Taylor Swift offers more beautiful life advice in her interview with Tavi
Previously: George Costanza claims he made Taylor Swift happen
Timeless icons Taylor Swift and Tavi Gevinson sat down before the Grammy’s this year to talk about Swift’s life. The interview has finally come out in Elle, and Swift is as candid as ever.
On ‘Clean’ from 1989:
“‘Clean’ I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date—it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, Oh, I hope he’s doing well. And nothing else… The first thought that came to my mind was, I’m finally clean.”
On being heartbroken:
“A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours. It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, “Hello, beautiful. Good morning.” You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was. You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day and planning fun dinner parties and going out on adventures with your girlfriends, and then all of a sudden one day you’re in London and you realize you’ve been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you’re fine. And you hope he’s fine.”
“I’d never been in a relationship when I wrote my first couple of albums, so these were all projections of what I thought they might be like. They were based on movies and books and songs and literature that tell us that a relationship is the most magical thing that can ever happen to you. And then once I fell in love, or thought I was in love, and then experienced disappointment or it just not working out a few times, I realized there’s this idea of happily ever after which in real life doesn’t happen. There’s no riding off into the sunset, because the camera always keeps rolling in real life.”
On the inspiration for the ‘You Are In Love’ lyric “You’re my best friend”:
“Yeah. I’ve never had that, so I wrote that song about things that Lena [Dunham] has told me about her and Jack [Antonoff]. That’s just basically stuff she’s told me. And I think that that kind of relationship—God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful—would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times.”
On growing up:
“As far as the need to rebel against the idea of you, or the image of you: Like, I feel no need to burn down the house I built by hand. I can make additions to it. I can redecorate. But I built this… And so with 1989, I feel like we gave the entire metaphorical house I built a complete renovation and it made me love the house even more—but still keeping the foundation of what I’ve always been.”
Check out Swift’s photos for Elle below:
