Taylor Swift
In a wide-ranging interview marking her being named Time’s Person of the Year, Swift discusses the fallout from high-profile disputes and criticizes the music industry over its treatment of young stars
Taylor Swift has opened up about the psychological toll of her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and criticized the music industry over its treatment of young pop stars in a new interview with Time, which named her Person of the Year.
After a year in which she was at the center of cultural conversations for her hugely lucrative Eras tour, Swift spoke scathingly about what she said were record labels’ short-term approach to replacing their stars rather than promoting them. “If an artist is mature enough to deal with the job psychologically, they usually throw you out at 29,” she says. “In the ’90s and ’00s, it seemed like the music industry just said, ‘Okay, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them in the fire and see what happens.’ When they have accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we will find new teenagers.'” She said her solution was to change the style with each new album project: “I realized that every record label was actively working on it to try replace me. Instead, I thought I would replace myself with a new me first. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
She was particularly critical of Big Machine, the label where she released her first six albums and which she accuses of keeping her on a tight artistic leash. “Every creative decision I wanted to make was questioned,” she said. “I really thought about those albums too much.”
This working relationship ended in great acrimony as Swift objected to transferring ownership of the Big Machine albums to music manager Scooter Braun, with whom she had clashed. “In my opinion, my masters were sold for nefarious reasons to someone who actively wanted them,” she told Time.
Braun hasn’t commented on the interview, but has previously said that with the deal and the circus surrounding it, “a lot of things got lost in translation”: “I thought it was unfair, but I also understand that from the other side, they probably did “I also felt it was unfair.”
Swift’s animosity toward Braun dates back to when he managed Kanye West. West released a song, Famous, with the lyrics: “I made that bitch famous”, referencing a previous argument between the two. Swift publicly opposed Famous’ lyrics, but was criticized after Kim Kardashian, West’s then-wife, leaked a phone call recording between West and Swift in which Swift appeared to approve the song. A longer version of the video justified Swift by showing that she had not approved the phrase “bitch.”
“A gothic punk moment of female rage”…Swift performs during her Reputation tour. Photo: Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP
The feud dominated tabloids and social media for years, damaging Swift’s reputation (which she alluded to in the title of her sixth album). “My career was taken away from me,” she says in her Time interview. “They have a completely made up lie in the form of an illegally recorded phone conversation that Kim Kardashian edited and then released to tell everyone I was a liar. This 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.”
Kardashian didn’t comment on it, but said in 2020, “No one has ever denied that the word ‘slut’ was used without their permission… I never edited the footage (another lie) – I just have a few clips on Snapchat.” posted to make my point,” adding that Swift “forced me to defend myself [West]“.
Swift spoke proudly about 2017’s “Reputation” – which was considered a failure by some upon release but is now widely embraced by Swift fans – calling it “a gothic-punk moment of female rage about it, of a whole social structure to be cheered on”.
Elsewhere in her Time interview, she discusses her much-discussed love life with NFL player Travis Kelce, the ongoing project to re-record her Big Machine-era albums, and touches on the comparisons between her Eras and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tours one that both made popular concert films. “Of course it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other,” she says.
More broadly, she said the current popularity of female pop stars – the 2024 Grammy nominations are dominated by female artists – is encouraging. “If we look at this in the most cynical way, the lucrative development of female ideas means more female art is created. It’s extremely encouraging.”
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