Taylor Swift

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  Taylor was just relieved to have her time in the spotlight, and she was enormously grateful to Beyoncé for the gesture. ‘It was just so wonderful and so incredibly classy of her and just gracious and wonderful to let me say something,’ said Taylor later. ‘She’s just been my hero and one of my idols ever since I was little … She’s always been a great person before anything else … I thought I couldn’t love Beyoncé more tonight, then tonight happened and it was just wonderful.’

  The shadow that West had cast over Taylor’s big night came with a considerable and obvious silver lining: the episode had focused colossal attention and significant sympathy onto Taylor. Millions of people around the world who had never heard of Taylor previously were made aware of her existence by the headlines the incident generated the following day. Thanks to the hunger and scale of the twenty-first-century media, those headlines continued for weeks afterwards. All of them cast Taylor as the hero of the piece. Her dignity played well with the media as well as its readers and viewers. Her manager, Scott Borchetta, acknowledged explicitly that the drama ended up being ‘positive in her career in terms of name recognition’.

  West, though, struggled to change his position as the villain of the piece. As pressure grew for him to apologise, he did just that in a blog post. Much of the post was written in capital letters and it included liberal use of exclamation marks. This only seemed to lessen the sincerity of it. He wrote: ‘I’m sooooo sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom.’ He also took a moment to praise Swift, and wrote that he likes ‘the lyrics about being a cheerleader and she’s in the bleachers’.

  ‘I’m in the wrong for going onstage and taking away from her moment!’ Although he insisted that Beyoncé’s video remained ‘the best of the decade’, he apologised to his fans and to his ‘friends at MTV’, and promised to ‘apologise to Taylor 2MRW’. He continued: ‘Everybody wanna boooo me but I’m a fan of real pop culture!!! … I gave my awards to OutKast when they deserved it over me … that’s what it is.’ He added, ‘I’m still happy for Taylor!!!!!’ and told her she is ‘very, very talented!!!’ In conclusion, he wrote: ‘I really feel bad for Taylor and I’m sincerely sorry!!! Much respect!!!’

  It was too late to save his credibility in the eyes of many of his industry colleagues. Pink was disgusted. She said: ‘Kanye West is the biggest piece of s**t on Earth. Quote me. My heart goes out to Taylor Swift. She is a sweet and talented girl and deserved her moment. She should know we all love her. Beyoncé is a classy lady. I feel for her, too. It’s not her fault at all, and her and Taylor did their thing. And douche bag got kicked out.’ Kelly Clarkson wondered if West got ‘hugged enough’ as a child. Joel Madden, of the rock band Good Charlotte, described the rapper as ‘a bully on that one’. Katy Perry was more succinct, saying simply, ‘F**k you, Kanye.’ She likened his actions to stepping on a kitten.

  Angry words, then, from a variety of pop royalty, yet they were about to be upstaged when US President Barack Obama weighed in. During an interview with CNBC, he was asked whether his daughters had been upset by West’s interruption of Taylor. ‘I thought that was really inappropriate,’ he said. ‘You know what, it was like, she was getting an award and, what, are you butting in? The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person, she’s getting her award and what’s he doing up there? He’s a jackass.’

  Later, West apologised more sincerely during an appearance on The Jay Leno Show, in tones that were nearly those of a therapist’s client. ‘It’s been extremely difficult, just dealing with the fact that I hurt someone or took anything away, you know, from a talented artist – or from anyone,’ he said. ‘My entire life, I’ve only wanted to give and do something that I felt was right. And I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong and it wasn’t a spectacle. It was actually someone’s emotions that I stepped on.’ He added: ‘It was rude, period. And, you know, I’d like to be able to apologise to her in person.’

  Some 48 hours later, Taylor herself appeared on US talk show The View to give her account of what it’s like when your speech at an awards do is hijacked by another artist’s ego. She said: ‘Well, I think my overall thought process was something like: wow, I can’t believe I won, this is awesome, don’t trip or fall. I’m gonna get to thank the fans, this is so cool. Oh, Kanye West is here. Cool haircut. What are you doing here? And then: ouch. And then: I guess I’m not gonna get to thank the fans.’ She admitted she was ‘rattled’ by the incident.

  Yet she did not want it to be blown any further out of proportion. ‘He was very sincere in his apology and I accepted that apology. I’m just honestly trying not to make it into a bigger deal than it already is. It’s become more of a big deal than I ever thought it would be. It happened on TV, so everybody saw [it]. I would just like to move on.’ In a further attempt to bring some perspective to the table, she said: ‘I’ve had a few days – and everyone has them – when you feel humiliated or you’re shocked by something or something knocks you down a few pegs. But in those moments, I’ve been very quick to realise and remind myself that there are people out there with real problems. To get hung up on any bad moment that happened this year would be unfair to all the good moments I’ve had this year.’

  All seemed peaceful, but within months West was seemingly retracting his apology and then firing borderline insults at Taylor. ‘I made a mistake,’ he told Hot 97, a New York radio station. ‘My timing was definitely extremely off and the bigger plans, the bigger fight – how do you go about it? How do you go about getting it done?’ Having seemingly revealed that all he regretted was his timing, rather than what he had actually done, he then suggested that Taylor should have done more to defend him.

  As the interview wore on, he spoke more about the incident. He denied there was anything arrogant about what he did, arguing instead that it was ‘completely selfless’. Indeed, he even compared his intervention to ‘jumping in front of a bullet’, adding that he had ‘lost an arm’ in the course of it. This portrayal of himself as a selfless man who had been not just wronged but injured by what he had done was one that sat uneasily with the perceptions of many observers. It was an inversion that won him few admirers.

  For Taylor, a quiet dignity on the matter had served her well. In November, she was given the chance to exorcise the embarrassment when she attended the Country Music Awards, where she was up for glory in four separate categories: Music Video of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year and the biggie, Entertainer of the Year. Taylor, decked out in a long gown, arrived at the Nashville Sommet Center looking splendid and then opened the evening with an attention-grabbing performance of ‘Forever & Always’.

  Then, it was time for the winners to be announced. She won the Video gong for ‘Love Story’ and then returned to the stage to take Album of the Year for Fearless. For Taylor, this was important. ‘I’d have to say that was the most mind-blowing experience, hearing my name called and winning that award,’ she said later. ‘That is an award I had placed in an unattainable spot in my head. To be the youngest to win it makes me love country music even more. We wished for this, my parents and I, every single day, without actually believing it would come true.’

  Then she was back onstage as the winner of Female Vocalist of the Year. This time, she made light of Westgate when she thanked ‘every single person here for not running up on to the stage during my speech’. There were further jokes about West from hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood. Country music veteran Little Jimmy Dickens even chipped in with one of his own. Taylor’s musical family was letting her know they had her back.

  She felt even more valued when she won the Entertainer of the Year award. There to present it to Taylor were Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. It was time to put the joking aside and for Taylor to explain why she was so deeply touched by this approval of her work. ‘I’ll never forget this moment, because in this moment everything that I could ever have wanted has just happened to me,’ she said. ‘You guys, this album is my diary, and so to a
ll the people who voted for this: thank you for saying you love my diary, because that’s the nicest compliment.’

  At the American Music Awards in December she won five separate honours, including Favourite Pop/Rock Artist of the Year, a category in which she was up against none other than the recently deceased pop legend Michael Jackson. She said it was an ‘unimaginable honour’ to win this award in the circumstances. ‘Music has never been ultimately about competition,’ she added. Maybe not, but it is always nice to win, isn’t it?

  Being cast as a victim has a certain appeal for a celebrity, but as the West controversy rolled on, it was clear that Taylor needed to reassert herself. She wanted the world to remember that she was a fun and happy character, rather than the wronged soul she had been cast as in recent times. She got the chance to do just that when she guest-hosted Saturday Night Live (SNL). A legendary US television show, SNL began in the mid 1970s. It steadily built a reputation as a beacon of live sketch comedy and variety performances. It began its thirty-ninth series in the autumn of 2013, making it one of the longest-running shows in American broadcasting history.

  Taylor even wrote her opening monologue herself. She delivered it in the form of a self-deprecating tune, which she called ‘Monologue Song’. Naturally, it referenced the West saga, but did so wittily. It was a big ask for someone as young as Taylor to enter the sharp, sometimes even sour, lion’s den of SNL. She seemed to please most commentators. Entertainment Weekly said of her: ‘Whether shrewdly letting her Kate Gosselin wig do most of the acting during a typically pungent parody of The View, or gleefully screeching while wearing braces in a public-service commercial satirising texting-while-driving, Swift was always up for the challenge, seemed to be having fun and helped the rest of the cast nail the punchlines.’

  As far as Taylor was concerned, SNL was a natural challenge for her. She was, she said, ‘a theatre kid’ when she started in performance. So for her, the slot was the natural culmination of that. She said the experience did take her out of her ‘comfort zone’. Yet she was soon acting on the small screen again when she appeared in an episode of CSI. Since it launched in the autumn of 2000, the American crime drama series has become hugely popular. The programme is now an internationally loved franchise, and Taylor had wanted to appear on it for some time. ‘I’ve always joked around with my record label and my mom and everybody,’ she said. ‘All my friends know that my dream is to die on CSI. I’ve always wanted to be one of the characters on there that they’re trying to figure out what happened to.’

  Producer Carol Mendelsohn said she ‘reached out’ to Taylor after hearing from a CBS executive that she was a fan. ‘So Taylor came in to meet me and we talked about the character, but I said: “It’s a very edgy part – this may not be what you want.”’ In the first of many comments about what she will tell her grandchildren, Taylor cited her CSI appearance as the source of some pride. ‘When I’m really old and can only remember one story about my life to go back and relive and tell over and over and over again to the point where my grandchildren roll their eyes and leave the room – that’s the story,’ she wrote on MySpace.

  Her love life was back in the limelight, too, when she became involved with another famous young pin-up. The moment she was linked to the actor Taylor Lautner, the media could hardly believe its luck. Here was a romance between two Taylors: a gym-pumped pin-up from a generation-defining film series and a clean-cut country singer. They met when they were cast in the same film – the rom-com Valentine’s Day. Swift was excited to make the move from the small screen to the big screen. She had landed the job following a call from a crew member. ‘I got a phone call from Garry Marshall saying, “Taylor, I want to have lunch or breakfast with you. I really want you to be in this movie. Will you? Will you let me write a part for you?” And I could not believe it. I couldn’t believe it; because I didn’t have the time to be a big role in this movie, Garry was going to write a small part for me. It blew my mind.’

  Cast as boyfriend and girlfriend – Lautner played Willy, Taylor played Felicia – their characters agreed that they would remain chaste until 14 February. The filming was quite an experience for both Taylors. Although Lautner was more accustomed to making movies than Swift, filming at a real-life school was a challenge. ‘We’re walking into school and it’s interesting because we shot this scene in an active high school. Active. As in, school is in session while we’re filming,’ said Swift. ‘Every 30 minutes, there would be a bell that would ring and hundreds of students were pouring out, exactly where we were, and there were loads of people screaming out of windows and groups of kids gathering together chanting things. It was definitely an interesting and very exciting day. For me to step outside my immediate comfort zone and try comedy, and to have one of the coolest directors – a legendary director – laughing that hard at my first scene, it was really wonderful.’

  Their characters kiss in the movie – and Taylor made sure she gave sufficiently enthusiastic statements about the experience to the media. Females linked to male teen heart-throbs can become the focus of intense envy. So she had to make sure she was not seen to be taking the experience lightly. She said the experience changed her life. ‘I love him, he’s so cute,’ she said. As for Lautner, he added that his pretty blonde co-star was certainly his ‘type’.

  He appreciated her personality, too. ‘We get along great, we instantly clicked,’ he told Rolling Stone. ‘And she’s – she’s an amazing girl. Aside from being beautiful, she’s extremely funny, charismatic and fun to be around, and so we definitely get along. We’re close.’ Luvvies traditionally gush over how wonderful their co-stars are, but were these merely two thespians pouring theatrical platitudes over one another? Or was something serious afoot? They were spotted together during the autumn of 2009, dining out at romantic restaurants, watching basketball and hockey games and hanging out in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Lautner also showed up at a few of Taylor’s concerts and they were spotted on a frozen-yoghurt date, chaperoned by Andrea.

  Questions were soon asked about whether they were involved romantically. How the media craved an official confirmation from either party! As with Jonas, Taylor seemed to prefer being slightly coy. She never denied the relationship, but at first only hinted at it. ‘I don’t know, he’s an amazing guy and we’re really close and … ah, yep … and we’re in a movie together and I’m really excited about seeing it.’

  For the media, there was by now enough evidence that the pair were an item. They were duly nicknamed ‘Tay Tay’. This might not roll off the tongue as elegantly as, say, ‘Brangelina’, but it looked great on the page. After just three months together, however, the couple went their separate ways. A source close to Taylor reportedly told Us Weekly magazine: ‘There was no chemistry and it felt contrived … He liked her more than she liked him. He went everywhere he could to see her, but she didn’t travel much to see him. They plan to stay friends.’

  Taylor took lessons from the experience, which she outlined in Girl’s Life magazine. ‘However hard and painful they are, you will learn something from a break-up. That is the most contrived, you’ve-heard-it-a-million-times lesson, but I really do feel like everything is put in your life to teach you something – even if it is terrible or hard.’ She has a knack of repeating well-worn clichés in a way that lends them a degree of self-awareness and a sense of originality. For her younger fans, these were fresh sentiments.

  She had, by this stage, bought her own home – a huge moment in the life of any young lady. But Taylor’s first home was not typical. In the fall of 2009 she moved into a penthouse apartment in Nashville. Now, she felt, as she paced around her own pad, she had really arrived in the city she had dreamed of as a child. It was a plush 4,062-square-foot apartment – and a property she immediately set about imposing her own identity upon. With the same sort of inspired eye for detail with which she had designed aspects of her tours, she made the apartment her own. She took her guiding principle from the fact that when she first
looked around the place, she had said to herself: ‘The view is amazing – let’s change everything else.’

  So Taylor did just that. She installed a pond, which she filled with koi, and a birdcage. She chose some beautiful antiques and picked bright colours to bring the place to life. ‘I love more of an old-world, eclectic feel, with mismatched chairs and a different knob on every cabinet,’ she told Oprah Winfrey. She felt the property had a ‘whimsical’ feel to it and she gave it a new moniker to reflect this: ‘The Imaginarium’. It was not – thank goodness – indulgence on the scale of some rock and pop stars’ houses. It was never going to rival Michael Jackson’s gawdy Neverland, for instance. She also preferred to keep her presence there low key, as opposed to, say, the high-profile ‘Supernova Heights’ house Noel Gallagher took in north London at the height of Oasis’s fame. But it did allow her, and her inner artist, some fun.

  Most of all, however, her new pad made her feel mature. She positively revelled in her newfound independence. ‘Living alone, you can do so many fantastic things,’ she said. ‘You can walk around and have conversations with yourself and, like, sing your thoughts … I think I’m the only one who does that.’ How fascinating it would be to hear some of those impromptu songs and spoken streams of consciousness. For Taylor, though, this privacy – where she was free to express herself – was precious. Performing in front of tens of thousands of concert-goers or millions of television viewers was one thing. While she loved those experiences, and worked hard for them, there was also something beautiful in her being able to hold these private performances for an audience of just one – Taylor Swift. It was a rare joy for her to be able to perform – and even exist – in such serenity and solitude. Her life was getting more frantic all the time, and she was beginning to feel like all eyes were upon her.