Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.
— Taylor Swift
My friends tease me about the fact that if someone seems bad or shady or like they have a secret, I find them incredibly interesting.
When we're falling in love or out of it, that's when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I'm very happy to do that.
It is possible for a woman to be a romantic, but also to be single and to be happy.
You get to a point where it's like you can't really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.
I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I've kept that mentality. Just because there's a hurricane going on around you doesn't mean you have to open the window and look at it.
I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.
I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It's hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.
When I'm 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I'll be like: 'Cool, I'll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.'
There's a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.
When I get on a roll with something, it's really hard for me to put it down unfinished.
As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing - hopefully.
I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it's a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.
I put out one album one week, and I'm already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.
I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.
I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.
Anytime someone tells me that I can't do something, I want to do it more.
I think that you can love people without it being the great love.
I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that's fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that's fine. And it might not be right, because I'm the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It's the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.
For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.
Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don't get me.
You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you're obsessed with yourself, and I'm not - you can become unhinged so easily.
Here's what I've learned about deal-breakers. If you have enough natural chemistry with someone, you overlook every single thing that you said would break the deal.
Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.
I think that it's okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn't about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.
I can't deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you. It's a conscious thing; it's a common-sense thing.
I get nervous for everything - literally everything.
Every one of my regrets has produced a song I'm proud of.
One thing I've tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.
For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
Some days I totally appreciate everything that's happening to me, and some days I feel everyone's waiting for me to mess up.
I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.
I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.
I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that's horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.
If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it's cool that happens.
I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.
I think that when you're making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.
I don't compare myself to anyone else; I don't make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that's okay by me.
Vanity can apply to both insecurity and egotism. So I distance myself, because I feel everything.
I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control. Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.
One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.
I'm a songwriter. Everything affects me.
I don't really know that much about love, it turns out.
'Love Story' I wrote on my bedroom floor in about 20 minutes.
I've never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.
My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.
I don't know if I could do this with the same energy, and in the same way - all the costume changes and glitter and hair and makeup - all the time. When I'm in my 50s, I kind of think I'll want to be in a garden.
I've always been really, really aware of my insecurities - really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.
I've written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that's what's been fun about looking back.
I'm typically single. I'm the girl who - I call it girl-next-door-itis - the hot guy is friends with and gets all his relationship advice from but never considers dating.
