Owning it. Taylor Swift reflected on the previous 10 years as the decade winds down and revealed whether she would change anything.
“Oh, God — I wouldn’t give myself any advice,” the 29-year-old singer admitted in her Billboard Woman of the Decade cover story, published on Wednesday, December 11. “I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs.”
Swift acknowledged the surprise some might have upon reading her remarks but went on to explain further. “Maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family,” she noted. “I’ve got my boyfriend [Joe Alwyn]. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.”
The Grammy winner had a remarkably successful 10 years, which happened to coincide with her 20s. She released Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation and Lover, while shifting from country to pop. The songstress also headlined the highest-grossing U.S. tour: the Reputation Stadium Tour.
The period was not without its hardships, though. Swift found herself at odds with Katy Perry, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, even taking a hiatus from the public eye during her feud with the rapper, 42, and the reality star, 39, over a phone call recording released by the KKW Beauty founder.
The Cats star insisted that the negative moments led to valuable tokens of wisdom. “I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men,” she told Billboard. “That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue — like, ‘Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?’ And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.”
