Peggy Sirota for EW When Taylor Swift released her album Reputation, she didn’t do interviews, letting the music and the tour speak for itself. But in her new era, Taylor seems more open: She’s just given her first sit-down magazine interview in three years, for Entertainment Weekly‘s new Music Issue, due out tomorrow.
In the story, Taylor says her upcoming album is more “vulnerable,” adding, “It’s much more of a singer-songwriter, personal journey than the last one.”
“I’m trying to convey an emotional spectrum,” she adds. “I definitely don’t wanna have too much of one thing…. You get some joyful songs and you get the bops, as they say.”
There are also “really, really, really, really sad songs,” but, Taylor points out, “not enough to where you need to worry about me.”
There’s also a lot of new music: Taylor reveals that her upcoming seventh album will include more songs than any of her previous releases.
As for the shift from the darker Reputation era to her new pastel-colored one, Taylor credits her fans. While she believed that everyone had bought into the bad press surrounding her that time, “I would look out into the audience and I’d see these amazing, thoughtful, caring, wonderful, empathetic people,” she says.
“I see that [the fans] actually see me as a flesh-and-blood human being,” Taylor explains. “That — as contrived as it may sound — changed [me] completely, assigning humanity to my life.”
As for the Easter eggs, on EW’s cover, Taylor’s wearing a denim jacket adorned with buttons, which the mag says contain clues. There are images of the cast of Friends and Game of Thrones, The Dixie Chicks, Mr. Rogers, singer Faith Hill, the words “Awesome” and “Calm,” Sandra Oh and Ellen Pompeo from Grey’s Anatomy, the musical Cats, and more.
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