This week, the New York Times decided to rage-bait music fans for some reason. The NYT Magazine compiled a thankfully unranked list of “the thirty greatest American songwriters alive.” Included on the list? Taylor Swift, who gave an on-camera interview to the magazine. Two notable things happened in the interview: Taylor revealed that she’s still super-close to Jack Antonoff, and Taylor took a swipe at her own snake-fam army for being obsessed with decoding her blind item songs. Girl!!
Taylor Swift may be prone to leaving Easter eggs for her fans, but she admits that fans can go to extreme places when trying to decipher her songs and that extensive decoding is still “weird” for her. While sitting down with the New York Times for being featured on their 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters list released Tuesday, the singer-songwriter reflected on how the inspiration behind her songwriting has become an obsession for fans.
“There’s corners of my fanbase who are gonna take things to a really extreme place,” Swift said. “There’s nothing I can do about that. There’s people who are gonna try to, like, do detective work, figure out the details — who is that about? What is this?”
“When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s a paternity test,” she said. “Like, ‘This song’s about that person.’ Because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song, I did.’ But that’s part of it,” she added.
Despite the intense analysis, Swift expressed the importance of abiding by her own “perception” when writing the song.
“You have to hold tight to your perception of your art and your relationship with it, and then you kind of have to [mimes blowing it out] there it goes. Hope you like it. And if you don’t now, hope you do in five years, and if you never do, then I was doing it for me anyway.”
Swift also took the opportunity to address her friendship with Jack Antonoff and said, “Jack Antonoff is a collaborator of mine and one of my best friends.” She also shared insight on their “rant bridge,” calling it a “stream of consciousness, endless pouring-out of emotion, intrusive thoughts, blended with metaphor, with discussion, with shouting.” She pointed to her 2014 song “Out of the Woods,” 2019’s “Cruel Summer,” and “Is It Over Now?” from 2023 as examples.
[From THR & Rolling Stone]
There’s a lot I could say but I’ll hold my tongue for the most part, because I don’t want to cause a lot of arguments. No one can argue with a few of these statements though: her blind-item songs are almost overwhelmingly obvious. While she’s written a few songs which are true mysteries, the songs about her exes are barely blind items. Additionally, no one can argue with the fact that Taylor has spent years encouraging her fans and baiting her fans with Easter eggs and blind-items as well. She’s a master of engaging with her fans at that level, so to hear her speak so dismissively of the snake fam’s engagement with those games… it’s fascinating. I mean, she is 36 years old and about to get married. Maybe she legitimately wants to “mature” as an artist and songwriter (The Life of a Showgirl begs to differ though).
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
