Taylor Swift

Zane Lowe: Are you an emo kid? Taylor Swift: I was actually at the most emo dinner party the other night. 'Cause Brendan Uri and Sarah, his amazing wife, like, had me over.

I show up, and it's like Brendan and Pete Wentz sitting next to each other, and I just got to ask them every single question. Pete Wentz is probably, if I had to pick a favorite lyricist, it would be a tie between him and Lana Del Rey. Blank Space is a song that's just zingers, one after another, which I definitely learned from listening to Fall Out Boy.

Zane Lowe: Congratulations, first and foremost, on the success of Lover, because there's no guarantees even for someone as successful and talented as yourself. Every time you release music, you open it up to the, you know, to the universe, and you hope it's discovered. Taylor Swift: Yeah, and actually, an interesting dynamic happens between you and your previous work, and it happens as soon as you put out your second record.

Everything you do is a standing ovation on your first record, if you're having that breakthrough record. And then you put out your second body of work, and then you realize that everything you're putting out now is being compared to what they liked about your first record. But then you put out the third one.

Mm. And then it's compared to the first two. Mm-hmm. Then you put out the fourth one. Then it's compared to the first three, and it goes on and on.

By the time you're at album seven, you are so. You have such a strange, convoluted relationship with your previous work. Yeah. Because you're like, "Damn, All Too Well was a good song."

And I knew with this album it was, it was, it was, like, something that was almost a return to form. Like, Reputation was such an important record for me because I couldn't stop writing. Mm. And I and like, I needed to write that album, and I needed to put out that album, and I needed to not explain that album.

Mm. Because another thing about that album was I knew if I did an interview about it, none of it would be about music. Yeah. And this entire, like, Lover phase of my life, there's been no distraction from the music.

'Cause you're in a place where you're actually telling a very personal story or telling something so personal to you that someone else's opinion, be it brilliant or otherwise, is, could only, could only cloud that, really. Yeah, and I thankfully work with really wonderful, collaborators who, you know. Jack is amazing. Like, when I bring in a song that I've written 100%, some producers will not.

Like, nowadays, some producers will not produce something that they didn't have a co-write on. We really haven't figured out a way to compensate the creators. Mm. And that's something that I'm always gonna be very vocal about until I feel like it's fixed.

I definitely wanna, when I write a song 100%, I want credit for that, and I think that's fair. But I also, when people have these policies where they're like, "We won't do this without this," I understand why. But I love right now, you know, out there we have amazing creators like Halsey.

Mm. Like, Halsey's an amazing writer, and she speaks up for what she cares about, and she's very vocal about things, and we have these very fierce women out there. It's an amazing time. It's so good. Zane Lowe: We were just talking about the internet back there and some of our favorite moments.

You may walk away from that world, but you're able to tap in and use it whenever you want, and you do it very effectively. Are you into it, the internet? Taylor Swift: The only thing I really read every day is political news.

Mm. Oddly, there are actual inflections of how I feel politically on this record, more so than ever before. Like, you know, You Need To, You Need To Calm Down The man? Yeah, the man. There's a song called Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.