Taylor Swift: Sexy?

Not on my radar'
Shes gone from ringletted country artist to feminist role
model and the worlds most charming pop star. As she
returns with her catchiest material yet, she talks awardsceremony etiquette, autobiographical lyrics and why
she puts nice before naughty
Hermione Hoby
Saturday 23 August 2014

In Manhattans chi-chi Sant Ambroeus restaurant, the pair of smartly dressed women at the
next table are making not-so-surreptitious eek faces at each other, having clocked that their
neighbour for lunch is Taylor Swift. And thats nothing compared to the commotion gathering
outside: wherever Taylor Swift dines, a swarm of fans and paparazzi soon forms on the
pavement.
This is normal life for the biggest force in pop right now, a global superstar whose songs
soundtrack lives, whose tours sell out stadiums in seconds, and whose every facial expression
generates a million tweets. Taylor Swift in 2014 is an extraordinary phenomenon. She began
as a ringletted country singer, teenage sweetheart of the American heartland, but between
2006s eponymous first album and now shes become the kind of culturally titanic figure
adored as much by gnarly rock critics as teenage girls, feminist intellectuals and, well, pretty
much all of emotionally sentient humankind. Unlike Beyonc with her indomitable run-theworld warrior-queen stylings, or Nicki Minaj, with her cartoonified, amplified self and
pantheon of alter egos, there is very little image-making going on with Taylor Swift, pop star.
Instead, its her realness thats made her; as well as, of course, some clever choices and
heavy doses of charisma and songwriting talent. She is, as her friend the teenage media
magnate Tavi Gevinson put it, nothing less than BFF to planet Earth. Which, for one thing,
entails talking to planet Earth at a moderate volume.
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When Im doing a concert, its not like, WHATS UP LONDONNNNN! I pretty much just
speak at this level, she says. As a result, her stadium shows have the confessional good
feeling of mass sleepovers and she communicates with her vast audiences as if Im talking
to them across the dinner table.
Swift releases an album every two years without fail, which means its time for a follow-up to
2012s Red. We meet in the week before she announces new album 1989 and its lead single,
Shake It Off, a breezy, uptempo number about ignoring the haters. She explains: In the last
couple of years Ive had to come to terms with the fact that anyone can say anything about
me and call TMZ or Radar Online or something, and it will be an international headline. You
can either go crazy and let it make you bitter and make you not trust people, and become

really secluded or rebellious against the whole system. Or you can just shake it off and figure
that as long as youre having more fun than anyone else, what does it matter what anyone else
thinks? Because Ive wanted this life since I was a kid.
Her cheery, stoical take on celebrity and tabloid intrusion has served her well. I am not
gonna let them make me miserable when I could be enjoying my life, she says. Thats why
you see these artists become a tabloid regular and then become artistically and musically
irrelevant, because they let [gossipy websites] stifle them. Its not going to happen here.
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For the Shake It Off video, she enlisted 100 fans as well as a load of professional dancers:
Ballet dancers, breakdancers, modern dance, twerkers and me, trying to keep up with
them, sucking. She adds: I feel like dancing is sort of a metaphor for the way you live your
life. You know how youre at a house party and theres a group of people over there just
talking and rolling their eyes at everyone dancing? And you know which group is having
more fun.
Dancing enthusiastically amid hauteur has become a Swift trademark; specifically, letting
loose at awards ceremonies while everyone else remains seated and stiff. Shes been
attending these shows since she was a teenager and, after eight years of these very stressful
and competitive scenarios, sitting in the front row trying to figure out how youre supposed to
act, she eventually realised that I can process this as a huge pressure cooker or I can just
look at it like I have a front-row seat to the coolest concert right now. Dancing to Justin
Timberlake with Selena Gomez at last years VMAs was a particularly fine example of the
latter.
But her most famous awards-show moment remains Kanye Wests interruption at the 2009
MTV Awards. Such is Swifts global standing that the President himself called West a
jackass and, five years on, the moment still hasnt quite died in the collective imagination.
Or indeed, Swifts own: Last year, she gave her friend Ed Sheeran a jar of homemade jam
with a handwritten label that said: Yo Ed Im really happy 4 u and Im gonna let u finish but
this is the best JAM OF ALL TIME - T.
In short, the interruption only magnified good feeling towards her. Less fortunate was her
Grammys appearance the following year in which she wobbled her way through a duet with
Stevie Nicks and subsequently suffered an online shellacking. At this years ceremony, she
seemed determined to eclipse that with a rendition of the bruised All Too Well, a song
allegedly inspired by her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. Her performance was fierce and
focused. When she finished, she turned from the piano and faced the audience with an intent
gaze of defiance and held it for several seconds. The message was clear: no more the victim.
Its this song, incidentally, that contains one of the lyrics shes most proud of: You call me
up again just to break me like a promise/ So casually cruel in the name of being honest. She
pauses, pleased. I was like, Ill stand by that one.
All Too Well was taken from 2012s Red, an album defined by widescreen, wind-machined
renderings of heartache, which confirmed that country could finally be dropped from her
tag of country-pop singer. But 1989, as she explains, is shorter on the jilted, sad, pining.
Instead, its the phase after that, when you go out into the world and make changes in your

life on your own terms, make friends on your own terms, without [literally] saying Cmon
girls, we can do it on our own!
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Taylor Swift performs onstage during the 56th Grammys, January 2014. Photograph: Kevork
Djansezian/Getty Images
Those words will kindle the hopes of those whove suspected Swift has experienced some
sort of feminist awakening over the last few months. Recently, she was spotted browsing the
feminist section of a Manhattan book shop. Even more heartening has been the array of BFFs
filling her Instagram feed, Lorde and Lena Dunham among them. This seems to be one of the
many fun things about being Taylor Swift: that pretty much any smart and interesting young
woman in the public eye is yours for the friending. She loved Lordes debut album Pure
Heroine, so sent flowers to congratulate her on its release. Lorde, in turn, got Swifts number
from Gevinson (whom Swift recently counselled through her first heartache) and sent her a
long message apologising for once calling her too flawless to be a role model.
Unsurprisingly, Swift forgave her. The first time they hung out, she says, We took a walk
and sat in the park and ate Shake Shack burgers.
Her friendship with Dunham began even more simply. Swift had tweeted in praised of Girls,
and the moment she followed Dunham on Twitter, Dunham responded with a direct message
which said, something like, Can we be friends please? And then that was that.
Has female friendship become more important to her than romance? Without a doubt.
Because the other alternative as in having a boyfriend isnt really possible right now. It
just doesnt seem like a possibility in the near future. It doesnt ever work. What works is
having incredible girlfriends who I can trust and tell anything.
As for the endless is Taylor Swift a feminist? pieces well, they can die now. As a
teenager, I didnt understand that saying youre a feminist is just saying that you hope women
and men will have equal rights and equal opportunities. What it seemed to me, the way it was
phrased in culture, society, was that you hate men. And now, I think a lot of girls have had a
feminist awakening because they understand what the word means. For so long its been
made to seem like something where youd picket against the opposite sex, whereas its not
about that at all. Becoming friends with Lena without her preaching to me, but just seeing
why she believes what she believes, why she says what she says, why she stands for what she
stands for has made me realise that Ive been taking a feminist stance without actually
saying so.
I ask if tabloid scrutiny over her lyrics (and the string of famous exes they allude to), has
dissuaded her from pursuing what rock critic Robert Christgau calls her diaristic realism, or
the clues she famously leaves in her liner notes. No, she says, because its that sense of
reading a journal that has always connected me to my fans in this very intense way.
Nonetheless, she concedes that its an interesting tightrope walk to write autobiographical
songs in an age where mystery is completely out the window.
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With Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009. Photograph: Jason DeCrow/AP

The way she sees it, theres a gender element to such scrutiny. I really resent the idea that if
a woman writes about her feelings, she has too many feelings, she says. And I really resent
the Be careful, buddy, shes going to write a song about you angle, because it trivialises
what I do. It makes it seem like creating art is something you do as a cheap weapon rather
than an artistic process. They can say whatever they want about my personal life because I
know what my personal life is, and it involves a lot of TV and cats and girlfriends. But I dont
like it when they start to make cheap shots at my songwriting. Because theres no joke to be
made there.
True: Swift has always been a deft lyricist. Our Song, for example a perky early hit written
when she was 16 indicates her precocious skill when it reveals itself as the our song of
the title: in the last verse she sings, I grabbed a pen/ And an old napkin/ And I wrote down
our song.
The hysteria and scrutiny came later, with songs like 2010s Better Than Revenge. Fired at
the woman who took her man, rather than the man himself, it includes the snide, no amount
of vintage dresses gives you dignity and a chorus thats distinctly unsisterly: Shes an
actress, whoa/ But shes better known for the things that she does/ On the mattress, whoa.
For a moment, Swift seemed in danger of typecasting herself as a victimised prude. I was 18
when I wrote that, she reminds me. Thats the age you are when you think someone can
actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realise no one take someone from you if
they dont want to leave.
Were meant to assume that anyone making this much money (at Forbess estimate, shell
have raked in $64m this year) or anyone this astronomically successful (seven Grammys, a
Country Music Association lifetime achievement award when she was 23, and so on) must be
a cold-blooded and ruthless operator. But Swifts reputation for niceness is unrivalled and,
as I discover a few minutes later, completely deserved.
Its always been important to me, thats always been a priority, she says. Every artist has
their set of priorities. Being looked at as sexy? Not really on my radar. But nice? I really hope
that that is the impression. She agrees that nice is often used pejoratively. Totally! But I
dont care if thats not cool, to seem nice or not. Im not that focused on being cool and I
never have been.
Outside, a sea of big black cameras and upraised iPhones are aimed at the door that shes
about to walk through. After a glance through the windows she wraps her arms around me in
a very deliberate hug goodbye. Then she looks me in the eye and says, in a low voice: Are
you ready for a photoshoot? Take my hand.