Taylor Swift has had a huge year, and now the pop star is opening up about her road to success — and all the bumps along the way.
In a rare interview with Time as she was named Person of the Year, Swift celebrated what she described as her career “breakthrough” following her record-breaking Eras tour and hugely successful concert film.
“I’ve been hoisted on the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years,” Swift told Time. “I was given a tiara, then it was taken away from me. It feels like the breakthrough of my career, happening at 33 years old. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally strong enough to endure what came with it.”
However, Swift said she had to hit rock bottom to truly appreciate this peak. “It’s not lost on me that the two big triggers for this happening were two terrible things that happened to me,” she said. “The first was that I was canceled shortly before my death and my sanity. The second was that my life’s work was taken away from me by someone who hates me.”
Swift is referring, in part, to her public feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, which led to her “Reputation” era. In 2016, West released the song “Famous,” in which he infamously rapped the line “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex” and claimed Swift agreed to it. She denied this, which led to Kardashian releasing a conversation recording that suggested Swift had actually greenlit the use of her name. Swift told Time that it felt like a “career death” at the moment.
“They have a completely fabricated pretext in the form of an illegally recorded phone call that Kim Kardashian edited and then released to tell everyone that I was a liar,” Swift said. “It took me to a place mentally that I had never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rented house for a year. I was afraid to answer the phone. I pushed away most of the people in my life because I no longer trusted anyone. I went down really, really hard.”
Following the release of her “Reputation” follow-up “Lover,” Swift was once again crushed – this time by the sale of her catalog by Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta to managing mogul Scooter Braun. “With the scooter thing, I think my masters were sold for nefarious reasons to someone who actively wanted them,” Swift told Time. “I was so blown away by the sale of my music and the person it was sold to. I thought, ‘Oh, they’ve beaten me now.’ That’s it. I do not know what to do.'”
Ultimately, Swift re-recorded all of her Big Machine albums and released them under the name “Taylor’s Version” – an unprecedented move that led to even more commercial success and became the spark for the Eras Tour, which covered each of her stages celebrated career.
As Swift fans who have been to an Eras show know, the concert is long – over 180 minutes – and extremely physically demanding, leading many to ask Swift to give up her exercise regime. The pop star revealed to Time exactly what she’s been doing to prepare for the tour, which recently ended in South America and resumes in Japan next year.
“Every day I would run on the treadmill and sing the entire set list out loud,” Swift said. “Fast for fast songs and jogging or fast walk for slow songs. Then I had three months of dance training because I wanted to get it into my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans and not lose track.”
Swift also quit drinking, telling Time, “Doing this show with a hangover… I don’t want to experience that world.”
Another topic Swift hasn’t spoken about yet is her budding relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Their appearances at his games have boosted TV ratings and led to some claims that it was a publicity stunt because the romance is so public – but Swift confirmed to Time that couldn’t be further from the truth .
“It all started with Travis adorably blasting me on his podcast, which I thought was hella metal. Right after that we started hanging out. So we actually had a lot of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for because we got to know each other,” Swift said. “When I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think they saw our first date at this game? We would never be psychotic enough to go on a first date with all our might.”
In short, people better get used to seeing Swift up there in the stands cheering on the Chiefs.
“When they say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to watch him do what he loves. We stand up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she said. “The opposite of that is that you have to go to great lengths to make sure no one knows you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”