Taylor Swift’s Songwriting Process on ‘evermore’ | Apple Music

taylor swift is apple music songwriter of the year for 2020. congratulations and thank you for bringing us not one but two incredible albums this year these records just steeped in imagery and escapism and romance and heartache and just remarkable examples of you as a songwriter we've always known but masterclass stuff so thanks so much for showing up twice this year taylor thank you for saying that um yeah it's it's amazing we just put out evermore uh yesterday so i'm i'm in this state of like exhaustion but relief but very proud so i was going to ask you actually how it feels because i mean you've done this you know a few times now working up the morning after records finally come out and i think as fans we all know the effort and the energy that you put into not just writing the songs and getting them complete but preparing the release of the music and ensuring that we're as engaged as possible so when it's all out and about and that whole process finally kind of comes to an end for the time being how do you feel the next morning are you are you well rested is the energy too intense what's the what's the situation i feel differently today than i felt the day after releasing folklore because even the day after releasing folklore aaron and i were still bouncing ideas back and forth and and we just knew we were going to keep writing music i didn't know if it was for an album of mine or um aaron and justin vernon have a really amazing project called big red machine so we kept writing thinking maybe we were going to do some big big red machine stuff but the things that we ended up writing really sounded more like more like a continuation of folklore so when i put out folklore i remember just feeling so proud and happy but still like foot on the gas like let's keep let's keep going this is fun i'm not finished with this and everybody all my collaborators we all felt the same way about it so we just kept going with this one i have this feeling of of sort of quiet conclusion and sort of this weird serenity of like we did what we did what we set out to do and we're all really proud of it and that feels really really nice i'm not surprised because i feel like the stories to some degree there's some conclusion in this in this album too from where you began on folklore and there's so much closure on this new record and i want to dive into aspects of that and i just feel like the future must feel wide open to you right now but i want to refer back to the long pond sessions you know and jack anthony said something really poignant which was i've never made an album like this i don't know if i ever will again yes and in your mind and in your heart you knew you wanted to carry on and there was music to be done but it felt like for others assuming that jack was genuine because he's an honest human he wasn't sure there would be an ever more or a chance to work like this again was there a sort of melancholy to the end of folklore not really i was just so happy that my world felt opened up creatively um there was a point where i that i got to as a writer who only wrote very diuristic songs that i felt it was unsustainable from from my future moving forward it felt like too hot of a microscope it felt a bit like i was just i was like why am i just like if i'm writing about my life and all it is at on my bad days i would feel like i was loading a cannon of click bait when that's not what i want for my life um and i think that when when i put out folklore i felt like if i can do this this thing where i get to create characters in this mythological american town or wherever i imagined them and i can reflect my own emotions onto what i think they might be feeling and i can create stories and characters and arcs and all this stuff but i don't have to have it feel like when i put out an album i'm just like giving tabloids ammunition and stuff yeah there's so much judgment that would come along with every record yeah and constantly kind of like um examining yourself in a way that feels like i felt like there would be a point in my life where i could no longer really do that and and still maintain um a place of like good mental health and emotional health and all that so what i felt after we put out folklore was like oh wow people people are into this too this thing that feels i can do this for my life and feels really good for my creativity there's a way out too oh my god um i saw i saw elaine i saw elaine for my future that i i it was a real breakthrough moment of excitement and happiness and i kind of referred to writing these songs as a flotation device because um obviously this year is is hell on earth for everyone and seeing what your fellow humans are going through the long pawn studio sessions was the first time that jack aaron and i were in the same room and i still haven't been in the same room with justin vernon who has now collaborated on two albums heavily and we've talked but we're just we've just never been in the same space together it's pretty wild yeah how was that experience when you first caught up together and saw each other having made this amazing body of work because we saw it on camera there was this giddiness and this idea of like wow we did it we made it now we can celebrate it make it real to some degree but what was going on behind the camera that's what i think we all want to know is when you all first saw each other before the cameras rolled what was happening then because that's a truly human experience that i don't think you or anyone has ever been through before where the stakes were so high for remote recording and then you all come together and it's like wow how do we even translate this it was such a strange thing because we'd been on you know group chats and it just wasn't it wasn't ever the combination yet so the combination of the three of us was like this strange feeling of i remember i walked into the studio they were already rehearsing and i walked in and it was just like they were a band it didn't it wasn't that feeling of awkwardness between them because i guess they'd had their moment i walked in and i heard them playing august or something and i was just sitting there thinking this is exactly how i would have wanted it i would have wanted this you know reunion or union at all to happen in a moment of me walking in on them creating music and and rehearsing and playing instruments and and it just i just started rehearsing too and it was such a vibe um and it couldn't really have been i couldn't have asked for more under the circumstances you know it's so fun to make a record when you've got people in the room and you've got that energy that's bouncing off the walls but if you can't do that this was a pretty close second yeah i mean no one's been able to do that very rarely have people been able to get into a room and get that tactility and that chemistry that we all i guess to some degree became so accustomed to and you know i think about this year you talked about it and you you put it in the perfect framework um but it's also taught us a lot about stillness and what it is to be still and what it is to reflect and to be comfortable in our own skin and i think human beings by nature search for coping mechanisms and distractions to avoid that and in your case i've always felt that you've moved so fast and even if you've taken some time between projects it's clear you're working on things all the time you know what has this process of working on folklore and evermore busy year for you as a songwriter but also has it taught you something about stillness and has it altered your attitude toward pace and productivity and what motivates you yes it it has changed everything about the way that i do what i do um it gave me a perspective of you know i was i was pretty upset when my shows all got cancelled and i realized i wasn't going to be able to connect with my fans in the way that i'm traditionally used to um just a normal human interaction i couldn't do anymore you know especially after an album like lover which is just like such a communal joyous experience i can imagine it's like wow i'm going to get to bring this to life you know yeah and i think we all felt that way i think the fans felt that way too where we were we were just sitting there going wow that would have been that would i think that would have been fun um but what it did was you know when you plan a live show i guess at least when i do it i'm i'm writing interstitial music i'm planning um this set piece goes off while this goes on while we distract them over here and this this song calls for this and this song calls for that and that's all creating and i don't think i really assigned very much merit to the fact that that is creating when you're taking music you've already made and an album that you've already made and you're choreographing and you are set you're setting up a live spectacle that is taking up so much emotional creative and imaginary imagination based bandwidth in your brain so if you take all of that away what happens and and i guess i i learned that it's very possible for me to write more music with that creative bandwidth um as musicians we're so used to immediately touring immediately putting together the show immediately going into rehearsals and then we always feel that we need a pretty big break or at least a significant gap of time where we get to rest afterward and i guess i learned that when we're on the road it's not just that we're sweating and we're and we're meeting a million people and we're we have all this back and forth of of just energy of meeting this person getting us trying to get a surprise guest to surprise the crowd and and all this stuff that happens um on tour it's also the creation of the show itself that is taking up a lot of a lot of your your brain space so without that um this just happened naturally on its own is there a dysfunction to that do you think looking back on it now is there a correlation between some of the kind of more hard to manage parts of your life and the pace at which things go and and and how careers become the you know these kind of entities unto themselves yes and no i think that um looking back on my career there have been so many different musical phases and you know different things i wanted to wear at different times and they fit my life at the time and and so i think that you've got to allow yourself that grace to put on a certain lifestyle or a certain outfit or a certain creative uh mantra and then discard it when it when you outgrow it this is this was weird though because this evermore was the first time i didn't discard everything after i made something new you know it was weird i actually had to kind of fight off anxiety that i had in my head like fear that was like you need to change like like the demons are here like you need to change you can't you can't stay in the forest i was like i want to stay in the forest but the forest is such a weird place because when you're a kid and i think aesthetically that's a big part a significant part of what's made this so um immersive this experience is that that idea of stepping into the unknown and when you're a kid like this idea of wide open water is really scary not knowing what's underneath being out in the forest and looking directly into trees that could go on forever you know it's kind of an intimidating type of image and yet you made it feel like something that was intimate like you wanted to go into that how did that kind of relate to the music because it's such an essential part of these two albums the way that it looks and feels i think that working with aaron the music that we were making um he was writing instrumentals and i was writing the the melodies and the lyrics and what ended up happening was i think we just gravitated towards what both of us simultaneously felt made us feel cozy which was nature you know so many people during the pandemic just were going on hikes and trying to get outside because it was nature symbolized this strange comfort all of a sudden where um where we everything was completely off kilter and nobody could really figure out how to get their bearings and so we all went outside or we all tried to go camping or trying to go hiking or go on drives and it just i think that aaron's music and my music both reflected sort of that feel with aaron such an amazing instrumentalist and his his instrumentals that he was writing were all very um kind of dreamscapes and so it's not that this album is all about like the forest and the woods and stuff it's got hints of that and there's a lot of um kind of the lyric i one thing i wanted to do with folklore is i wanted it to represent spring and summer um and when i made evermore i knew that i wanted to fill in the rest of the seasons of the year and have it reflect fall and winter so that's another element that nature came into it but also it was the easiest way that we could do a photo shoot you know you can't you can't have i haven't had a haircut um by anyone except for myself since lockdown started and uh that's kind of how it's been you know like how can i make how can i make art and make visuals that go with this art where i i can't i can't ask my hair and makeup people and my stylist to quarantine for two weeks away from their families i'm not gonna ask them to do that like and and ask them to fly and and expose themselves to the virus so what how can i possibly make a cover on my own could i just sort of diy this um so i asked um you know i asked my friends if i could use their field and their woods and um i used a photographer who works alone she doesn't have assistance she shoots on film so we were carrying bags of film out in fields and i'd be like you know touching up my like my lipstick and and then i'd run out into a field and she'd take pictures it was it was really fun honestly i'm gonna say you know it must have been really amazing as a songwriter too i was thinking about these two albums in relation to your career and how in a weird way and i don't mean this in any relation to the in any negative reaction to your previous albums because you know how i feel but the process itself of writing songs from a very pure place with no plans because you make your debut album with nothing but ambition that's a plan that's a big plan and then from there the plans start to increase and get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and to your point you're looking for the next plan i just don't feel like there were any plans here did it did it feel like you could get to a pure place this year without all those yes it did pure is a really really perfect word for that um because what happens to you as your career builds and builds and builds and builds is that if you've accomplished a thing in the past all of a sudden you're you're expected to accomplish that thing plus another new thing plus this other thing over here there it becomes sort of like i had felt at times when i felt a lot of pressure i had felt like i was doing some sort of like obstacle course um and and that's not how you should feel when you're creating you know you shouldn't feel like i need to make a track list where this one's for the stadium show this one's for radio this one's for people who want to get in their feelings check check check and you can end up doing you can end up doing that um and it's good to have friends who are artists who have similar pressures like like ed sheeran and i talk about this a great deal this was a time when we both stepped back and i would say to him this is the first time i felt like i threw the checklist away like i threw it away and i definitely could have gone into the pandemic thinking i've got to wait for everything to open up so i can do things exactly the way that i am used to doing them but then about three days in i thought wait this could be an opportunity to for me to do things in a way i haven't ever done them before what would my work sound like if i took away all of my fear-based checklisting that i have inflicted on myself wow so i guess you know the answer now yeah to me there's an interesting correlation here between these two albums and this idea of getting into a pure space the freedom and the space space being another key word to this um and the idea of going back and and re-recording your music do you see a correlation between reflecting the person you've been and becoming the person you wanted that you are and are going to be wow there's a lot to unpack there um but it does resonate with me a lot because i was i was allowed to start re-recording my music in november by then we had a great deal of evermore um done i i had shot a music video for willow but i was still writing and i was still recording so there would be days where i'd be recording um i'd be recording you belong with me and then i'd be recording a song like happiness which is on evermore and wow it made me feel really proud of sort of um the scope of things and looking back when i was a teenager and i would write about you know my my troubles in high school and the drama and the pining away and all that stuff that was all so valid to me at that time in my life just as much as evermore is so valid to to my happiness at this time in my life um so it's been really i've really felt very grateful lately for people giving me the ability to grow up creatively and i know there have been snags and there have been times where people have been like i don't like her several times but for the most part i feel a great amount of gratitude that i was able to make music from the time i was a teenager to the time that i'm 31. and normally you know you you put those songs out and then you have to let them go and even when you perform them in front of people they i often feel like they they belong more to the fans and to the audience sometimes than they even do to the artists you know and getting a chance to re-record them for whatever reason whatever whatever prompted this thing the fact that you get to go and listen to these and re-record them i wonder if it may if it brings you closer to them and changes your feelings towards songs that often people just record and move on from don't even listen to again as artists unless they're playing them yes it does it makes me feel really close to those songs again and it also reminds me that obviously i want to keep a lot of cool surprises for the fans until i'm ready to show them fully to everyone but the reason that i feel so passionately that artists should own their catalogs is because if you are the creator of all of this music you're the only one who actually knows the ins and the outs of it you're the only one who knows what almost was written you're the only one who knows the kind of secrets of the journey of making this music so you're actually the only one who has the ability to share it with the fans in the way that that um can make everyone the happiest and the most excited so it's been it's been really fulfilling in a way that i i had no idea what to expect you don't want to feel like it's um like you know your homework got destroyed and so now you have to redo your homework it's not like that at all yeah it's yeah it's not like you gotta go into it like this is an opportunity and also you know you talked about artists owning their catalogue and i i've been talking to artists for most of my life and there's one thing that continues to crop up and i think that you know your perspective would be really really interesting here which is why do you think that as artists we put security and stability before artistic control and freedom as young artists we don't make that conscious decision we aren't given the information often times and that's why i'm having lots of conversations behind the scenes with record labels and trying to help them understand this from from a psychological perspective what you do to an artist when you separate them from their work you break something and and i'm trying to figure out how to put that thing back together in a way that heals what was broken by a system that is not designed for artists to um have have a chance at you know a that's a that's an artist pension plan that's their retirement that's their legacy that's what they want to leave to their children and how could you ever know how could you ever know the life you're going to live how could you ever know what's going to happen right a coming of age has come and gone right how could you ever know that yeah good quote but yeah i was i was a i was 15 14 when i was in record deal talks record deal negotiations so you can't really go back and say wow this was a what a conscious choice that was made you just you don't know um the music industry until you know it and and because i have learned what i've learned i really just want to make things better for other people and i want that to start at the at the record deal in the contract artists should never have to part with their work they should they should own it from day one but they should license it back to the label so that the label can make back their money over a certain amount of time and that that amount of time should be what's negotiated upon it should not be a question moving forward and and if i can if i can do anything to change that for a young artist in the future or many or all of them then that's you know i'm gonna keep keep being loud about it it's an incredible observation at a brilliant age to come to come to that um and at the time of recording your birthdays in a couple of days by the time this is seen it's probably about 24 hours ago to protect myself from the swifties i gotta say happy birthday even though you haven't had your birthday it's a very delorean kind of nightmare for me right now i mean so back to the future vortex but anyway happy birthday thank you i wanted to talk about this album and the word i mentioned at the beginning closure is is something that keeps coming up on evermore for me as a listener and a fan of your music but it's got to start somewhere the album and the journey has to start somewhere and it starts with willow and it's i don't i don't often ask this question i wish i did why is that the first song on the album and you're the artist to ask it to taylor because it's definitely a reason i liked opening the album with that because i loved the feeling that i got immediately upon hearing the instrumental that aaron created for it it felt strangely i i say witchy and i stand by that it felt like somebody's standing over a potion making a love potion dreaming up the person that they want and the person they desire and trying to figure out how to get that person in their life and all the kind of misdirection and bait and switch and comp like complexity that goes into seeing someone feeling a connection wanting them and trying to make them a part of your life it's um it it's tactical at times it's confusing at times to fate it's magic it's called manifestation that's how human beings actually make sense of it it's we're manifesting but it's something else it's something else yeah it's a cold combination of all of it yeah it felt it felt a bit magical and mysterious which is what i wanted people to feel going into an album that was a collection of these stories um that were going to take them in all kinds of directions so i wanted to start them with sort of a setting of the vibe but what you say about closure is really really profound because with folklore i one of the main themes throughout that was conflict resolution right like trying to figure out how to get through something with someone or making confessions or trying to tell them something trying to communicate with them evermore deals a lot in endings of all sorts shapes and sizes all the kinds of ways we can end a relationship a friendship um something toxic and and and the pain that goes along with that the phases of it um so it's cool that you notice that i mean it opens up so many possibilities for you as a writer once you know you get to a point where you feel you don't have to stick to that linear narrative and it's it's a very brilliant narrative but the idea of like i love you we fell out we broke up you know there's pain there's there's joy when you start to look at all the other open endings and you go deeper and it requires some real character analysis and development in order to do that successfully because you can't have lived all those lives but you might have learned a thing or two about your own by doing so have there been moments during writing of these albums where you've learned things about yourself that you would never have learned if you'd been focused on that specific emotional feeling absolutely absolutely because um when you watch a film or you read a book and there's a character that you identify with you most of the time identify with them because they're they're targeting something in you that feels that you've been there um you re that's why we relate to characters and so um when i'm when i was reading you know rebecca by daphne de mourier and i was thinking um wow her husband just tolerates her she's she's doing all these things and she's trying so hard and she's trying to impress him and he's just tolerating her the whole time there was a part of me that was you know relating to that because at some point in my life i felt that way and so i ended up writing this song tolerate it that's all about sort of truth trying to love someone who's ambivalent thank you it's unreal thank you so much and i mean even a song like champagne problems all right let's talk about that there's unrequited love that's a well written topic in in the art of in the arts but then there's that song that song that is one of the most heartbreaking tales of unrequited love i've ever heard in my entire life and it should have been written by somebody who is honestly and obviously very much in love so i don't know how you got there well joe and i really love sad songs we've always bonded over music so it was clearly you've written some of the saddest songs of your career together songs we just really love sad songs what can i say um he he started that one and came up with the uh melodic structure of it and um i say it was a surprise that we started writing together but in a way it wasn't because we have always bonded over music and had the same musical tastes and he's always the person who's showing me songs by by artists and i'm then then they become my favorite songs or whatever but um yeah champagne problems was that was one of my favorite bridges to write i really love um a bridge where you tell the full story in the bridge like you really like you shift gears in that bridge i'm so excited to one day be in front of a crowd when they all sing she would have made such a lovely bride what a shame she's in the head like it's broken i know it's so sad i know it's so sad but it's those songs like all too well performing the song all too well is one of the most joyful experiences i ever go through when i perform live so when there's a song like champagne problems where you know it's so sad you know that but i i i love a sad song you know what's it like when you're walking through the house and you hear the piano being played and music being written and maybe for the first time ever it's not you yes someone else well he doesn't think of it that way you know he's always just playing instruments and he doesn't do it in a strategic i'm writing a song right now thing he's always done that but i do i think we would have taken the step of hey let's see if there's an there's a song in here let's write a song together if we hadn't been in lockdown uh i don't think that would have happened and i'm so glad that it did he's been a part of some of the most sort of powerful moments on these records in terms of song exile is no joke like that song is a serious serious moment and another seriously sad it is it is we're so proud of that one um also because i i do remember the exact moment that i walked in and he was playing that exact piano part um and all i had to do was follow the piano melody with the verse melody so because the vocal melody is exactly the same pretty much it's mirrored with the piano part that he wrote and we did the same thing with evermore where i'll just kind of hear what he's doing and it's exactly it's all there all i have to do is dream up some lyrics and come up with some gut-wrenching heart-shattering story to to write with him so here's the question then you're joe and you and you play music because you love it and you have passions in the arts in all kinds of places and i would ask him this if i saw him but i can't so i'll ask you then you come up with a song like exile and justin vernon is singing it with you has he expressed to you how that feels for him to just be expressing himself the next thing you know bonnie ver and yourself are bringing this song to life because you always wanted that in your life but for him it's just been this organic thing folklore and evermore include our favorite artists so it's you know we've always listened to bunny bear the national so it's a big deal for you it's a huge deal and you've probably been trying to pluck up the courage to get into the studio with justin vernon subconsciously or consciously for a long time but for him it's like how does this happen i never would have imagined that justin would be would dive into this project or any project with me like this because justin has his own musical world and his own sort of in my mind it was this impenetrable force field of brilliance that he he cultivates talent from everywhere he he operates out of eau claire i i never knew how i would ever get in contact with justin vernon my in was that aaron desner who produced these albums and wrote with me um is his best friend i mean they are like they have a connection they would do anything for each other like they would do anything to support each other's projects it's really really sweet and pure and lovely their their love and ex and uh respect for each other so he said to me when i when i sent him exile um he said to me i think i think justin would be into this i think he would be into this and i said i said this will break my heart if he doesn't want to because my biggest anxieties say to me the artist that you love will never will never love you too so so um it was just a really huge moment just all around all around really good moment when he wanted to be a part of it and then he when we went in to make evermore what shocked me too was that justin leaned in you know he's playing the lead guitar solo on cowboy like me he's playing the drums on that song he's playing drums on closure he's singing background vocals on ivy and marjorie sorry i didn't know i had a home phone but apparently until somebody called it you probably didn't even know your number it's actually really good to learn that today um but but justin vernon working so um just so naturally and so enthusiastically on evermore was a really cool turn of events because i feel truly truly honored um and i can't wait to meet him yeah it's so weird i know it's so weird but you know perfectly perfectly in keeping with this year okay yeah so here's a question up until this year even through your collaborative stages and you've been working with jack now for a while and you have a really strong group of artists and friends around you all the time but there's always the sense that it's taylor's vision taylor's on track you're in control you've got this this idea of you having to kind of forge ahead on your own terms and here you are on a song like exile with your significant other involved in the creative process and your hero involved in the creative process i was listening to that song and i thought well you must have fought protected you must have actually felt really wrapped up in that moment and and was it emotional and did it did that resonate with you that like wow like i'm good i actually don't think that i believed that this song would exist in the world because in my head that doesn't that wasn't going to happen i'd never wanted to get too invested in it because i always wanted justin to be able to say at the last minute hey i don't want to be on the record you know and i wanted that to be okay with me you know so i actually did not assign too much i didn't fuse myself to the idea that this was real until the album was actually out and i remember just like going on drives and listening to exile thinking oh it happened this song got made it got finished it got put out into the world and we're all happy about it and people are listening to it like it was sort of i don't mind i don't mean to seem so like aw shucks about it but it really i didn't want to get my heart broken you know people can change their minds about things i get it but then when he goes so step right out and he gets he does that justin vernon thing that was that was the moment because he when he added that part that was the moment that sent me into the universe with without any chance of returning um because he he we had written up to that point and he added that and so when we got the recording back we had no idea what he was going to do and when we heard that part it was just like hands on face face is melting everything is everything is made out of confetti it's a beautiful way to put it um yeah one story that that that really stood out um when we were watching the long pond sessions was the one about august and the idea of that song coming from that line meet me behind the mall and that you'd had that line for a long time how long had you had that line for uh it was about six months old probably you're collecting ideas and things all the time right i mean you've got to be just absorbing and drawing inspiration and writing jutting and and and ideating um how do you sort of catalog and how do you make sense of that and do you draw upon those things often do you reflect into your own space to create something new yes whenever i because i really love um a turn of a phrase or play on words or common phrases and you twist something um another one that i had for a very long time i think i'd had this one for a couple of years was um the knife cuts both ways if the shoe fits walk in it till your high heels break those are my favorite kind of things to do so if i think of one but i don't have a song at the moment i write it down and and i keep a file of um i also have a folder of favorite words so it's i have favorite phrases favorite words favorite lines that i think could just fit somewhere what are some of your favorite words top of your head oh top of my head well epiphany on on folklore was it was one of my favorite words um incandescent which is on the the song um ivy um that's one that i really like just sort of the ones that sound pretty when you say them and and they also mean something that's interesting um the fans have a really amazing inside joke where they they're like what like the the starter kit for listening to folklore evermore and it's just a picture of a dictionary like like they're like they're like taylor we needed to look up 300 different words it is like taylor swift bingo it's like bingo we got that one in there that's great no it all adds up to as i said at the beginning of our conversation it's kind of really immersive world and you use geography a lot on these two albums too you know coney island being a very very visceral image i've been there i know what you're referring to when you go there the idea of that very foggy lonely the you know the fairground ride is shut down the whole thing feels like the end of a golden era um and matt bernie bernage's uh burning his uh verse on that is just unbelievable but he didn't write it right yeah i was writing it as if i were matt so wow you did a great job what's the line in here what's the line in there do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into paradise and left you there will you forgive my soul when you're too wise to trust and too old to care okay so what's it like when you're inside how do you like that one that just that one was i'm a huge fan of the national i love the way they do that sort of downbeat sometimes self-loathing reflective just cut right to the heart of the matter um that lyricism it you know it's why i'm such a fan of the band and when we had an idea that that matt could could sound really amazing on this um that was kind of the perspective i was coming from was like a male a male perspective of regret or guilt after life after a lifetime of of um of a pattern of behavior um and i've been kind of touching on sort of things like that on the song tolerate it where there's this you know person who's on one side of the relationship who's felt like they've just their partner's been there but they haven't been there they've been there but they're just sitting next to each other eating breakfast they haven't they haven't been there so writing matt's part was really fun i really loved writing we were like the mall before the internet it was the one place to be like it was it was the place to be and i was trying to reflect on the coney island visual of a place where thrills were once sought you know a place where once it was all electricity and magic and um now the lights are out and and you're looking at it thinking what did i do i also really liked having him say happy birthday in the song were you standing in the hallway with a big cake happy birthday and i knew i was gonna release it on my birthday week so a little personal birthday wish from matt burning if you on your birthday nobody's great i actually got my favorite lead singer of my favorite band to wish me happy birthday so that's the real win you talk about tolerate it you talk about nobody no crime loyalty the idea of being loyal to your own emotions also loyalty being i would say based on what we know about you being it's something that's very important to you that loyalty is an incredibly important character trait to you probably the most important character trait yeah it requires some tough conversations and and i think about a song like tolerate it and we've all seen our friends go through this continue to stay in situations where it's not good for their health and they can't see it are you the kind of person that's capable to do that out of loyalty to speak to your friends and say look you know this isn't working for you i think that it's probably not my place to say that unless they come to me and confide in me and say you know i need to vent i need to talk you have to kind of give people the space to learn lessons in their own time i've learned that you know the messenger often gets shot and if you talk a bunch of about your friend's boyfriend like they're definitely going to get back together and then you're the one who who they they form a united front and you're the one that's on on the outside of it so i try really hard to just kind of be patient and listen to friends and if they want to talk we talk and but it's it's you have to know that people are going to make decisions based on their heart and their feelings and and like if that doesn't match up with the way that you see the situation objectively you've gotta you've gotta take it take it as a case-by-case situation and just try to be a good friend because we're all human and we're all kind of learning lessons at in the weirdest time facing humankind 2020. true true the song happiness again one of the best best songs on evermore and there's a great line in there where you talk a little bit about not being ready to reinvent yourself yet you're not there you haven't identified who you need to become i i i guess you're just really content in this place and then with i just applied it to the songwriting process into where you were at your life you said you woke up feeling like this was coming to an end to some degree this morning do you feel like the world is now starting to catch up to you again and that this wonderful kind of magical moment is going to change shape well that's that's very perceptive of you because that that song was the last song that i wrote on evermore so i think that line specifically was i haven't i haven't met the new me yet in the context of the relationship song i was writing i was trying to channel sort of my friends who have gotten out of very very long impactful life-altering relationships and saying how do i pack this up how do i put this in a box and put it in my car and drive away um and what did i leave there so from from that perspective it goes to i haven't met the new me yet you know the person i'm gonna have to become in order to get over this this person who's gonna have to have new hobbies and fill their time with new things other than you in the second verse it says i hope she'll be a beautiful fool who takes my spot next to you and i i have you haven't met the new me yet meaning you haven't met the person who's going to replace me yet but i know you're going to so then in the third verse it goes to i haven't met the new me yet but i think she'll give you that meaning i think she's going to forgive you and i think she's going to give you that green light to move ahead with your life and to know that i'm okay but in my in my there's another meaning to the phrase which is that i have no idea what comes after this and i truly truly have no plan and i'm okay with that it does feel like this is it for a bit um but i don't know what that means and i don't know it's it's exactly the phrase is exactly what i mean i have no idea what happens next there's a couple of songs on this album that take us into your family history that prove not only to be fantastic stories but clearly very personal very emotional and just beautifully told and one of those is called margaery which is you know for anyone who has lost a member of their family and felt like there was something unresolved in terms of wisdom or experience or time spent because we take time for granted we really do as people until it's too late or we lose it what was the experience like writing that song the experience writing that song was really surreal because you know i i was kind of a wreck at times writing it i'd sort of break down sometimes um it was really hard to actually even sing it in the vocal booth without sounding like i had sort of a a break because it just was really emotional i think that one of the hardest forms of regret to sort of work through is the regret of being so young when you lost someone that you didn't have the perspective to learn and appreciate who they were fully you know you didn't have that that sort of you know i'd open up my grandmother's closet and she had beautiful dresses from the 60s i wish i'd asked her where she wore every single one of them yeah so things like that she was a singer and and she my mom will look at me so many times a year and say god you just you're just like her when i'll do you know some mannerism that i don't recognize as being anyone other than mine and it's really hard that that thing because parents they hand that down to you as a gift that's a very common thing to say about family members it's ultimately a gift it's like you remind me of your your you know your grandmother whatever but what it does is it continues to pique your interest in why i can't get an answer why really because they're not here for me to find that out you know yeah yeah she she died when i was 13 and um she died almost i think it was when i was on a trip to nashville to try and make it and to try to hand out my demo cd to record labels and things like that so there were pretty insane coincidences like that and um you know i've always felt that thing like i've always just sort of felt like like she was seeing um seeing seeing this you know because we have to sort of do that but one of the things about this song that kind of um still rips me apart when i listen to it is that she's singing with me on this song how did that happen my mom found a bunch of her old records a bunch of old vinyls of her singing opera and i sent them to aaron and he added them to the song and so it says you know if i didn't know better i think you were singing to me now and then you hear her you hear marjorie actually saying my grandmother and it just it's it's moments like that on the record that just make you feel like your whole heart is in this whole thing that you're doing it's it's all of you that you put into these things memories are a significant part of this this body of work the idea of memories and what they mean to you and also as we said the beginning closure to create new ones you know and you talked about you talked about time and coincidence and things the biggest mischief conception about you we spoke about this last time we spoke was that there's this controlling side to you there's a difference between ambition or wanting to do something right in control but my point is that is that you actually your life is filled with coincidence it's filled with fate it's filled with timing isn't it yes and never more so than with the process of these two albums honestly this is one of those things where i kind of had to just sort of throw out any playbook i had you know i you you just in times like these when everything is uncertain and everything changes in your world i guess i just sort of took it as an opportunity to embrace the fact that even if you think you have control in normal times that's an illusion if you're making stuff put it out if people need music and you've made music put it out you know there was a time in the beginning of the process where i was like i will wait till january when things are looking more normal then i will put out folklore and i was like that's my old brain that's my old brain thinking that there's any way that i can control this and you know humans do need to have some sort of strategy when they go into putting out you know music or doing any business whatsoever but as much as that has an ability to fall by the wayside it did with this because there was no way to make it and feel in control you can't you've got to just let fate do what it's going to do with something like this and and i do talk to aaron and jack about this a lot because we do feel sort of like this was a whirlwind we don't understand it our logical brains don't comprehend it um and we know it's you know you guys make albums of course you put out albums all the time whatever but this this feels different for us it does it feels like something that will affect our the rest of our lives um and the way that we make art and and not being too precious we we actually really weren't very precious about this we we weren't too picky or or oh it has to be everything has to be perfect it's like no uh nothing's going to be perfect right now let's make music that yeah how does it feel and um i'm so happy that people welcomed it into their lives the way that they did so if the album has to start with willow it has to end somewhere and it ends with evermore and a lot has already been made because your fans we are so engaged in your writing and the themes and the narrative of that particular song but you wrote it and i'd love to know why it ends these you know this body of work well there were there were sort of a double meaning to the months that are mentioned and the feelings that are mentioned um one of the meanings is that um we were i wrote this song and these lyrics when uh we were coming up to the election and i didn't know what was going to happen um so almost i was almost preparing for the worst to happen and trying to see some sort of glimmer at the at the at the end of the tunnel and and the last verse you know the song is it goes through walking through the forest barefoot in the middle of winter or standing on a balcony and letting the icy wind just hit you and you're catching your death and and then in the last course the person goes inside and finally is warm and finally is safe it's about sort of um the process of finding hope again but it also reflected back to um an experience that i had that was pretty life altering when i went through like a bunch of bad stuff in 2016 like july november all those times were just sort of taking it day by day to get through trying to find some trying to find a glimmer of hope all of that so i was coming from both of those perspectives and we wrote it exactly the same way we did exile where joe wrote the piano i based the vocal melody on the piano and we sent it to justin who then added that bridge it and joe had written the piano part so that it the tempo speeds up and it changes the music completely changes to a different tempo in the bridge and justin really latched on to that and just a hundred percent embraced it and wrote this beautiful sort of the clutter the clutter of all your anxieties in your head and they're all speaking at once and i we got the bridge back and then i wrote this narrative of um when i was shipwrecked i thought of you you know that sort of thing where there was this beacon of hope and then in the end you realize the pain wouldn't be forever that it you know it could get better so that was why i wanted to end it there but we also have two bonus tracks that are coming out um that are a second ending which i'm excited about i know you love a second ending taylor which we all do as well i love that um well i gotta ask i gotta ask this question because at some point the the hope is that the doors open up again and we get to experience this as a community and we get to see perform and and put on these amazing shows and there's something really beautiful about these these two albums existing in their own skin and not having to put on costumes every night but there's obviously going to be a desire i'm sure to play them and it definitely is for us to hear them you've got these this amazing team around you these players these collaborators can you see a time when you could you could pull this family together and go and play some shows even just a select group of shows wow that is one of our day dreams that we talk about often but it's not a plan the conversations happen between me erin and jack and doing doing the long pawn studio sessions it just made us want to play music like that more it just made us want to um you know start a band together um and justin i know talks to aaron about it a lot too about just like we've gotta we've gotta play together we've gotta play this music together because we've loved singing it i was actually talking to marcus mumford about it too because he sang backup vocals on cowboy like me and he was like we gotta we gotta have a band we've gotta do this so i think everybody who's involved you know the the heim girls are my best friends and we have it's weird we always end up at parties where there's a stage and people are like go play something play something and so we've played live together so many times we've been on tour together but this is actually the first album where esti alana danielle and i have actually collaborated on a song and so you know these are all people i love that's the reason why the daydream feels very feasible because i i would play with these people forever what do you play with heim at parties i gotta ask because i'm friends with them as well what do you play with i'm at parties what do you play do you play covers what do you play well when we were at um the snl 40th anniversary party they had a band up there on stage and uh jimmy fallon had the mic and he was like somebody's gotta get up and play and so um he saw us in the crowd pointed at us and i was like i think it was established that shake it off as three chords over and over and over again so i was just like i was like a minor cg um uh and and so you know we played then we've also done like we had a party once where we would um where we were the house band and we would just like if somebody wanted to sing karaoke we would just really quick chart out the song and play whatever song they wanted to and it was like a karaoke machine so we've had a lot of fun what was the worst cover that you did that night when you guys couldn't chart it out and it just fell apart at the seams um it wasn't bad in the sense that we didn't know the song but we did do like sort of a disco version of under the sea by from the little mermaid that i think is would be filed as one of the least expected ones from the evening um so much closure now and and you yourself said you woke up this morning feeling this i can't remember what word you used but you used a brilliant way to describe it can you remember how you described how you felt this morning when you woke up it was like either serenity or or like relief or conclusion or serenity is a great one relief conclusion they're all great ones so the last the last question for now is if the last decade was just success and pace and controversy and and irrelevant you know tumultuousness and all this stuff wrapped up in into it into a decade right what is what does it feel like looking forward now that you've had this year to be able to collect your thoughts put them into music and and and come through the end of this year looking forward what does it feel like i have absolutely no idea what uh the next decade holds and i think that's kind of something i'm going to keep i'm going to keep that like it is because i was always such a planner and such a such a list maker and lists of dreams and goals and things i wanted to do and i think my new list will be like places i want to see in the world adventures i want to have experiences i want to have things i want to learn um i think that'll be what the list looks like because you know there's always going to be a list it's me you know but it'll be lists of in quarantine my list uh was i decided to start trying to cook everything that i had always loved to eat but never been able to cook so there's always a list it's been great to uh to connect with you on this a sincere congratulations from everyone at apple music and everyone who subscribes who loves your music and streams your music and you know we're so excited for what's to come but right now just to live in this in this moment for you to be the apple music songwriter of the year is so richly deserved and we're really happy i'm really grateful and i'm so thankful to everyone who listens and and also everybody um just on your platform who is so creative and and believes in artists and lifts us up and supports us and that includes you so thank you so much um for everything and for always being a good friend and a great person to talk to and a great person uh who listens i know you've heard all this a million times because everyone loves you but i hope you have a really great holiday season and and um it's much appreciated thank you taylor be safe be well have a great holiday and uh to the future thank you bye you

Channel: Apple Music

Views: 2,015,776

Keywords: taylor swift, taylor, swift, folklore, taylor swift folklore, folklore taylor swift, cardigan, taylor swift cardigan, the last great american dynasty, exile, taylor swift exile, bon lver, taylor swift bon lver, album, folklore album, evermore, taylor swift evermore, evermore taylor swift, willow, taylor swift willow, taylor swift music, songs, songwriter, songwriter of the year, zane lowe, zane lowe interview, apple music awards, apple music awards 2020, awards, apple, music, apple music

Id: CQacWbsLbS4

Length: 56min 7sec (3367 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020