COVER STORY
10 hot stories, including how Taylor found her voice, VB’S A-list ‘love whisperer’, how to be an optimist and trendless buys you’ll love forever
As Taylor swift accepted her award for Best Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, for single You Need To Calm Down, last Monday night, she took a moment to compose herself before looking up and directly into the camera. ‘This video made several points,’ she said of the film, which featured big stars of the LGBT community including Ellen Degeneres, Rupaul and the cast of Netflix series Queer Eye.
‘So the fact that you voted for this video means that you all want a world where we are treated equally. Regardless of who they love and how they identify.’ She added, ‘At the end of this video, there was a petition for the Equality Act and I want to thank everyone who signed that petition because it now has half a million signatures, which is five times the amount it would need to warrant a response from the White House.’
Her words neatly demonstrated the evolution of Taylor Swift. The acceptance speech for which she had been previously best known – the one interrupted by Kanye West in 2009 (turn the page for a refresher on that incident, and how it impacted pop culture and beyond) – was a million miles away. This Taylor wasn’t about to have her speech, or her voice, taken away from her by anyone. Indeed, two days before, Taylor had given an interview in which she stated that Donald Trump was running an ‘autocracy’, the first time she had acknowledged any issue with the US president.
A source describes to Grazia that 2019 has been a significant year for Taylor in many ways – not only because her new release, Lover, is already the year’s biggest selling album (in fact, it got the biggest first-week album sales of 2019 in a single day). ‘She is feeling more happy and confident in both her private and professional life than she has ever done before,’ said the source. ‘Taylor has been on a roller coaster ride over the last few years. She felt as though her various public feuds [with Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry] were overtaking her music in the media and that was frustrating for her – not to mention the relentless speculation her love life has always generated. She became cautious that everything she said and did was going to be used as ammunition in some way.’ Last week, Taylor explained that the maelstrom of negative press at the time of the feuds had made her feel ‘useless’ and that several years ago she had been ‘literally about to break’.
Fast-forward to today and Taylor, 29, has backed away from those seemingly petty feuds which dominated the Bad Blood era (Katy Perry even appeared in the video for You Need To Calm Down). As for her private life: that is remaining private. While several tracks on Lover are undoubtedly about her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, known for his roles in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and The Favourite, their romance is by far the most low profile of Taylor’s life – they have only been photographed together a handful of times.
It is the polar opposite to the highly documented flings with Harry Styles and Tom Hiddleston. That is no fluke, and this understated yet serious relationship has been helping her build a quiet confidence in love again, says Grazia’s source. ‘Taylor and Joe made a decision very early on that this would be just for them. She has been
spending as much time in London with Joe as possible because she finds it easier to go under the radar there.
‘Keeping things private hasn’t been easy,’ continues the source. ‘If she and Joe are going out together it will often have to be planned far in advance. She once flew by helicopter into a small town near Petersfield to spend a few days at Joe’s friend’s house in the countryside. It was like a military operation, but worth it in order for them to have some semblance of normality.’
On her track London Boy, Taylor sings: ‘I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent,’ one of several public attestations of affection for Joe on the album (she was mocked for claiming, on the same track, to love walking in Camden in the afternoon – because which true Brit wants to do that?). Grazia’s source explains that both she and Joe are comfortable with their relationship becoming part of her work – as long as that’s where it remains. As Taylor quipped in her latest interview, ‘I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star. And then, even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.’
Clarity is key for Taylor now. Whether it’s endorsing the Democratic candidate for Tennessee or declaring that she is ‘pro-choice’, she has stressed that she will do everything she can ‘for [the] 2020’ election. Taylor has successfully sued the radio DJ who grabbed her backside and is currently said to be considering rerecording her entire back catalogue so she is no longer under the ownership of producer Scooter Braun. This Taylor definitely won’t lose her voice ever again.