Jonas, who had been famous since he was in his early teens, fitted the bill perfectly. The fact that he was very cute only added to his allure. They were spotted snacking on ice cream together near her home, and then he was reported to have been backstage at one of Taylor’s concerts. Radio disc jockey Mishelle Rivera told the media she had spotted Jonas, who was trying to be incognito. She said: ‘He was trying to hide from the crowds by kicking in between a few people – he was wearing a baseball cap and real casual dress so he wouldn’t stand out.’ The broadcaster then explained how Jonas crept backstage to join Taylor after her performance, but claimed he ‘hid’ when he realised people had recognised him. ‘It was real obvious he didn’t want people to know he was there to see Taylor,’ she said.
Taylor was left with a curious paradox: she had wanted to go out with someone famous who would understand the pressures of celebrity, yet it was the very nature of Jonas’s fame that meant they had to be so secretive – something Taylor was uncomfortable with. ‘When someone’s not allowed to go out with me in public, that’s an issue,’ she said later. This tiptoeing around sat uneasily with Taylor’s upbringing, in which she had been encouraged always to be honest. As long as one is truthful in life, she was taught, one should have nothing to fear.
While both artists were being encouraged to present a wholesome image to the public, it was Jonas who was under the most pressure to play his every move in a squeaky-clean style. He wore a ‘purity ring’; this is an item of jewellery sometimes known as a ‘promise ring’. He and his brothers were champions of teenage abstinence, and their rings were as much a symbol of their image as cyclist Lance Armstrong’s yellow wristband was, once upon a time, a reflection of his. For Taylor, the issue was not necessarily chastity so much as the restrictions that Jonas’s fame put on their day-to-day life together.
But he left an impact on her creatively. Indeed, it is widely believed that her song ‘Love Story’ was, in fact, about Jonas. Despite her previous insistence that she did not want to write songs ‘about being on the road and being in hotels and missing your family and missing your friends’ – or being, in other words, a pop star – it seemed she had done just that in ‘Love Story’. In doing so, she went against her 14- or 15-year-old self, who would say ‘Ugh, skip’ when she heard such themes on the albums of other artists.
Speaking later, she joined the various dots. ‘I was dating a guy who wasn’t exactly the popular choice,’ she said. ‘His situation was a little complicated, but I didn’t care. When I wrote the ending to this song, I felt like it was the ending every girl wants to go with her love story. It’s the ending I want. You want a guy who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, what anyone says.’ It was subsequently rumoured that what had actually caused Taylor and Jonas to break up was that he was seeing someone else – Camilla Belle, an actress. ‘They’ve been together for months,’ Taylor told the press. ‘That’s why we broke up.’
As news of their split spread, Taylor received a crash course in how a celebrity story can take on a life of its own. One rumour had it that she had fallen pregnant. This was an incendiary piece of gossip: it threatened both parties’ public images. Taylor knew she had to jump on it without equivocation. ‘I read a very creative rumour saying I’m pregnant, which is the most impossible thing on the planet,’ she said. ‘Take my word for it – impossible!’
With that rumour stamped upon, another one took its place. Yet far from being a victim of this one, Taylor was the person driving it. The story of how Jonas had ended their relationship was tailor-made for headlines. It had it all: the girl of the romance as the injured party, the man as the cold villain and a dramatic figure in the mix, too. It all started when Taylor explained how they had parted ways. ‘He broke up with me over the phone,’ she said. ‘I looked at the call log – it was, like, 27 seconds. That’s got to be a record.’
It made for a memorable tale and it quickly became legend. Later, she posted a video diary onto her MySpace page in which she mocked Jonas further over the phone call. She held a plastic Joe Jonas doll during the video and joked that it came complete with a phone, which the doll could use to ‘break up with other dolls’. In an online posting, Jonas addressed the subject, although he never mentioned Taylor directly by name. ‘This blog is not an attack of anyone,’ his missive begins. ‘Anytime you are in a relationship for any length of time, there are going to be issues. Sometimes they resolve; other times they lead to a change of heart. This was the case recently.’ Jonas was also cryptic. He has insisted he ‘never cheated on a girlfriend’, adding, ‘Maybe there were reasons for a break-up. Maybe the heart moved on.’
Naturally, he had to address the 27-second dimension of the story. He did not dispute the length of the call, but he did challenge Taylor’s memory of which of them terminated it. ‘For those who have expressed concern over the ‘27-second’ phone call … I called to discuss feelings with the other person,’ he wrote. ‘Those feelings were obviously not well received. I did not end the conversation. Someone else did. Phone calls can only last as long as the person on the other end of the line is willing to talk. A phone call can be pretty short when someone else ends the call. The only difference in this conversation was that I shared something the other person did not want to hear. There were later attempts at communication that had no response.’
Her romance with Jonas and its aftermath had been an eye-opening experience for Taylor. It meant that as well as being written about for her music, she was now also the subject of stories about her personal life. If that did not feel invasive enough, there was the added layer that by definition Taylor had 50 per cent less control over stories involving a partner. She would, in time, find a serenity of sorts in the powerlessness she felt amid the media sagas. Back then, though, it cut deep.
She had to focus on her music to remind herself what made it all worthwhile. Soon, it was time to get out on the road and promote the new album. She had taken the deliberate decision not to rush into a headlining arena tour. When acts move too soon into arenas they are sometimes forced to curtain off some sections of the venue to make up for seats that were not sold. This can be a demeaning experience. ‘I never wanted to go into an arena and have to downsize it so there were only 5,000 or 4,000 people there,’ she said. ‘So we waited a long time to make sure the headlining tour was everything I wanted a headlining tour to be.’
This was not going to be a problem for Taylor. When her tour went on sale, fans eagerly snapped up the tickets within minutes. Even the huge Madison Square Garden, with its 40,000 seats, sold out within 60 seconds. Her appearance at the huge LA venue the Staples Center was booked out within two minutes. She was delighted. Moments before the tour went on sale, the concert promoter had called her to let her know that the tickets were about to be made available. ‘Okay,’ replied Taylor, ‘well, let me know tonight how we’re doing.’ Just three minutes later, the promoter was back on the phone. ‘You sold out,’ he told her. That, she later reflected, was the moment she realised she was ‘having a good year’.
She had never realistically expected such demand. When she had imagined touring one day, she had thought that worries over ticket sales would be part of the experience. ‘I look at things from a very practical place and a very realistic place. I’ve always had crazy dreams, but I’ve never expected them to come true.’ On the tour she would harness all she had observed and learned during her time supporting other established acts on the road. The likes of Rascal Flatts, Brad Paisley and others had given her several ideas. ‘Some things have blown me away, and I’ve taken away some things that I really want to incorporate,’ she said. She had been opening for other acts since she was 16, so she had spent many hours sitting on the tour bus in the evening imagining what she would do if she did her own tour.
Taylor put into context what it meant to her to be finally the top billing on the road. ‘Headlining my own tour is a dream come true,’ she said. ‘This way I can play more music every night than I ever have bef
ore. Having written my own songs, they are all stories in my head, and my goal for this tour is to bring these stories to life.’ It was a high standard to set herself. Attention to detail was a principle that was clearly at the heart of the tour, from onstage choreography to the backstage areas. And it was Taylor herself who was calling the shots. She dictated that images be projected onto the stage itself, so the evening would be a non-stop visual extravaganza. And there would be numerous costume changes, including one midway through each evening’s opening track – ‘You Belong With Me’. Taylor’s suggestions were readily accepted by the crew. ‘Anything Taylor wants to happen, happens onstage,’ said the tour’s bassist Amos Heller.
She also had directives for what should go on backstage. ‘It looks nothing like backstage,’ she wrote. ‘It looks like your living room. The walls are covered in magenta/maroon/gold/purple draped fabric, and the floors are carpeted with oriental rugs on top. There are lanterns hanging from the ceiling and candles everywhere.’ For Taylor, this meticulousness was well worth it, because the experience of live performance was something that always made her come alive. ‘When I hear that high-pitched sound of all those people screaming together, it’s like I want to get onstage right now,’ she has said. ‘I love being onstage. It’s one of my favourite things in the world.’ For her, the planning in and of itself was something to get excited about. ‘I’m in heaven right now,’ she wrote on her blog. ‘Constantly having meetings with the video crew and the lighting guys and the carpenters and the band and running through things over and over and over again.’ With everything agreed, she could not wait for the tour to start.
The opening night was at a venue in Evansville, in Indiana. Before the show, Taylor, her musicians and crew all gathered in a huddle. She told those assembled that she had never had a senior class or a sorority and that she saw them as her equivalent to that. She told them they were the people helping her to become ‘the person I’m going to be’.
The show was a success, prompting its star to say, ‘The energy was just incredible. The people were, like, freaking out, losing their minds.’ Yet even as she left the stage to thunderous applause and cheers at the end of the night, she had in mind some changes to the ‘lighting and stuff’ for the remainder of the tour.
Taylor had high standards for her work, whether in the studio or onstage. Yet she tried to balance that with courtesy. She wanted to be demanding, but not a diva. ‘There are times when you get frustrated, but the one thing you always focus on is treating people well. You just cannot storm off and freak out. People don’t take you seriously if you scream, if you raise your voice – especially when you’re a 19-year-old girl.’ By the end of the tour, she was delighted with what she and her band mates had achieved. She described them as her ‘one true love’. Whether it was her biological relatives or her adoptive musical soul mates, somehow or other it was always about family for Taylor.
Misbehaviour at pop award ceremonies can quickly conjure up a media storm. They have been the scenes of raucous, attention-grabbing behaviour for many years. As far back as 1984, Madonna took to the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards (sometimes known as the VMAs) wearing a white wedding dress, only to roll and writhe around on the stage as she sang her hit ‘Like a Virgin’. In the comparatively demure 1980s, this behaviour from Madge was enough to raise eyebrows around the globe. It prompted almost as much outrage and publicity as she hoped it would.
She inspired dozens of copycats. In 1996, Jarvis Cocker, lead singer with indie band Pulp, ran onstage at the BRIT Awards to interrupt Michael Jackson’s messianic performance of ‘Earth Song’. The bespectacled Brit-popper clowned around, pointed his (clothed) backside at Jackson and was then removed from the stage. Later, he explained: ‘My actions were a form of protest at the way Michael Jackson sees himself as some kind of Christ-like figure with the power of healing. The music industry allows him to indulge his fantasies because of his wealth and power.’
Other shocking moments – all of which took place at the ever-controversial MTV VMAs bashes – include the lesbian kiss shared by Britney Spears and Madonna in 2003, Prince’s ass-revealing trousers in 1991 and Lady Gaga’s simulated suicide in 2009. The allure for publicity-hungry artists to make a bid for the top headlines at these parties remains strong for good reason. Ask Miley Cyrus. At the 2013 MTV VMAs, her duet with Robin Thicke was the talk of the night. The young singer stripped down to a skimpy, skin-coloured latex outfit and pointed a huge foam finger at Thicke’s crotch area. Then she twerked enthusiastically against his genital area, with a hugely mischievous and excited expression on her face.
In the days and weeks after the ceremony, Cyrus’s twerking was widely and endlessly discussed. Among the adjectives the media used to describe it were ‘crass’; they even referred to it as a ‘train wreck’. The Hollywood Reporter said it was ‘reminiscent of a bad acid trip’. Social networks were awash with comments about what she had done. At the peak of these discussions, Twitter users were generating 360,000 tweets per minute. Soon, it felt like Cyrus’s twerking stunt was being discussed from a countless number of angles. Feminists were up in arms. Was what Cyrus had done in some way racist, asked some, who felt she was mocking ‘ratchet culture’? Irish songstress Sinéad O’Connor then entered the debate with a widely shared open letter in which she said the young Cyrus was being pimped. As for Cyrus herself, she later brushed off the controversy, saying of her critics, ‘They’re overthinking it. You’re thinking about it more than I thought about it when I did it.’ In truth, people were thinking about it at least as much as Cyrus hoped they would. Indeed, just a few months later, she was courting controversy at the 2013 MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs). She arrived in a skimpy outfit and later lit what appeared to be a spliff. Cue a renewed wave of publicity for the singer.
The moral of the story is that headline-grabbing behaviour at awards ceremonies can prompt a considerable amount of media coverage. Cyrus’s conduct at awards bashes in the second half of 2013 is the benchmark for how to ride that tiger. Yet, for all the discussion of her twerking, she cannot boast as prestigious a contributor to the debate as Taylor can when it comes to her own high-profile ceremony moment. When Taylor unwittingly hit the headlines for an incident at a bash in 2009, President Barack Obama himself, no less, joined in the subsequent discussion.
It all began at that scene of numerous scandals – the MTV VMAs. Held at the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, it was an exciting evening. Michael Jackson, who had died earlier that year, was the subject of a special tribute, before the awards proper began to be handed out. Taylor, who was wearing a KaufmanFranco dress, was the first to get a gong on the night. She won the Best Female Video category. In doing so, she had beaten off competition from the likes of Pink (for ‘So What’), Lady Gaga (for ‘Poker Face’) and Beyoncé (for ‘Single Ladies – Put a Ring On It’).
When she was announced as the winner, Taylor walked to the stage expecting to receive the trophy, make a brief acceptance speech in which she would thank key people, then return to her seat, the subject of rapturous applause. Well, that was the plan. Thanks to a bizarre interruption from another star on the night, she scarcely got through one sentence of her speech. She said: ‘I always wondered what it would be like to maybe win one of these some day, but never actually thought it would happen …’
Everything was going according to plan, but then the rapper Kanye West appeared, having decided that what the world needed was for him to intervene on behalf of runner-up Beyoncé. He grabbed the microphone from Taylor’s clutches and said: ‘Yo, Tay, I’m really happy for you and I’m gonna let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!’ Taylor was stunned and the shocked expression on her face cut the carefully controlled atmosphere of the event to ribbons.
Much of the audience was similarly shocked. And confused, too. What was West doing there? Was this just a joke, or a gimmick that had been pre-arranged with the hosts? In time, though,
people realised exactly what West was doing. Elliott Wilson, the chief executive officer of Rap Radar, observed the awkward spectacle firsthand. ‘You could feel everybody being nervous and not knowing if it was a prank or something,’ he told CNN. ‘Then people started booing him really loud. The reaction to his tantrum was so strong … and what happened was he gave everyone the finger.’
Could it be that West was drunk? He had, according to the Daily Mail, been spotted ‘swigging Hennessy cognac on the red carpet earlier in the night’. (In 2006, when he disrupted the MTV EMAs after missing out on the Best Video award for ‘Touch the Sky’ to Simian, he had admitted to having a ‘sippy sippy’ earlier in the evening.) Beyoncé looked shocked and embarrassed as she sat in the audience. There was nothing in her reaction to suggest that she endorsed what the rapper was saying on her behalf. Later in the evening, she won the Best Choreography award for ‘Single Ladies’. She took the opportunity to give Taylor the moment in the spotlight that West had denied her.
Beyoncé told the audience how much her first VMA, which she had won as a teenager with Destiny’s Child, had meant to her. Having put into context what an exciting moment it can be for a teen to win such an award, she invited Taylor onto the stage to continue the speech that had been so rudely interrupted. Taylor accepted the invitation and stood at the microphone. ‘Maybe we could try this again,’ she said. The audience showed its approval with a standing ovation. Then, she finally got to deliver her speech. ‘I would really like to thank Roman White, who directed the video, and Lucas Till for being in it. I would like to thank all the fans on Twitter and MySpace and everyone that came out to my shows this summer. And I would like to thank my little brother’s high school for letting us shoot there.’
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