Originally published in the October 29, 2012 issue of Country Weekly magazine.

Ensconced in a comfy office on Music Row where she’s been doing interviews all day, Taylor Swift looks casually chic in a sleek pair of black pants and sleeveless black top with white accents. Bestowing a hug before she settles back onto a black leather chair and puts her bare feet on the footstool, it’s easy to forget she’s a global superstar.

Though polished and poised, Taylor exudes a disarming girl-next-door charm that makes
an interview feel more like a fun conversation with a friend than a celebrity promoting a new project. There’s talk about clothes, hair and girl stuff before settling into the topic at hand—the Oct. 22 release of her new album, Red.

The project has already made history as the first single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 all-genre chart. The song’s debut sales of 623,000 downloads made it the biggest opening week for a song by a female artist in history.

“‘We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together’ was a song that just said something that I hadn’t said before,” Taylor tells Country Weekly. “[It’s about] the moment where you’ve been in and out of a bad relationship and you are so done. You are so done in fact that it feels like a celebration to talk about how done you are.” Though there was speculation in the press about who Taylor wrote the song about, she prefers not to name the ex-boyfriend who inspired it. “I’ve never named who anything was about. People make their assumption and then it becomes fact,” she says, obviously a little frustrated by the misinformation that swirls around her life and career. “One of the things that I always keep with me is the ability to be the only one who knows who these songs are really about.”

Taylor followed up the feisty break-up anthem with a new single, “Begin Again.” “Putting out ‘Begin Again’ was something that we felt was the right thing to do from the perspective of the story that we’re telling,” Taylor explains. “We started with ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,’ which is like ‘we’re done,’ and ‘Begin Again’ is much more of an introspective look on the fact that you don’t get to a point of being done with a relationship without experiencing some sort of hurt. This was a song that I wrote much later on after the relationship ended and I looked back at it and thought, ‘I really lost myself there.’ That’s a hard thing to come to terms with, realizing that you’ve changed something about yourself every day, little by little, and woke up and really didn’t recognize yourself anymore. So to have that song go to No. 1 on iTunes, within hours of it being put up, was really gratifying because you’ve got a song that’s dealing with all your insecurities and it’s sitting at No. 1.”

Though she refuses to name names when it comes to her relationships, Taylor is known for opening up her
heart and pouring all her emotions into her songs. The whole world is listening, but that hasn’t caused Taylor to censor herself or become more guarded in her writing. “Writing songs is something
I’ve done since I was 12 years old. I’ve always done it for the same reasons and it hasn’t always produced the same result,” she explains. “The songs that I wrote when I was 12 ended up being played in coffeehouses when I’d sing them, and then they would just kind of disappear when I outgrew them. The songs that I write now end up all over the world for everyone to hear, so I think it’s the fact that I’ve been writing since I was so young that my motivations behind it haven’t changed. I haven’t started to guard myself in the form of songwriting. I’ve learned to guard areas of my life that I have to keep for just me, like my personal life.

“I’d so much rather sing about it in songs than have it be me talking about what’s going on in my personal life all the time or ever in the media,” she continues, “but I somehow feel like it’s OK and actually helpful for me to write about it. People read theories from gossip blogs as to what’s going on in my life and there’s something really fun about knowing that they don’t really know what really happened from my perspective until I put out an album and there are songs about it.”

It’s no secret that much of Taylor’s inspiration comes from relationships, and whether she’s writing a song or chatting with strangers, love is always a favorite topic. “I end up in conversations about relationships no matter what,” she says with a smile. “When I talk to fans and I see them in public or I run into them at Starbucks or at the airport or something, they always ask me about their boyfriend issues and I love it! It’s like my favorite thing to talk about.
I was in the park the other day and I ran into these two 16-year-old girls and one was talking about her boyfriend. We got into this whole conversation about him and I just love talking about love. I love writing about love. I love thinking about love because it’s so unpredictable.”

Needless to say, many of the 16 songs on the new album are about relationships. Taylor penned 10 of the tunes by herself and co-wrote the remaining tracks. “Trouble” is a song about a guy who’s bad news. “I came up with that melody months before I went into the studio with [songwriter and producer] Max [Martin],” she says. “I walked into the studio and I was like, I want to write this song about how I felt this different kind of heartbreak recently where I’m not like, ‘Shame on you, you broke my heart’; I’m thinking, ‘Shame on me, you broke my heart. I knew the red flags. I saw them. I saw the warning signs. I walked right past them, right into your arms and then I got absolutely tricked.’ The feeling of being tricked is almost worse than being heartbroken because you knew better. You’re not blindsided. You saw this coming, but you let wishful thinking get in the way, and that’s what I’ve been guilty of a few times.”

Among the album’s many highlights is a song titled “All Too Well,” which Taylor cites as the hardest song she’s ever written. “It’s about this relationship that I had and it tells the story of it from start to finish, so it’s all these pieces of memories, one by one listed off. It’s one of the most vivid pictures that I’ve ever gotten to paint with a song,” she says of the song she co-wrote with Liz Rose. “It’s the first song I wrote for the record a year and a half ago. I called her and said, ‘I’ve been working on this song and it’s going to be nine minutes long if I finish it the way that it is. You’ve got to help me edit this down, make it more concise and make it a story that can be told in the form of a song that isn’t going to be an hour long because I’ve written so much.’ She came over and we sat down and wrote it and it became one of the songs on the record that displays the most amount of hurt. It starts off with the innocent beginnings and goes all the way down to the bitter end and follows the relationship as it’s crashing down, and the hook of it is, I was there. I remember it all too well.”

Taylor Swift Fills In the Blanks

I would never . . . sky dive or bungee jump.

I wish I were better at . . . sports.

I’m trying to quit . . . midnight snacks that turn into meals at 4 in the morning. [I’m trying to quit ] eating after 10 p.m.

My favorite hobby is . . . antique shopping.

I always make sure I . . . talk to people politely.

My biggest fear is . . . losing someone I love.

I never leave home without . . . my phone.

My perfect day is . . . hanging out with my friends, going on a girls’ trip to the beach, running around acting like little kids, having a kitchen dance party, laughing, talking, catching up with all my friends that I haven’t seen in forever.