Taylor has been chosen as EW’s Entertainer of the Year and is featured on the cover of EW Magazine’s latest issue. This issue will be available on newsstands on December 3 2010.
2010 will go down in history as the year we all saw Taylor Swift differently. The 20 year-old kicked things off with a No. 2 single debut (“Today Was a Fairytaleâ€), a hit movie (Valentine’s Day), and four Grammy wins, including Album of the Year for her 2008 CD, Fearless. She spent months headlining arena concerts and big-ticket awards shows. But there was one achievement—the Oct. 25 release of her third record, Speak Now—that topped everything. Buoyed by strong reviews and the radio-friendly hit “Mine,†Speak amassed a jaw-dropping 1,047,000 units in first-week sales, the highest tally for any release in five years. For all that, the confidently sweet woman who was only 2 months old when Entertainment Weekly launched in 1990 is now our youngest-ever Entertainer of the Year.
Entertainment Weekly: Before Speak Now was released, were you nervous about it selling?
Taylor Swift: It was an emotional roller coaster leading up to releasing that record. I tend to live somewhere between hope and fear. I’ve never wavered so much in my life than I did in the weeks leading up to the record release.
EW: As the first week went by, were you getting updates on how it was doing?
Swift: I wasn’t given any sales updates. That was by choice. I didn’t think that we could sell a million records, to be completely honest with you. I felt like, “There’s no way I can do this, and the fact that people are speculating whether I can or not immediately gives everyone a reason tosay ‘It did less than projected’ if I sold 999,999 records.†But everybody else seemed to think that we could do this impossible thing.
EW: So how did you find out about the number?
Swift: I got a call, and it was a bunch of people from management and my mom and my dad on the phone. I remember Scott Borchetta, my record-label president, saying,“Congratulations. I guess you’re my million-dollar baby.†I made him say it, like, four times because I couldn’t actually believe it. First I was screaming, and then I was really silent, and then I was really emotional, and then I was dancing. I still can’t wrap my mind around it.
EW: And now people are saying you’ve saved the music business.
Swift: I write music about my life and love and relationships, and I hope that people like it enough to bring it into their world and make it about their life and their love and their relationships. That’s where I have to draw the line as far as what I am and what I am not.
EW: Which song on the record were you most scared to write?
Swift: I never had that feeling. There were, of course, songs on the record— and I think you can probably use your imagination about the ones I’m talking about—where I knew people would draw their own conclusions about who they were about. I would take a few seconds and think, “Okay, you need to really have an idea of what you’re doing here and what the consequences could be.†Because I realize there are consequences to your actions. But the reason I write songs is to help clarify how I feel and get past it. Writing a song like “Mean†helped me. The songs on the record that are really raw—those songs helped me more than anything.
EW: Were you surprised by how quickly and specifically people started speculating about the subjects of the songs?
Swift: I imagined that people would make their own guesses. Sometimes I would laugh because I would see it in print and it would say,“This song, which is written about her ex, so-and-so…†And they would write about it as if it was fact. The fact is, I haven’t ever confirmed that any song is about any particular person. There’s something kind of freeing about that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all still up in the air.
EW: When you wrote“Innocent,†did you know immediately that you would sing it on the VMAs, where Kanye West had caused that ruckus last year?
Swift: I didn’t know that until about a week out. That woke me up in the middle of the night. Before I had gone to sleep I had decided that I didn’t want to perform on the show. Or even go. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and I realized that I had to, and that I wanted to perform that song.
EW: You’re partially responsible for this because you wrote the song, but how do you feel about the fact that you and Kanye West continue to be linked?
Swift: It’s such a long story and it’s such an old story. I wasn’t given much choice in the matter, but the one choice that I do have, that I continue to make, is to not talk about it.
EW: You caught some flak this year for some of your performances, particularly your duet with Stevie Nicks at the Grammys. Did that bother you?
Swift: Words are everything to me. Words can build me up and make me feel so good. And on the flip side, words can absolutely demolish me. I am nowhere close to being bulletproof when it comes to criticism. Feeling everything is part of being a songwriter. If I block out those feelings of pain and rejection, then I don’t know what I would write about. I’d rather feel pain when I read something terrible about me than feel nothing.
EW: Okay, moving on: Have you seen any good movies lately?
Swift: Um, yes! {Laughs} What have I seen lately? None that are out yet.
EW: How about Love& Other Drugs, starring Jake Gyllenhaal?
Swift: {Smiles} It’s a good movie.
EW: So what’s it like to go away for a weekend with someone and have it end up on the cover of a magazine?
Swift: I write in great detail about my personal life, but I don’t talk about it.
EW: Is anyone in your life allowed to say,“You can’t write a song about me�
Swift: Nothing is off-limits as far as writing. You can’t have parts of your life you don’t write about.
(Cover Story, Page 33)
