Category: rankin

Taylor Swift covers the new issue of FASHION Magazine (Canada). It’s a decent shoot, but that’s mostly because I love some good coat p0rn. There’s a chill in the air and I want that light grey-ish coat!! Anyway, Swifty is promoting her new album, 1989, and she’s still giving pretty decent interviews. Some highlights from the FASHION article:

On poetic justice: “I feel like writing a song is sort of the last piece of the puzzle of solving whatever mystery I’m trying to solve emotionally. Things that kind of torture and haunt me a little bit are usually put to rest when I figure out a way to say it in a song. There’s a strange, eerie form of justice that happens when someone treats you terribly, you write a song about it, and that song ends up playing all over the world. You know at some point they’ve heard it in the grocery store, and they can’t escape.”

On being emotionally vulnerable: “As a songwriter you have to open yourself up over and over again to pain and rejection – and doing that at the stage my career is in, the stakes are pretty high. So if you get your heart broken, you get your heart broken on the cover of magazines that are all over the world. But I think that it’s important to continue to live your life, and not be guarded or standoffish or keep people at a distance.”

On her changing values: “When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was just fascinated by romance. I think now the most important thing to me is the opinions of the sisterhood of friends that I have now … I think that my girlfriends have been what has shaped me more in the past year and a half than any other factor.”

On girlfriends versus sycophants: “Celebrities surround themselves with people who don’t know what they want and only have you to validate their lives—that’s not interesting to me. You should not be threatened by women who are pretty and charismatic and good at what they do…my girlfriends have shaped me more in the past year and a half than any other factor. I’ve never had more friends who I trust and can rely on, but there’s always a bit of your self-perception that’s frozen in junior high, when you trained yourself to not feel cool. You’ll never really feel like you’re part of the ‘in’ crowd, but growing up means that matters to you less and less every day.”

Why she sings blind-item songs: “You have to give emotion in order to evoke emotion in people. What I see cutting through are singers who give details and insights about their lives, because people feel appreciative that you’ve trusted them with that information. Being revealing can present itself in different ways—I’ve chosen to do it emotionally because that feels more natural to me.”

[From Fashion Magazine]

Do you believe her? I think she gives some seemingly reasonable and well-explained justifications for why she sings her blind-item songs and why she slammed so many of her exes musically. But here’s the part that I don’t really understand: “there’s always a bit of your self-perception that’s frozen in junior high, when you trained yourself to not feel cool.” There’s a lot wrong with that statement, and she’s throwing it out there like it’s a universal experience. No, Taylor, many of us are not stuck in the junior high mindset of coolness rankings. And I really don’t get “when you trained yourself to not feel cool.” As in… she’s always been cool but in junior high she trained herself to not feel cool and now she’s returning to her coolness? Good lord. This whole conversation about coolness is so middle school.

Also: “You should not be threatened by women who are pretty and charismatic and good at what they do.” Good advice, Swifty. Now let’s see you follow it. Lyrically and in real life.

Photos courtesy of Gabor Jurina/FASHION.

Special thanks Cele Bitch