Taylor Swift knew it was a big deal to be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023. She understood the significance and she delivered one of the better interviews I’ve ever read from her. She does not come across as a girl-woman gossiping cryptically about who did what. She names names, calls people trash and creates a heroine’s narrative for herself. She also talks about Travis Kelce and some of the “fun” stuff – her tour, her tour film, how much she loves Beyonce. I thought this line from Time was important: “She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.” It’s probably true. Some highlights from Taylor’s Time POTY cover interview:
The breakthrough moment: “I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years. I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away. It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”
Recovering from her Eras shows: “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there. It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels. I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed. That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.”
Her success this year happened because of all of the bad sh-t: “It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me. The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity. The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”
1989 was her “imperial phase”: She didn’t realize it would also give her much farther to fall. Public sentiment turned—sniping about everything from her perceived overexposure to conspiracy theories about her politics. “I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots.”
The Canceling, aka the Kanye-Kim issue in 2016: She felt it was “a career death. Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me. You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
On Scooter Braun: “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion.” Swift rallied her fans against the deal, but still felt powerless. “I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold. I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’”
The Taylor’s Version albums: “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it.’ My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” She began rerecording subtly different versions of her old albums, tagging them “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding unreleased tracks to redirect listenership to them. She frames the strategy as a coping mechanism. “It’s all in how you deal with loss. I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”
Kanye’s been canceled now & Scooter is losing clients: “Nothing is permanent. So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art. But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”
Going to Chiefs games: “I’m just there to support Travis. I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads. Football is awesome, it turns out. I’ve been missing out my whole life.”
When she & Travis Kelce started: “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date. When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care. The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
She knows her life can be chaotic, but whatever: “Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter. Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends. Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.”
I don’t want Tree Paine on my ass, but Taylor is addicted to trying to rewrite what happened between herself, Kanye and Kim and that’s all I’ll say. Now, Taylor has every right to gloat and “trash takes itself out every single time” is one of the most terrifically bitchy lines to use in this situation. Although… while Kanye has effectively taken himself out like the Nazi trash he is, Kim is actually thriving. Scooter is still a mega-successful music industry professional as well, although it’s clear that he’s not going to be a hands-on manager anymore.
As for the rest of it – I’m glad she clarified that she and Travis were spending time together long before she turned up at her first Chiefs game. I’m also glad that her mindset is “I’m going to live my life and do what I want to do, chaos be damned.” The self-aware queen has turned into the IDGAF queen.
Covers courtesy of Time Magazine.
Kaiser
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