Taylor Swift can truly find inspiration anywhere she goes. In the past, she’s shared how her neighbors’ love story and movies informed her early songwriting. Now, in a new interview with The New York Times Magazine, the superstar went deep on how her songwriting process has evolved in her two decades in the music industry.
“There are so many different ways that a song begins in my world,” Swift said. She cited the latest single, “Elizabeth Taylor,” from her most recent LP The Life of a Showgirl as an example of when a song “comes as if from nowhere.”
While her ode to the Hollywood starlet may sound like a track that was years in the making, Swift shared how a car ride with fiancee Travis Kelce inspired her to put pen to paper. Or, rather, open the voice memo app.
“I’m riding in the car with Travis. I go on and on and explaining to Travis, like why I love Elizabeth Taylor so much,” she recalled. “She fought for artist rights. She was exploited in so many ways, and yet she kept her humanity, she kept her humor, she kept her passion for life, and I was just going on and on.”
Swift continued: “I’m like, her eyes were violet. Some people said they were blue. Some people said they were violet. I think they were violet. And we arrive, we get home, he gets out of the car, and I’m just in my head. I’m like, this intrusive melody of like, ‘I cry my eyes violet, Elizabeth Taylor,’ and I’m just like scrambling to open my my record like app on my phone.”
This kind of spontaneous experience “where it floats down like a cloud in front of you, and all you have to do is grab it, and the song transpires from there” isn’t that rare, Swift said. “That’s the way it happens most of the time.”
Elsewhere in the 30-minute interview, the esteemed songwriter shared the stories behind some of her most ambitious and vulnerable songs, like the fan-favorite “All Too Well (10 Minute Version).”
According to Swift, the original five-minute version came from “a very emotional rant that I did in like a sound check when we were rehearsing for the Speak Now tour.” Thankfully, a sound guy captured that session, which turned into the 2012 Red track. But nearly ten years later when she was piecing together the vault tracks for her re-recorded “Taylor’s Version” of the album, Swift couldn’t find that original version of the cathartic rant.
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“I was like, going back through diaries and finding like little fragments of it, and I didn’t have the like old thing anymore, so I was looking through safes, trying to find the CD,” shes said, confirming that the 10-minute version isn’t directly lifted from that legendary tour moment. “But I had to go back and piece together lyrics and stuff. That was the most extensive restoration process I’ve ever done on a song.”
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Swift also used the interview to shout-out some of her own favorite songwriters, including Sombr. “I’m a massive fan of his songwriting, and his lyrics are so intensely confessional,” she said, pointing out that “having a male artist say stuff like that is really good for the cause of women to be able to say stuff.”
The pop star wrapped up the interview by reflecting on how criticism of her art has fueled her. “It’s been a huge jumping off point, like a creative writing prompt… There are so many songs in my career that would not exist. Like, ‘Blank Space’ would not exist,” she said. Swift then imparted some wisdom to new songwriters when it comes to intense online criticism: “Don’t respond to like trolls in your comments. That’s not what we want from you. We want your art.”
