10 Biggest Takeaways – Billboard

“Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me.”

Swift received straight to the purpose when speaking about her age-old feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, which reached its climax in 2016 after Kim launched snippets presupposed to be a cellphone dialog between her then-husband and the “Karma” singer concerning the lyric, “I made that b—h famous.” “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,” Swift described the scenario to TIME.

“That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before,” she continued. “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.”

She went on to launch 2017’s Reputation partially in response to the scandal, an album she remembers as being met with uproar and skepticism. “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she informed the journal. 

In the interview, Swift described her fallout with Kardashian and West as being considered one of two springboards for the success she has right now. The second? “Having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me,” she stated.

She’s referring, after all, to the 2020 sale of her first six album masters to Scooter Braun, who acquired them from the proprietor of Swift’s ex-label, Big Machine Records’ Scott Borchetta. “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” she informed TIME. “I was so knocked on my a– 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.’”

After a lot of public backwards and forwards, she determined to reclaim her misplaced albums by re-recording them one after the other, a venture she is now two-thirds of the way in which by (solely her 2006 self-titled debut and Reputation are left). “My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things,” she stated. “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.”

Speaking of Reputation, Swift did take a second to tease that she’s already enthusiastic about her subsequent “Taylor’s Version” launch. “It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she stated of her 2017 album. “I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, ‘Sick snakes and strobe lights.’”

As for the From the Vault tracks approaching the nonetheless unannounced Reputation (Taylor’s Version)? Swift teases they’re “fire.”

Swift wasn’t instantly positive whether or not she wished to embark on her “Taylor’s Version” quest. “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it,’” she recalled. “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.” 

“It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she added. “I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

If you’ve ever questioned how Swift feels concerning the means of re-releasing her first six albums, she says it’s akin to one thing out of a fantasy-adventure movie. “I’m collecting horcruxes,” she joked, referencing Harry Potter earlier than dropping nods at Marvel and the Lord of the Rings. “I’m collecting Infinity Stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”

People have been questioning since Swift’s Eras Tour kicked off in March how she’s bodily capable of get by such an arduous three-hour present every evening — all whereas making it look fully easy. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she defined to TIME. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”

She additionally began a health routine designed specifically for her by her fitness center, which included energy, conditioning and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” Swift continued. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”

Plus, Swift stated she’s fully ditched alcohol (with one exception: Grammy evening). “Doing that show with a hangover …,” she added. “I don’t want to know that world.”

Swift and Beyoncé have each spent the yr touring. And whereas the 2 have lengthy been buddies and even attended one another’s live performance movie premieres this fall, the 2 girls haven’t been capable of escape comparisons of their abilities and stage exhibits.

“She’s the most precious gem of a person — warm and open and funny,” Swift stated of the “Break My Soul” singer. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.”

“There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she added. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”

The world was blown away when Swift confirmed as much as considered one of Kelce’s Chiefs video games at Arrowhead Stadium earlier this yr, sending followers right into a spiral over whether or not or not she and the Kansas City tight finish had been relationship. But based on her, they had been already boyfriend and girlfriend by the point she went to the sport.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she recalled. “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.”

As beloved as her relationship with Kelce already is, there have been some grumblings from soccer followers who assume the NFL is focusing an excessive amount of on the pop star. “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she stated of the sports activities media consideration. (*10*)

“I’m just there to support Travis,” she continued. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads.”

Swift may be very conscious of the final shock individuals have proven in response to the general public nature of her relationship, particularly compared to her final longterm romance. In the previous few months alone, for reference, she and Kelce have most likely been seen collectively extra occasions than she and her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn ever had been over the course of six years. But based on Swift, there’s a cause for that.

“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,” she stated. “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.”

 “Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter,” she added. “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.”