This decade, Taylor Swift has released five albums, and each one of them topped the charts. For that reason and many others, Billboard named Swift their Artist Of The Decade, a distinction that’s hard to argue with. She sat down for an interview with the publication, and during the chat, she revealed that due to the public scrutiny she has received over the years and how well she has handled it, artists sometimes reach out to her for advice about navigating bad press.
In the conversation, Swift was asked, “You’ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you’ve faced, using phrases like ‘They’ve wanted to see this’ and ‘They hated me for this.’ Who is ‘they’?” Swift responded, “It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men.”
Billboard Woman of the Decade @taylorswift13: "I do want my music to live on" https://t.co/pghL9ZGe2i #BBWomenInMusic pic.twitter.com/WaJUjFkvwS
— billboard (@billboard) December 11, 2019
From there, she revealed that she has become a sort of go-to mentor for up-and-coming artists who are dealing with the first bit of backlash in their young careers: “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.”
It’s not clear which artists Swift has helped, or over what period she has done so, but regardless, it’s nice to see her using her experience and wisdom to help younger artists deal with issues similar to those she has gone through herself.
Read the full feature here.
