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Celeb News: Taylor's GQ cover story
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 11,618
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Inspiration behind Wildest Dreams MV:
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Swift whips out her phone and starts showing me images from the video shoot for “Wildest Dreams,” including a clip of a giraffe licking her face. She has more photos on her phone than any person I’ve ever met. “I wanted this video to be about the making of a 1950s movie being filmed on location in Africa,” she explains. Swift came up with the concept after reading a book by Ava Gardner and Peter Evans, The Secret Conversations. Her premise for the video (co-starring Clint Eastwood’s son) is that—since social media did not exist in the ’50s—it would be impossible for actors not to fall in love if they were isolated together in Africa, since there would be no one else to talk to.
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Writing a book when she was 14:
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We chat a little about Ryan Adams and a little about books. Swift mentions that she wrote a non-autobiographical novel when she was 14, titled A Girl Named Girl, and that her parents still have it. I ask her what it was about, assuming she will laugh. But her memory of the plot is remarkably detailed. (It’s about a mother who wants a son but instead has a girl.)
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Received a call from JT in the middle of the GQ interview:
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Just as she tells me this, her cell phone rings. The display panel says the incoming call is from J TIMB. “Oh, my God. Justin Timberlake?” Her surprise does not seem artificial. “Can I take this?”
She takes the call. The volume on her phone is loud enough for me to intermittently hear both sides of the conversation. Swift explains that she’s driving to her house, but that she can’t actually stay there because contractors are renovating almost every room. “Have you ever seen the movie The Money Pit?” asks Timberlake. She has not, so Timberlake provides a capsule review. He has a 4-month-old baby at home and is constantly tired, yet he can’t fall sleep. He asks Swift for advice on sleeping. Swift tells the driver to pull over to the shoulder of the road, since she keeps losing reception as we drive through the canyon. The paparazzo in the gray car casually passes, having not-so-casually followed us for at least five miles.
The conversation lasts almost 15 minutes (which is a little weird, since I’m just sitting there beside her, openly taking notes). “You’re never going to get old,” Swift assures Timberlake. “That’s scientific fact. That’s medical.” Even her sarcasm is aspirational. Eventually JT tells her the reason he’s calling is because he wants to perform the song “Mirrors” with her on the last night of her upcoming five-date stand at Staples Center. (Late in every concert, Swift brings a surprise guest onstage.) She reacts to this news the way a teenage girl in Nebraska would react if suddenly informed that a paternity test had revealed Taylor Swift was her biological sister.
When she ends the call, Swift looks at me and says, “This is so crazy. This is so crazy.” She repeats that phrase four times, each time with ascending volume.
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Talked about writing SIO:
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“Shake It Off” is one of my most successful songs, and that has nothing directly, intricately, pointedly personal in it. No one really says I stay out too late. I just thought it sounded good.
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Talking about the decision of releasing 1989:
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“Even calling this record 1989 was a risk,” she says. “I had so many intense conversations where my label really tried to step in. I could tell they’d all gotten together and decided, ‘We gotta talk some sense into her. She’s had an established, astronomically successful career in country music. To shake that up would be the biggest mistake she ever makes.’ But to me, the safest thing I could do was take the biggest risk. I know how to write a song. I’m not confident about a lot of other aspects of my life, but I know how to write a song. I’d read a review of [2012’s] Red that said it wasn’t sonically cohesive. So that was what I wanted on 1989: an umbrella that would go over all of these songs, so that they all belonged on the same album. But then I’d go into the label office, and they were like, ‘Can we talk about putting a fiddle and a steel-guitar solo on ‘Shake It Off’ to service country radio?’ I was trying to make the most honest record I could possibly make, and they were kind of asking me to be a little disingenuous about it: ‘Let’s capitalize on both markets.’ No, let’s not. Let’s choose a lane.”
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Talking about "calculation":
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Late in our lunch, I mention something that happened several years ago: By chance, I’d found myself having dinner with a former acquaintance of Swift’s who offhandedly described her as “calculating.” This is the only moment during our interview when Swift appears remotely flustered. She really, really hates the word calculating. She despises how it has become tethered to her iconography and believes the person I met has been the singular voice regurgitating this categorization. As she explains these things, her speech does not oscillate from the second mode.
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Full article:
http://www.gq.com/story/taylor-swift-gq-cover-story
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 8,704
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 11/5/2011
Posts: 100,491
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then I’d go into the label office, and they were like, ‘Can we talk about putting a fiddle and a steel-guitar solo on ‘Shake It Off’ to service country radio?’ I was trying to make the most honest record I could possibly make, and they were kind of asking me to be a little disingenuous about it: ‘Let’s capitalize on both markets.’ No, let’s not. Let’s choose a lane.”
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I always felt that the country mix of WANEGBT was forced as hell, and it didn't sound right at all. I'm glad she stood her ground with 1989 and decided to aim SIO just at the pop audience.
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 8,079
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One of the better interviews & photoshoots this era. Read it like 3 times already. 
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 11/4/2010
Posts: 26,597
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serving
EVERYTHING
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 40,803
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Member Since: 5/9/2012
Posts: 38,050
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One of her best photoshoots & interviews.
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 10,037
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Quote:
Originally posted by umich
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I always felt that the country mix of WANEGBT was forced as hell, and it didn't sound right at all. I'm glad she stood her ground with 1989 and decided to aim SIO just at the pop audience.
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Smart girl
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Member Since: 8/20/2011
Posts: 12,590
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What kind of deception.
I saw the words "Taylor" and "GQ" came running in here to see pictures of Taylor Kinney not Taylor Swift.
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Member Since: 3/31/2012
Posts: 43,847
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 7,793
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I liked this section
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If you don’t take Swift seriously, you don’t take contemporary music seriously. With the (arguable) exceptions of Kanye West and Beyoncé Knowles, she is the most significant pop artist of the modern age. The scale of her commercial supremacy defies parallel—she’s sold 1 million albums in a week three times, during an era when most major artists are thrilled to move 500,000 albums in a year. If a record as comparatively dominant as 1989 had actually existed in the year 1989, it would have surpassed the sales of Thriller. There is no demographic she does not tap into, which is obviously rare. But what’s even more atypical is how that ubiquity is critically received. Swift gets excellent reviews, particularly from the most significant arbiters of taste. (A 2011 New Yorker piece conceded that Swift’s reviews are “almost uniformly positive.”) She has never gratuitously sexualized her image and seems pathologically averse to controversy. There’s simply no antecedent for this kind of career: a cross-genre, youth-oriented, critically acclaimed colossus based entirely on the intuitive songwriting merits of a single female artist. It’s as if mid-period Garth Brooks was also early Liz Phair, minus the hat and the swearing. As a phenomenon, it’s absolutely new.
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Member Since: 5/9/2012
Posts: 38,050
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Wait at her knowing people think she's "calculating". 
She's so self aware.
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Member Since: 2/5/2014
Posts: 2,617
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Justin begging to be on the 1989 tour
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Member Since: 9/7/2012
Posts: 9,553
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 23,368
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Wow
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 7,793
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Quote:
Originally posted by umich
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I always felt that the country mix of WANEGBT was forced as hell, and it didn't sound right at all. I'm glad she stood her ground with 1989 and decided to aim SIO just at the pop audience.
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It just underlines the reality that her label doesn't exert any creative controls on her anymore. By now they know she can create an album without any creative oversight from the label. They know she made Big Machine into what it is now, and she remains their biggest asset. I expect she tells them what the singles are gonna be too. LOL
I recently read about how Kelly Clarkson was always fighting with Clive Davis about what tracks were put on her albums and how that ongoing struggle caused their relationship to end. I am sure this struggle between artists and labels is common, with usually the labels winning.
Taylor's decision to switch to Pop was always a risk. In Atrl too often a lot of people take it as an easy transition to make, and yet historically there are only a few Country Artists who have successfully made this transition and many who have failed. It almost broke Garth Brooks' career. So the concerns of the label are understandable. They didn't want Taylor to throw her career away by making such a move. Obviously Taylor has been proven right, as 1989 has been a monumental success by any metrics.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 1,680
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Beautiful photoshoot and a really interesting article.
I wanna know who this acquaintance is that tells everyone she's calculating.
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Member Since: 3/25/2011
Posts: 10,337
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Fantastic interview both on her part and the journalist. You see how bright she really is, she describes her life with such precision.
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 12,913
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her definition of world 
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Member Since: 6/25/2011
Posts: 28,853
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She's so beautiful  
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