Tavi Interviewed Taylor Swift

The two talked for Elle’s “Women In Music” issue.

May 07, 2015

Taylor Swift is covering the June "Women In Music" issue of Elle, and the magazine tapped Tavi Gevinson, founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie Magazine, to interview Swift for the story. (Gevinson also covered Miley Cyrus for Elle last year.) The issue doesn't come out until May 19th, but excerpts from Gevinson's conversation with Swift hit the web today. The star discusses the evolution in the way she thinks about relationships, songwriting, and her past. Check out some highlights below.

On Relationships:

"[O]nce I fell in love, or thought I was in love, and then experienced disappointment or it just not working out a few times, I realized there's this idea of happily ever after which in real life doesn't happen. There's no riding off into the sunset, because the camera always keeps rolling in real life… Now I have more of a grasp on the fact that when you're in a state of infatuation and you think everything that person does is perfect, it then—if you're lucky—morphs into a real relationship when you see that that person is not in fact perfect, but you still want to see them every day."

On 1989 track "You Are In Love:"

"I wrote that song about things that Lena [Dunham] has told me about her and Jack [Antonoff]. That's just basically stuff she's told me. And I think that that kind of relationship—God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful—would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times."

On Past Decisions:

"I feel no need to burn down the house I built by hand. I can make additions to it. I can redecorate. But I built this. And so I'm not going to sit there and say, 'Oh, I wish I hadn't had corkscrew-curly hair and worn cowboy boots and sundresses to awards shows when I was 17; I wish I hadn't gone through that fairy-tale phase where I just wanted to wear princess dresses to awards shows every single time. Because I made those choices. I did that.'"

Tavi Interviewed Taylor Swift