I had that praise of, âTaylor, youâre doing a good job at your work.â
Youâre doing a good job at being a songwriter.
Youâre doing a good job at being a musician.
Like, those pats on the head were all I lived for.
I was so fulfilled by approval⌠that was it.
I became the person who everyone wanted me to be.
Everybody in music has their own sort of niche specialty thing that they do that, you know, sets them apart from everybody else. And.. my storytelling is what it is for me. I know that without me writing my own songs, I wouldnât be here.Â
There is an element to my fan base where we feel like we grew up together. Iâll be going through something, write the album about it, and then itâll come out, and sometimes itâll just coincide with me what theyâre going through. Kind of like theyâre reading my diary.Â
I was in country music and I was doing, like, a very spectacle-type live show, and I remember thinking, â This feels like a dream. This feels like a dream. This feels like a dream.â
But when youâre living for the approval of strangers, and thatâs where you derive all of your joy and fulfilment, one bad thing can cause everything to crumble.
Taylor Swift rĂŠponse to Kanye West.Â
It was so echoey in there. At the time, I didnât know they were booing him doing that. I thought they were booing me. For someone whoâs built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience. That was sort of like a catalyst, for a lot of pyschological paths that I went down. And not all of them were.. beneficial. It was fuelled by not feeling like I belonged there. Iâm only here because I work hard and Iâm nice to people. That work ethic, like Thank God I had that work ethic. Like I canât change whatâs gonna happen to me, but I can control what I write.
I really just went to this place where I was like, âIâm gonna prove myself. Iâm gonna make sure people know I deserve to be here.âÂ
That was it. My life had never been better.Â
I had won Album of the Year at the Grammys for a second time, which I never thought was a possibility.Â
And I remembered thinking afterward âOh, my God, thatâs whatâs all you wanted it. That was all you focused on.â You get to the mountaintop and you look around, and youâre like, âOh, God. W-What now?âÂ
I want to thank Fans for the last 10 years & the recording academy âŚ
I didnât have the partner that I climbed it with that I could, like, high-five. I didnât have anyone I could talk to who could relate to what I was.. what..what I .. you know?Â
I had my mom.. but I just wondered⌠âShouldnâtâ shouldnât I ⌠Shouldnât I have someone that I could call right now?â Â
Taylor: Iâm about to be 29
Joel: 29? I remember those days.
Taylor, I mean, yeah thatâs part of me that feels like Iâm 57, but thereâs a part of me thatâs like definitely not ready to have kids, definitely not ready for this grown-up stuff. So..Â
Joel: Yeah. I donât think anybodyâs ever ready for that stuff. You just figure it out when it happens.Â
Taylor: I kind of donât really have the luxury of figuring stuff out because my life is planned, like, in like, 2 years ahead of time.
Taylor: Like, literally, in 2 months, theyâll come to me with the dates for the next tour.Â
Taylor: Theyâll be like, âSo youâll be at Foxborough Stadium, this date, 2020,â or whatever year, you know? Like its..so yeah..Â
She got cancer 7 years ago. That has been really hard for me because sheâs my favourite person. It woke me up from this life where I used to sweat all these things. But like, do you really care if the internet doesnât like you today if your momâs sick from her chemo? You gotta be able to really prioritise what matters to you. For me, itâs my family and my friends.Â
Iâve learned over the years its not good to see pictures of myself every day cause I have a tendency. and itâs only happened a few times, and Iâm not in any way proud of it, but I get .. I tend to get triggered by something whether itâs a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big or like, someone said that I looked pregnant or something, and thatâll just trigger me to just to starve a little bit, just stop eating. I thought that I was just, like, supposed to feel like I was gonna pass out at the end of the show or in the middle of it. I thought that was how it was. and now I realise: no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel it which is a really good revelation because Iâm a lot happier with who I am ,& I am happier with, like I donât care as much if, like somebody points out that I have gained weight. Itâs just something that makes my life better, the fact that Iâm, you know I am a size six instead of a size double zero. I mean that wasnât how my body was supposed to be. I just didnât really understand that at the time. I really donât think I knew it. I wouldâve defended to anyone who said, â I am concerned about you.â What are you talking about? Of course I eat. Itâs perfectly normal. I just exercise a lot. And I did exercise a lot, but I wasnât eating. And you canât .. I just donât think you know youâre doing that when youâre doing it gradually. Thereâs always some standard of beauty that youâre not meeting. Cause if youâre thin enough then you donât have that ass that everybody wants. But if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, then your stomach isnât flat enough. Itâs all just fucking impossible. You donât ever say to yourself, âLook, Iâve got an eating disorder,â but you know youâre like, making a list of everything you put in your mouth that day, and you know thatâs probably not right, but then thereâs so many diet blogs that tell you that .. thatâs what you should do. This would cause me to into, like, a real shame like hate spiral and like, I caught myself yesterday starting to do it, and I was like, âNope, we donât do that anymore. We donât do that anymore, because itâs better to look to think you look fat than to look sick. And we donât do that anymore, and you just weâre just.. weâre changing the channel in our brain, and weâre not doing that anymore. That didnât end us up in a good place.âÂ
As your career goes like this, the magnifying glass goes like that.Â
When people decided I was wicked, evil, and conniving and not a good person, that was the one that I couldnât really bounce back from cause my whole life was centered around it. Â
#TaylorSwiftOverParty was the no trend 1 on Twitter Worldwide.
Know how many people have to be tweeting that they hate you for that to happen?
Weâre people who got into this line of work because we wanted people to like us, âcause weâre intrinsically insecure, because we liked the sound of people clapping âcause it made us forget how much we feel like weâre not good enough. And Iâve been doing this for 15 years, and itâs just, Iâm tired of it. Iâm just tired of the .. it just feels like itâs more than music now at this point. And just, most days, Iâm like, âOkay.â But then sometimes, Iâm just like.. itâs just get loud sometimes.Â
When people fall out of love with you, thereâs nothing you can do to make them change their mind. They just donât love you anymore. I just wanted to disappear. Nobody physically saw me for a year. And that was what I thought they wanted.Â
The reason why that backlash hurt so much was because that used to be all I had. I felt really alone. I felt really bitter. I felt, you know, sort of like a wounded animal lashing out. I figured I had to reset everything. I had to deconstructed the whole belief system for my own personal sanity. I also was falling in love with someone who had really wonderful. balanced, grounded life. And we decided together that we wanted our relationship to be private.Â
Even though it was horrible I was happy. But I wasnât happy in the happy that Iâd been trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone elseâs input. It was just.. we were happy.Â
Part of the fabric of being a country artist is âDonât force your politics on people. Let people live their lives.â That is grilled into us.
Throughout my whole career label executives and publishers would just say, âDonât be like the Dixie Chicks.â
And I loved the âDixie ChicksâÂ
But a nice girls doesnât force their opinions on people.Â
A nice girl smiles and waves and says thank you.
A nice girl doesnât make people feel uncomfortable with her views.
Itâs my right to vote, but itâs not my right to tell other people what to do.
I was so obsessed with not getting in trouble, that I was like, âIâm just not gonna do anything that anyone could say anything about.âÂ
Iâm just getting to the point where I canât listen to people telling me, âNo, stay out of it. Stay out of it.Â
So, um, I just wanted to .. I just kind of looking back, this exact day a year ago, I was not playing a sold-out stadium in Tampa, I was in a courtroom in Denver, Colorado. Honestly, I was there for a sexual assault case, and this day, a year ago, was the day that the jury decided in my favour & said that they believe me.Â
I guess, I just think about all the people that werenât believed, people who havenât believed, or the people who are afraid to speak up because they think they wonât be believed. And I just want to say that Iâm sorry to anyone who ever wasnât believed because I donât know what turn my life would have taken if somebody if people didnât believe me when I said that something had happened to me.Â
The drought was the very worst
When the flowers that weâd grown together
It was months & months of back & forth
Youâre still all over me like a wine-stained dress I canât wear anymore
Hung my head as I lost the war & the sky turned black like a perfect storm
The rain came pouring down When I was drowningâÂ
Thatâs when I could finally breathe & gone by morning
Gone was any trace of youÂ
I think I am finally cleanÂ
I just canât stop thinking about it
And I just thought to myself,
Next time there is any opportunity to change anything,
you had better know what you stand for and what you wanna say.â
I wish I didnât feel like thereâs a better version of me out there. I feel that way all the time.Â
Itâs a lot of process because we do exist in this society, where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time theyâre 35.Â
Everyoneâs a shiny, new toy for like, two years.
The female artist that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the mole artists.
They have to or else youâre out of a job.Â
Constantly having to reinvent, constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny.Â
Be new to us, be young to us, but only in a new way and only in the way we want.Â
And reinvent yourself, but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also a challenge for you.Â
Live out a narrative that we find o be interesting enough to entertain us, but not crazy that it makes us uncomfortable. This is probably one of my last opportunities as an artist to grasp onto that kind of success.Â
So, I donât know, like as Iâm reaching 30, Iâm like âI want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful.âÂ
Iâm trying to be as educated as possible on how to respect people, on how to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain. Toss it out, reject it, and resist it. Like, there is no such thing as a slut. There is no such thing as a bitch. Thereâs no such thing as someone whoâs bossy, thereâs just a boss. We donât want to be condemned for being multifaceted. Sorry that was a real soapbox.Â
Oh, my God .. Why did I say sorry?
No, because weâre trained to say sorry.
Yeah, we legitimately are. Weâre like âSorry was I loud in my own house that I bought with the songs that I wrote about my own life?â
There is nothing feels better than this moment.Â
After 13 years of constantly feeling like I was misunderstood, knowing that happened was all gonna turn into this moment is fucking awesome.Â
Thereâs this thing people say about celebrities, that theyâre frozen at the age they got famous and thatâs what kind of happen to me. I had a lot growing up to do, just trying to catch up to 29. Just gonna go have fun. No one out there that I know of in the audience actively hates me. Not get dead-faced. Have fun the whole time. Today ready to do this.Â
âOh, I tried to practice my songs, but I completely psyched myself out & broke down crying. I donât know If I can do this. I want it so bad, but I get so scared of what might happen. Relax, I can handle it. Iâm young, Iâm talented. Theyâll see it in me. Iâve got to hang on.â I still wanna have a sharp pen and a thin skin and an open heart.Â
