I was expecting to bring this article one week earlier, but more important issues had to be addressed first. Wonder what goodness is on the April edition of Harper's Bazaar Australia? Read part 1 of the article:
"I worry about everything," admits Taylor Swift. "Literally everything you can possibly think of, I worry about. I worry that maybe those lights over there will set the curtain on fire. I think, and worry, and am anxious about any outcome my career could have or any decision that I make – even the little ones. It takes up a lot of time and sleepless nights, but I think the fact that I do worry about so much keeps me from making crazy, dumb impulse decisions."
Half sitting, half lounging in the Nashville photography studio where this shoot took place, Swift is contemplating the pitfalls of stardom and whether her millions of fans will stick around into the future. There have been no early career missteps to date. No Lindsay Lohan-like brush with the law. No pot-smoking accusations such as the ones Miley Cyrus has had to endure.
But at 22, this current princess of pop-country is keenly aware she has a whole life of choices ahead of her. "It's important to have spontaneity as an artist, I understand that. That you have to go all-out and live your life. But I am really hoping to make…" She pauses, eyes searching the ceiling in an attempt to find the right words. "It's impossible to not make stupid decisions. But I'm hoping to keep them to a minimum."
As an artist, she's currently facing a task that seasoned singer-songwriters twice her age would find daunting: creating songs for a new album that will follow Speak Now, her third release of heartfelt outpourings, about love and loss, which holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist, the tour for which brings the music phenomenon to Australia this month.
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion regarding the determined girl from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, who grew up on a Christmas tree farm with her mother, a housewife, stockbroker father and younger brother, began writing songs on the guitar as a 12-year-old and relocated (with her entire family) to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, when she was 14 in order to pursue a career in music.
Perhaps it was that onstage incident when Kanye West crashed her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards that sticks in people's minds? (According to The New Yorker, a subsequent brief interaction between the two at the Met Ball in New York involved no outward display of animosity.) Or maybe it's how her adoring teenage fans find her authentic, a kindred spirit, even, while their grown-up counterparts puzzle over Swift's preternatural self-possession and laser-like focus.
In advance of this interview, one seasoned New York tabloid reporter warned in jest that "You better not piss her off or she'll write a bad song about you." On the flip side, my heavily tattooed and pierced barber with connections to a Los Angeles gang grew giddy upon hearing of the meeting, and was moved to reverently utter the following through his foot-long beard: "Taylor Swift? I love her!"
Since the release of her self-titled debut album in 2006, Swift has become one of the powerhouse recording artists of recent times, gathering a fan base that numbers in the millions – hirsute barbers and reigning queen of country Dolly Parton included. Her list of achievements and honors could fill the remaining space so, to paint a brief picture: Swift has won six Grammy awards, including Album of the Year for Fearless, her second disc, released in 2008; she's the top-selling digital artist in music history; her career album sales exceed 20 million (2010's Speak Now sold 1,046,718 copies in the U.S. in its first week of release alone); and in December, Forbes listed Swift's earnings for the previous year as $45 million, placing her in the number-two spot (Lady Gaga took number one, with $90 million) on the list of top-earning women in music.
Swift replies with an enthusiastic "Yes!" when asked if she would like to discuss a few of her contemporaries – both new and established – in an effort to help place her in the Zeitgeist.
How does Swift feel about Adele?
"Oh, she's so sweet and funny. She is amazing, both talent-wise and her personality – I love running into her," she says with no apparent envy. The two singers are practically rivals on the music landscape, with both producing often autobiographical songs about love found, and lost. Since the release of Speak Now, Swift has become known for writing songs about ex-boyfriends and people who have done her wrong. (Remember that quip about not pissing her off?) With Swift's former beaus reportedly including actors Taylor Lautner and Jake Gyllenhaal, and singers Joe Jonas and John Mayer, the internet is awash with speculation about which song pertains to which former love.
For Swift, who doesn't so much kiss and tell as kiss and sing, it's more than just a way of "getting the last word" publicly. Love is her stock in trade. "It's pretty hard to study something as much as I have studied love," she says with conviction. "[I've been] thinking about and writing about love and break-ups for three albums." Has getting older made writing about it any easier? "It's not the same animal that it was when I was 16. Love is so different now, and it's so much more difficult to verbalize how it feels to lose someone or to fall in love with someone. You've got to dig deeper into it and find other angles."
For the record, there is no romantic interest at present. And even though she happily brings up Gyllenhaal with the stylist and assistants on the shoot, when pressed for details during the interview she simply says, "Absolutely nothing going on." Swift, a self-described "hopeless romantic," recently told U.S. current affairs program 60 Minutes that one day she would like to be married and have "an army of kids." Swift rolls her eyes when reminded of this. "I'm 22, so I don't know anything about anything compared to what I will think about things five or 10 years from now. So I would say the future is open to a million possibilities as far as where I am going, and who I will end up with and how many kids we'll have. I can't believe I actually said that – an army of kids."
And Zooey Deschanel?
"I love her – she is so charming. She is amazing, how she sings to herself on [US television series] New Girl." It's no surprise that Swift is so effusive in her praise for Deschanel's character on the show, Jess. The two share a similar persona: that of the girl-next-door naïf looking out at the world through wide (often wonderstruck) eyes.
In the case of Swift, it's that aw-shucks aura of surprise that many would like to believe is an act, a character she plays for the masses when accepting awards or giving interviews. Spend any time with her, though, and it becomes clear there is no act. "I feel pretty lucky because the business me is the real me," she says with a matter-of-fact shrug. "It's not like I have to play some character in meetings or in interviews. That person is not that far from when I am at my friend's house and raiding their fridge. That makes my life a lot less exhausting."
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