorite sequences of the film,â she says. âI was surprised, of course. But I love how sheâs kind of thinking out loud about it. And every woman will see themselves in that sequence. I just have no doubt.â
The filmmaker points out that there were clearly plenty of people who didnât think Swift was too thin back in the mid-2010s. âYou can also just not notice people being really skinny, because weâre all so accustomed to seeing women on magazine covers who are unhealthy-skinny, and thatâs become normalized.â Even with non-celebrities, Wilson says, everybodyâs a body critic. âItâs incessant, and I can say this as a woman: Itâs amazing to me how people are constantly like âYou look skinnyâ or âYouâve gained weight.â People you barely know say this to you. And it feels awful, and you canât win either way. So I think itâs really brave to see someone who is a role model for so many girls and women be really honest about that. I think it will have a huge impact.â
As much as Swift may be seen as a role model for speaking frankly on the subject, sheâs got her own favorite artist, so to speak, when it comes to advocacy for womenâs bodily self-image issues.
âI love people like (actress and activist) Jameela Jamil, because she says things in a really articulate way,â the singer tells us. âThe way she speaks about body image, itâs almost like she speaks in a hook. If you read her quotes about women and body image and aging and the way that women are treated in our industry and portrayed in the media, I swear the way she speaks is like lyrics, and it gets stuck in my head and it calms me down. Because women are held to such a ridiculous standard of beauty. Weâre seeing so much on social media that makes us feel like we are less than, or weâre not what we should be, that you kind of need a mantra to repeat in your head when you start to have harmful or unhealthy thoughts. So sheâs one of the people who, when I read what she says, it sticks with me and it helps me.â
In the film, then-and-now photos illustrate just how thin Swift had gotten during the â1989â era, versus the still svelte but healthier look she sported by the time she toured behind the âReputationâ album in 2018. Swift says that her under-eating in that earlier time severely affected her stamina on tour.
âI thought that I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of a show, or in the middle of it,â she attests in the documentary. âNow I realize, no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel (enervated).â Swift says she doesnât care so much now if someone comments on a weight gain, and sheâs reconciled âthe fact that Iâm a size 6 instead of a size double-zero.â Swift says she was completely unaware that anything was wrong in her double-zero era, and had a defense at the ready should it come up. If anyone expressed concern, sheâd say, ââWhat are you talking about? Of course I eat. âŠ. I exercise a lot.â And I did exercise a lot. But I wasnât eating.â
Few women viewing the film will fail to nod their heads as Swift describes the impossibility of any body shape or size living up to all the standards for beauty. âIf youâre thin enough, then you donât have that ass that everybody wants,â she says in the film. âBut if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, your stomach isnât flat enough. Itâs all just fâing impossible.â As she became aware of the problem, Swift says in the film, it would cause her to âgo into a real shame/hate spiral.â
The word âshameâ comes up elsewhere in conversation with Swift, who by virtue of becoming one of the most celebrated women in the world has also had to deal with more catty comments than almost any celebrity in the world â and hasnât always succeeded in shaking it all off.
She continues, âI donât expect anyone with a pop career to learn how to do that within the first 10 years. And I know that thereâs a lot of bad stuff thatâs gone on recently, a lot of really hard stuff my family is going through, and a lot of opposition and feeling pressure or suppression of one kind or another. But I am actually really happy. Because I pick and choose now, for the most part, what I care deeply about. And I think thatâs made a huge difference.â
My boyfriend and I were in a car accident New Yearâs Eve 1015pm. The whole time all I could hear in my head was @taylorswift âout of the woodsâ the paramedics were not happy with me đ€Šđ»ââïž
Taylor Swift Explains Her âCatsâ Transformation: Hissing, Barefoot Crawling and Jellicle School
By:Â Ramin Setoodeh for Variety
Date: December 20th 2019
Taylor Swift attended âcat schoolâ to learn what Jellicles can and Jellicles do. To prepare for âCats,â the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webberâs 1981 musical, Swift and her co-stars enrolled in classes to master the movements of their four-legged characters. In the film, Swift plays Bombalurina, a rabble-rousing outsider who sprinkles catnip over the Jellicle ball.
Swift didnât phone (or meow) in her performance in âCats,â starring Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. She wanted to be ready for her big number, âMacavity,â and in case Lloyd Weber enlisted her to write a new song for the movie. When he did, their collaboration was fast and easy, in the form of âBeautiful Ghosts,â a confessional ballad performed by the stray cat Victoria (Francesca Hayward) that serves as a bookend to âMemory,â the productionâs signature song (belted out by Hudson).
On the morning that âCatsâ premiered in New York on Dec. 16, Swift still hadnât watched the movie. She was eager to see how director Tom Hooperâs âdigital fur technology,â a lengthy post-production process where the human actors were turned into cats, would look. Swift spoke to Variety about all things âCats.â
And you said yes?
I said yes right away. You have to dislocate the end result with your experience and you have to commit to doing it only based on what you think the experience will be and if the experience will teach you things that enrich your life. So thatâs exactly what I thought this would be, which is getting to work with the best dancers and performers in the world, getting to perform live on set, getting to work with one of the best directors out there, the most amazing producers and team of Andrew Lloyd Webber and [choreographer] Andy Blankenbuehler. What more could I possibly ask for in an experience? And so that was what made me immediately commit.
How did you get into the mindset of your character?
It was really fun being on set because they had sort of an animal behavior class called âcat school.â
They did?
We would literally do hours on end of barefoot crawling on the floor, hissing at each other. We learned about cat instincts and the way they carry themselves and the way that they process information, the way they see the world, the way they move. Whatâs strange is from the very beginning of the whole process, everyone on the director/choreography side of it had decided that we werenât going to be crawling all the time and we werenât going to be walking all the time. We were going to be hybrids in both our appearance and our behavior and movement. Which was so funny because youâd walk on set one day and theyâd be like, âOh we have to redo the choreography! Itâs a little too human today. We need to make it more cat today.â Or theyâd be like, âItâs a little too cat and not enough dance, so we need to dial back the cat and make it more dance.â And it just was so funny because regardless of what the end result is, thereâs just never been a movie made like this, which is why it was so fun to be a part of.
How did you work on your hiss?
Iâve had that down since I was about six years old. Donât you worry.
Did you attend a lot of âcat schoolâ?
I came in, Iâd say, four times more than I was scheduled to be there because I wanted to be a part of it. Iâm a singer. This is not really my forte. I wanted to be there as much as possible and just get the hang of it and have my choreography down and have my song memorized and work on the dialect. And what ended up happening was I ended up being around the cast almost as much as one of the principal cast members who danced in every scene. I was around people a lot, got to know everybody, which really was amazing. But what ended up happening with me kind of loitering as much as I did, was that I ended up writing a song with Andrew Lloyd Weber.
You werenât asked from the beginning to write âBeautiful Ghostsâ with him?
No. From the very beginning, they thought that it didnât make sense that Victoria, Francescaâs character, is essentially the narrator and the lead character of the film. But we never hear from her. She never says what sheâs feeling or going through. She never sings in the original musical. And Andrew had said he was so rushed during the 1981 version and it was essentially a workshop that took off and went viral - the 1981 version of viral - which became very successful very quickly.
And he had said to me that was the one thing that he would have done differently. He wouldâve given Victoria a chance to actually say what her experience had been rather than just simply dancing. So this was kind of an opportunity for him to go back and add that. I think that they were working on some kind of idea for the character to sing a song, but they didnât know what they wanted the song to be. And one of the reasons why I was on set every day was I wanted to really get to know that character because if anyone should ever call me to help with the song, I wanted to know what I was doing. And by the time someone did say, âOh, Andrew wants you to go over to his flat to rehearse,â I kind of had in my head like, âI hope he asks me to write on this because I know exactly what I would want her to say.â
And he did. As soon as we were rehearsing, he started playing a melody that I knew wasnât in the version of âCatsâ that I had seen. I knew immediately it was a new melody and I was like, âWhat is that youâre playing?â And he said: âWell itâs a new song. We are hoping for Victoria to sing, but we donât know what we want her to say.â It was just that the dream of what I was hoping he would say, because then I could just jump in and help.
Did the song have a name at this point?
It didnât have a name and it didnât have any lyrics. It was a beautiful instrumental piece.
Did you write it quickly?
I came up with the verse and chorus right there in his office, and we decided that for the bridge, I would take it home and we would write at his country house, which was the best idea. I got to go there and play the bridge I had written and then have an amazing Sunday roast and meet his whole family who are the loveliest people ever.
The song was just nominated for a Golden Globe.
It feels really great. Itâs so awesome that they nominated us because this is a song that I feel like is pivotal to the story. I donât think the movie is the same without the song. Sometimes you see a situation where a song is stuck in a movie and it enhances it a little. This is imperative to the narrative of âCats.â
Would you be interested in acting in more movies?
Sure. Weâll see how this goes. I mean, honestly, I love my job so much. I love writing songs and singing them. I love that so much that this was for me a really special, strange, weird, exciting experience to get to have. And if there was something that came up that was really interesting in a different way, that would be cool. But I really just want to do things that enrich my life and I want to have adventures and I want to do things that Iâm curious about. Itâs kind of just where I am.
My four year old, Taylor, has non stop asked me today if we could go see @taylorswift because sheâs her bestfriend, theyâre twins because they have the same name đč then told me all she wanted for Christmas was a repuation shirt (she just wants a shirt/sweater with Taylor swift on it)
With the amount of time @ellendegeneres has scared @taylorswift , Iâm surprised she hasnât pushed her or something. And the fact she hasnât learned by now đč
Kids who read with their parents have better behavior. When parents read aloud to their children, it gives them the opportunity to consider the thoughts and feelings of the characters, and it helps them learn what words to use to describe those difficult feelings - which ultimately teaches them how to control their own behavior when they are upset.Â
This is my 4 year old daughter (and one of our favorite aunties and theyâre BOTH named Taylor đ»), sheâs one of the best things that has ever been MINE, sheâs funny, spoiled, happy, healthy, creative and so cuddly.
She also thinks when @taylorswift sings âI forgot that you existedâ sheâs saying âI forgot you were stupidâ and when Taylor sings âsheâs cheer captain and Iâm on the bleachersâ she thinks sheâs saying âmother bleachersâ for some silly reason. đčđ»
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