Hello Taylor Nation,
If you have visited us before here at the Swift Agency, one guy who couldn’t be more excited for the upcoming Outspoken performance at the Grammy Awards, you know that when I write commentary and use quotes from an article I am careful to use paraphrasing (saying what the article said using different words) instead of cutting and pasting.
That’s hard to do with the latest article on the Queen of Sparks in Vogue because it all seems like it should be mentioned. I am going to do my best to just get the highlights and not spoil it all.
It may come as no surprise that Vogue‘s cover story on the Outspoken One includes one of the most beautiful pictorials that I’ve ever seen. Fortunately they back it up with an interesting article as they follow the Sparkly Dressed throughout the photoshoot.
It’s no surprise to her fans that the Enchantress in person is sharp, clever and funny. Also, as the author puts it, she gets “occasionally downright bawdy.” Apparently Taylor knows every line of a certain curse-filled honey-badger viral video on YouTube. She did asked the author to keep her cursing off the record (this kind of gives it away though). I am glad to report that T-Swizzle does have more edge that she’s given credit for, though she keeps it in check.
However, she gave up on being cool a long time ago. “I think that happened as soon as I left school, when I was sixteen, because then all that mattered was music and this dream that I’d had my whole life,” T-Swizzle tells Vogue‘s Jonathan Van Meter.
“This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life,” adds the Blonde With The Sparkly Guitar. “It never freaks me out. Never. Ever.” She pauses for a moment. “But you know what does freak me out? When is the other shoe going to drop? I am so happy right now. So I am always living in fear. This can’t be real, right? This can’t really be my life.”
People still expect her to become a wild party girl for some reason, and for a long time asking her if she ever felt like letting her hair down was a constant question in every interview.
“But you know, as time has gone by, I’ve gotten that question less and less. I think, for me, the bigger pitfall is losing your self-awareness. Even though I am at a place where my dresses are really pretty and the red carpets have a lot of bright lights and I get to play to thousands of people . . . you have to take that with a grain of salt. The stakes are really high if you mess up, if you slack off and don’t make a good record, if you make mistakes based on the idea that you are larger than life and you can just coast.”
The Forever and Always Fearless One does admit she sometimes loses it and acts bratty, but spends the next few days apologizing endlessly. We think it’s cute. It’s also very endearing the way she describes her parents, Andrea and Scott Swift. We’ll let you read that on the article, but I do want to mention how she says she has a pie-in-the-sky Dad and down-to-earth Mom.
There’s also a description on her (yet nameless) fourth album:
“There’s just been this earth-shattering, not recent, but absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak,” Taylor tells Vogue, “and that will turn out to be what the next album is about. The only way that I can feel better about myself—pull myself out of that awful pain of losing someone—is writing songs about it to get some sort of clarity.”
I have to quote something that the author says that I’ve longed to put in writing for a long, long time:
Swift’s music is not exactly straight diary entry—it’s cleverer than that—but somehow the specifics of her past relationships continue to have a universal appeal.
– Jonathan Van Meter, Vogue
Not every song is a name, folks. And even then not every song is a word-by-word account. They’re only inspired by actual events.
And regarding relationships, she mentions she’s not in one. She has red flags for them now:
- “If someone doesn’t seem to want to get to know me as a person but instead seems to have kind of bought into the whole idea of me and he approves of my Wikipedia page? And falls in love based on zero hours spent with me? That’s maybe something to be aware of. That will fade fast. You can’t be in love with a Google search.”
- “If a dude is threatened by the fact that I need security, if they make me feel like I am some sort of princessy diva—that’s a bad sign. I don’t have security to make myself look cool, or like I have an entourage. I have security because there’s a file of stalkers who want to take me home and chain me to a pipe in their basement.”
- “If you need to put me down a lot in order to level the playing field or something? If you are threatened by some part of what I do and want to cut me down to size in order to make it even? That won’t work either.”
- “Also, I can’t deal with someone who’s obsessed with privacy. People kind of care if there are two famous people dating. But no one cares that much. If you care about privacy to the point where we need to dig a tunnel under this restaurant so that we can leave? I can’t do that.”
Finally, I will mention this dialog that happened when the Sparkly Dressed met designer Alexander Wang.
“You are so tall!” says Alexander Wang when meeting the Enchantress.
“I think I am still growing,” replies the Outspoken One. “I haven’t topped off yet.”
Once again, she’s right in more senses than one.
You can read the complete cover story in Vogue. The magazine will appear in newsstands on the last week of January.
And finally, you probably expected me to post this EPIC picture 🙂
On Taylor Swift: Rodarte quilted lamé leather dress with Swarovski Elements (fall 2009) and laminated linen hat (spring 2008). Michael Kors boots. From far left: Al Wilson, David Cook, Caitlin Evanson (wearing a Rodarte leather jacket from spring 2009), Mike Meadows, Elizabeth Huett (wearing a Rodarte leather jacket from spring 2009), Grant Mickelson, Paul Sidoti, Daniel Sadownick, Amos Heller (on the floor). Photographed by Mario Testino.
Coming up in the Calendar!
- February 12: The 54th Annual Grammy Awards will take place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Taylor Swift is nominated for Best Country Album for Speak Now, Best Country Song for Mean and Best Country Solo Performance for Mean. The show will be broadcast live on CBS from 8:00pm to 11:30pm ET/PT.
(Source: Vogue)
The Swift Agency 
haha naturally the first thing i had to do was watch the honey badger video, lol. when the vogue article said it was curse-filled, i was expecting something much more explicit, but it’s pretty much just two words repeated occasionally and one other word towards the end.
as for the rest of the article (and your blog post on it), i love them both and think they did a great job of writing about the sparkly dressed! 🙂