As we have seen, when Taylor moved into her first apartment she relished the freedom it gave her to speak and sing out loud as she wandered around it. It clearly made for a fertile environment, as we see in ‘Never Grow Up’. Taylor has explained: ‘I walked into this apartment after I bought it and thought: oh man, this is real now. We’re all getting older, and soon my parents are going to be older, and then I have to think about grown-up things.’
Again, we see Taylor as the elder sibling here. Or is she actually feeling cluckier than that and having pangs of yearning for motherhood? ‘Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is seven or eight, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is, becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.’
One day in New York, Taylor met someone who really grabbed her attention. She was so moved by the encounter that she returned to her hotel suite and wrote a song that summed up how she felt. It was called ‘Enchanted’. ‘Meeting him, it was this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you’re not in love with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I remember the glittery New York City buildings passing by, and then just sitting there thinking: am I ever going to talk to this person again? And that pining away for a romance that may never happen … but all you have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will.’
The song itself is very mature – and almost cinematic in its gravitas. It is believed that the man who so struck her in this way was electronica artist Adam Young. He once wrote an open letter to her on his website. Its conclusion hinted strongly that he was the subject of this track. ‘Everything about you is lovely. You’re an immensely charming girl with a beautiful heart and more grace and elegance than I know how to describe. You are a true princess from a dreamy fairytale, and above all I just want you to know … I was enchanted to meet you, too.’
If you enjoy angry Taylor, then you will have loved her furious songs, such as ‘Picture to Burn’. That ire rises again in ‘Better Than Revenge’, in which she hurls insults at a woman who had, Taylor believed, been the other party when one of her boyfriends had cheated on her. The lyrics are petulant and unflinching, yet the metaphors about someone stealing other children’s toys in the playground have a certain wit to them.
In ‘Innocent’, she addresses the Kanye West drama. ‘That was a huge, intense thing in my life that resonated for a long time,’ she said. Even though she was asked about the incident wherever she went, she chose to keep her silence on the matter for some time. When she was ready to ‘speak’ about it, she chose to sing about it instead. She later explained: ‘Even then, I didn’t talk about it and I still don’t really talk about it. I just thought it was very important for me to sing about it.’ The song explains how everyone has the chance to reinvent themselves. ‘Nothing is going to go exactly the way you plan it to,’ she said. ‘Just because you make a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s gonna happen.’
‘Haunted’, said Taylor, is about ‘being really strung out on a relationship and wishing you had it back, and being tormented by it’. Again, it has a big-screen feel to it – this could easily be on the soundtrack of a Twilight-esque ‘tween’ movie. ‘I wanted the music and the orchestration to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience – recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for.’
‘Last Kiss’ is a ballad that attempts to capture the moment when you fully connect with the sadness you feel over a lost love. This is not, as with many break-up songs, about the initial drama of a split, but more about a feeling further down the line. ‘Going through a break-up, you feel all of these different things,’ she explained. ‘You feel anger, and you feel confusion and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories and the hopes you had for the future.’
There is so much gloom in Speak Now, yet the album finishes on an upbeat note. She was inspired to write the catchy melody for the final track during a concert. In between the main chunk of her performance and the subsequent encore, she was in the dressing room when a tune came into her head. She made a quick note of it and then returned to her adoring audience. Later, she revisited the melody and the result was ‘Long Live’.
Suitably, given the location of its genesis, she turned the song into a tribute to those who work with her. ‘Sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team,’ was how she described it. Listening to it, you want to be on – and in – Taylor’s team. There is just the right level of pride, and plentiful courage. Rolling Stone compared it to Bon Jovi, and rightfully so – this is another Taylor song that is made for big arenas.
That Rolling Stone comment was emblematic of the praise Speak Now got from the critics. The music monthly said the album stood within a steady progression of Taylor’s talent. It declared that the album ‘is roughly twice as good as 2008’s Fearless, which was roughly twice as good as her 2006 debut’. The Guardian gave Speak Now four out of five stars and said it was ‘mostly’ a ‘triumph’. It praised the courage of ‘Never Grow Up’, which its reviewer found ‘devastating and genuinely uncomfortable’.
While the BBC website found Taylor was progressing at a ‘stately’ pace, it also felt that the album was too long. ‘When you’ve heard half a dozen perky laments you’ve heard, well, quite a lot,’ it said. The Washington Post made a similar point about length, complaining of the album’s ‘14 wordy, stretched-thin, occasionally repetitive songs, all written entirely by her’. But at least the same reviewer was moved to say that Speak Now was a ‘captivating exercise in woo pitching, flame tending and score settling’.
The New York Times, meanwhile, described Speak Now as ‘a bravura work of nontransparent transparency’. Yet it was Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times who got closest to the heart of the appeal of the album, and of Taylor in general. Wrote Powers: ‘Much of mainstream pop music now sounds like advertising jingles and football chants, with melodic earworms the size of tapeworms and itchily irresistible beats. Outrageous personalities complement these pushy sounds. Swift reminds us that there’s another way to hook in listeners. Not surprisingly, coming from someone so focused on childhood imagery, it’s a trick parents often use with their kids: use a soft tone. Focus everything inward. Make the one you’re addressing feel like you and she are the only ones in the world.’
The tour to promote the album began in February 2011. It would take in 17 countries, with her playing 100 tour dates over a year. It was the most lucrative tour of 2011 according to Billboard, which estimated that she made $123.7 million. Yet it was not easy work. ‘Going through these performances, it’s like an athletic marathon,’ she told Katie Couric. ‘When I’m underneath the stage and then it pops me up like a toaster, and then I’m like six feet in the air, and I’m like, “Made it through that … did the banjo song … okay … onto this next blocking … change clothes … flying above the crowd – awesome …”’
Alongside the careful planning, Taylor aimed to keep much of the evening ‘in the moment’. She wanted a blend of preparation and spontaneity. She said: ‘One of my favourite things about this tour – although it’s a very theatrical show, and it really reminds me a lot of my favourite musical theatre productions in its scenery, costumes and production – there are lots of moments in the show that are very spontaneous.’
The freedom of that spontaneity was something that Taylor would occasionally look back on in the future and question whether it had disappeared from her life. The perspective one eventually gets on a lost relationship, as Taylor explored in ‘Last Kiss’, was something she would also find with regards to her career. Her fame was about to rocket to new heights. And while enjoying much of the ride, Taylor would at times look back and wonder where some of the fun had gone.
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What is the difference between a star and a superstar? We each have our own instinctive idea of what each term means, but the difference is not entirely tangible. However, Taylor went a long way towards discovering the answer to this question during 2012, as her fame took on ever-greater intensity. She found herself in a vortex of recognition. Increased media stature is both a driver and signpost of newfound fame. Celebrity is a phenomenon that feeds itself: the more you get the more you get. Taylor was about to get plenty.
The February 2012 edition of Vogue magazine featured her on its front cover. Billboard named her its ‘Woman of the Year’, making her the youngest artist to receive the honour. With all this recognition came considerable fortune for her. She came top of Billboard’s ‘Top 40 Money Makers in Music’ list and was named by Forbes as the highest-earning star under 30. Among the other magazines to feature her on their front covers were Elle and Rolling Stone – which added her to its list of ‘Women Who Rock’, lauding her as a ‘genuine’ rock star with ‘a flawless ear for what makes a song click’. She was gaining recognition and respect across a wide range of media. Serious music magazines paid tribute to the country roots of her craftsmanship, women’s monthlies saw her as an inspiring and intriguing character, while teen and celeb weeklies knew she was of interest to their younger, poppier readership.
This gave her enormous currency and delighted her record label no end. As far as the public relations department was concerned, Taylor was a dream act to promote: everyone was only too happy to promote her latest releases. With some artists, such departments have their work cut out trying to get stories or reviews printed. Yet Taylor was sweeping the board, appearing in every publication her label could reasonably wish to see her in.
Britain’s broadsheet paper The Guardian, which prides itself on its discerning relationship with the arts, published an in-depth interview with her. In it, she attempted to explain why her songs connected so strongly with her listeners, particularly young females who were facing the emotional and physical hydra that is adolescence. ‘There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once,’ she told them. ‘What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three and a half minutes.’ The interviewer, Alex Macpherson, was impressed. He reflected: ‘In Swift, the traditions of storytelling and confessionalism are intertwined, held together by an instinct for the universal.’
Yet for all the respect Taylor was attracting from highbrow publications, there was still plentiful fascination with her love life among the more gossipy corners of the media. When she co-starred with High School Musical hunk Zac Efron in the animated Dr Seuss film The Lorax, there was a sense of inevitability to the speculation that they had become an item off screen. Yet Taylor shot the rumours down. ‘We are not a couple,’ she told Ellen DeGeneres. ‘He’s awesome; we are not a couple, though. You hear people get together when they’re shooting movies, co-stars. But not like animated co-stars. You know what I’m saying? Oh my god, as we were recording our voiceovers on separate coasts, we really connected.’
The next famous man she was accurately linked to was not an actor, but a member of a well-known political clan. Cute Conor Kennedy is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy. He had a three-month summer romance with Taylor in 2012. They were first spotted in July. They were lunching at a pizza restaurant in Mount Kisco, New York. Within days they were spotted at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. They were seen together there many times, holding hands on occasion. Another time, baby-faced Conor was seen kissing Taylor. Things seemed serious: she was also reportedly considering buying property in the area.
She was accused of being a ‘wedding crasher’ when she and Conor rolled up at a family ceremony. Taylor’s representatives denied she had turned up without being asked. There was more family stuff going on when she accompanied Conor for a visit to the grave of his mother, who had hanged herself only months earlier. She helped remove some overgrown vegetation from the site. Although things seemed serious between them, they soon split up. A close friend told Us Weekly: ‘They quietly parted ways a while ago. It was just a distance thing. No hard feelings. They’re fine.’ Another relationship had gone by the wayside. More lessons learned for Taylor and, most importantly, new inspiration for her songs.
However, her fling with Kennedy would be dwarfed when compared to her next relationship – with another international teen pin-up. As far as the celebrity press was concerned, here was a romance made in show-business heaven: a beautiful, blonde singer with a history of heartbreak, and a baby-faced boy-band studlet with a reputation as a player. Between them, the two had many millions of fans around the world who were already fascinated by their every move. Together, they were gold and guaranteed to generate many miles of column inches. Indeed, the connection between Taylor and Harry Styles was so convenient that the question was asked how deep their relationship really was.
Before he had ever met Taylor, Styles’s love life was already a mainstay in the media. While all of the members of his pop band, One Direction, were of interest to the press, Styles had jumped out of the pack. It all started when he was linked with Xtra Factor presenter Caroline Flack, who was 14 years older than him. The age gap alone made the story a veritable bombshell: One Direction fans were as furious as the tabloid press was excited. Flack received death threats from jealous 1D fans and lots of people had an opinion on the rumoured dalliance. Eventually the pair went their separate ways, but the fling had made Styles one of the media’s central targets.
Reporters followed him everywhere and tried to link him to a chain of people. Most of the stories were fabricated. Even the Radio 1 host Nick Grimshaw, a close friend of Harry’s, was alleged to be romantically involved with the young singer – something they both deny. At one point, Harry was moved to say he felt as if he had ‘7,000 girlfriends’ – according to the media, at least. As for Taylor, we have seen that she, too, had considerable media currency, albeit from a more wholesome place. There were few celebrity magazine editors who did not covet juicy gossip involving her. So when whispers began to circulate that the two young stars had become an item, it was bound to be a big story.
They reportedly met for the first time at an awards night in 2012. It was March and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards was in full swing. Taylor was spotted dancing during One Direction’s performance. Next to her was her friend Selena Gomez, but it was Taylor who caught the most attention. The reporters present quickly sensed the opportunity for a story and later, after the two singers had chatted, Styles was asked if he had anything to report. With a smile, he described Taylor as ‘nice’.
With the intense scrutiny paid to his words, Styles had grown accustomed to weighing his every syllable carefully, particularly when speaking about his private life. Therefore, he was extremely measured in what he said about Taylor.
Even when he spoke about her to Seventeen, he sounded more like a politician than a pop star. He said: ‘She honestly couldn’t be a sweeter person. She’s genuinely nice and extremely talented and she deserves everything she has.’ Few teenage boys choose their words so cautiously or speak with such nuance when discussing attractive ladies.
That nuance meant the guessing game had to carry on. In fact, the first people to hint that the pair had become an item were neither Taylor nor Styles, but other celebrities. The prince of pop Justin Bieber teased the media with a deliberately cryptic allusion to them. ‘I already know one of the biggest artists in the world thinks Harry is so hot, but I have been sworn to secrecy,’ he said. Styles’s One Direction bandmates were also seen teasing him about the gossip, including at the MTV VMAs.
Then, after Taylor appeared on the final of the US X Factor, the show’s anchor Mario Lopez offered the press what he called ‘a little inside scoop’. He said: ‘During the rehearsals, Harry from One Direction came and slapped me on the back and said: “Hey, Mario, how ya doing?” And I said, “What
are you doing here?” And he sort of pointed toward Taylor.’ Lopez said they left holding hands. The show’s official Twitter feed also bumped up the story, saying the two had eaten cheeseburgers together.
This was enough to convince the world that the pair were an item, and soon they were dubbed ‘Haylor’. Lopez would surely not have touched with a barge pole any unsubstantiated rumour about One Direction, seeing as they were the beloved product of his own employer, Simon Cowell. Although stories are frequently placed in the media by the X Factor team, those stories are all carefully controlled at the source. While the Lopez quote was revealing, as the media jumped on the story, the one thing reporters were still lacking was a ‘smoking gun’ – in other words, solid proof.
Styles continued to be coy when he was asked about his love life. For instance, he told Cosmopolitan magazine: ‘There’s someone I like … but this girl … isn’t my “type”. It’s more about the person. How they act, their body language, if they can laugh at themselves.’ This could have been anyone, so the media settled for speculation. They wondered whether Taylor was trying to buy a house in London so she could be near Harry. This cast the relationship as moving very quickly, yet nobody knew for sure if such a relationship was even in place.
The clues kept coming. Taylor was seen wearing a silver airplane chain, identical to one owned by Styles. She also hinted that she was now interested in relationships with ‘bad boys’. While to older readers the concept of baby-faced Styles as such a creature may seem odd, for younger people, he has a reputation as a heartbreaker. ‘There’s a really interesting charisma involved,’ said Taylor. ‘They usually have a lot to say, and even if they don’t, they know how to look at you to say it all. I think every girl’s dream is to find a bad boy at the right time, when he wants to not be bad any more.’
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