Music

Everything We Learned From Taylor Swift’s Revealing Vogue Cover Story

The pop star talks Hillary Clinton, getting cancelled, and her 2017 lawsuit.

by Joseph Earp  9 August 2019
Taylor Swift scooter braun

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Despite being best known for writing songs with all the emotional intensity and honesty of diary entries, Taylor Swift tends to clam up when it comes to her press obligations.

She is an expert at weaving together charming, funny stories — just check out her appearances on any number of talk shows for evidence of that. And she’s clearly a pleasant person to be around. Journalists tend to walk away from interviews with Swift gushing about her politeness, and her singsong voice, and how special she made them feel.

Related
Taylor Swift, You Need To Calm Down, Because Pride Isn't About Straight People

But despite all that, there’s often not much of substance to the things that the pop star reveals in interviews. Most of the time, she talks about her music like a carpenter reminiscing about a particularly fine door they made — with affection, but an implicit acknowledgement that it’s kinda not a big deal. Which is perfectly fine; her privacy is her prerogative. But it does sometimes leave you wishing for just a little bit more, some slither of revelation, delivered straight from Swift herself.

Well, looks like our wishes have been granted, via a new interview with Abby Aguirre of Vogue magazine. In the career-spanning chat, Swift pores over her haters, her lawsuit, and why she decided to — somewhat controversially — come out in support of her LGBTQI fans.

Here are the major takeaways.

#1. ‘You Need To Calm Down’ Isn’t Just An LGBTIQ Anthem

When ‘You Need To Calm Down’ first dropped, some applauded Swift’s newfound commitment to airing her politics in public. Others — like our own Jared Richards — noted that the song appeared to conflate the struggles of being a successful woman with the struggles of growing up queer.

Well, Swift straight-up confirms the accuracy of that reading in the interview, describing the song as a tripartite examination of different kinds of discrimination.

“The first verse is about trolls and cancel culture,” Swift says. “The second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other.”

#2. One Simple Question Is All It Took To Change Swift’s Stance On Public Politics

For years, Swift has been criticised for playing her political cards close to her chest, cloaking herself in a silence that the right-wing took to interpret as proof she was a secret supporter of Donald Trump. (It’s worth noting that most celebrities maintain this silence, and that it’s always been odd that critics decided to single Swift out for something that a lot of other public figures do.)

That’s not true anymore, of course: ‘You Need To Calm Down’ is the most stridently politicised song of Swift’s career. And it turns out all it took was one question to produce it.

“Maybe a year or two ago, Todrick [Hall] and I are in the car, and he asked me, ‘What would you do if your son was gay?'” Swift says. “The fact that he had to ask me…shocked me and made me realise that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough. If my son was gay, he’d be gay. I don’t understand the question.”

Later in the interview, she shares more.

“Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cis gender male. I didn’t realise until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze.”

Swift also reveals that her decision to stay quiet during the 2016 election was calculated, designed to avoid feeding into a picture of Hillary Clinton her rival nominee for president was already smearing about the press.

“I just knew I wasn’t going to help. Also, you know, the summer before that election, all people were saying was She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability?”

#3. She Ended Up Getting That Dollar From The Man Who Groped Her

In 2017, Swift appeared in court to deliver testimony against David Mueller, a DJ who she accused of groping her during a photo-opp in 2013. Swift had told Mueller’s employers about the incident, leading him to be fired. Shortly thereafter, the DJ launched a $3 million lawsuit against the singer. She in turn sued him, for the symbolic amount of a single dollar.

Swift’s testimony is something of a legend — she spoke honestly and brusquely, shooting down the implications of Mueller’s lawyers. She won the case.

In the Vogue interview, the singer reveals that she did end up getting that dollar off of Mueller. He sent her a Sacagawea coin, a dollar emblazoned with the profile of the famous Native American activist.

“He was trolling me, implying that I was self-righteous and hell-bent on angry, vengeful feminism. That’s what I’m inferring from him giving me a Sacagawea coin,” Swift says in the interview.

“Hey, maybe he was trying to do it in honor of a powerful Native American woman. I didn’t ask.”

#4. Reputation Was “The Only Way” Swift Could “Preserve Her Mental Health”

Reputation is widely considered one of Swift’s trickiest albums — we ranked it as her second worst. For the artist herself, however, it was a much-needed coping strategy, designed to reclaim her narrative after the notorious incident in which Kim Kardashian and Kanye West attempted to ‘cancel’ her.

In the Vogue interview, Swift takes particular issue with the idea of cancel culture.

“A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” she says. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly. When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being.”

That’s where Reputation came in.

“I realised I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control. I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”