Full Transcript: Taylor Swift interviewed by Barbara Walters

Full Transcript by Sonix: Taylor Swift interviewed by Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters: Next is a young woman who moved from Nashville to New York this year and seems bent on global domination. Her parents named her after James Taylor and her fans are called Swifties. If you haven’t guessed her name by now you are clearly living under a very large rock. One magazine headline says it best. Taylor Swift is the music industry.

Barbara Walters: You could say there was one song this year that you just couldn’t shake off: Shake it off. Taylor Swift’s giant hit single off her a giant hit album 1989. 1989 sold over a million copies its first week. Unheard of these days and was the only album to go platinum in 2014. The one time teen country singer became a pop powerhouse this year. A one woman exception to the rule that in the digital artists cannot make money selling records.

Barbara Walters: This is your first album of all pop songs. Are you at all worried that you will lose some of the country fans?

Taylor Swift: I am not worried about that. I’m really in touch with my fans and I know what they like. What my fans in general were afraid of was that I would start making pop music and I would stop writing smart lyrics. Or I would stop writing emotional lyrics. And when they heard the new music they realized that that wasn’t the case at all.

Barbara Walters: Taylor’s success is based on her close relationship with her fans. They are called Swifties. They see themselves in her and she sees herself in them.

Barbara Walters: Your fans feel so personal about you. I mean you’re the only one I know who invites people back into your house. Do you still do that?

Taylor Swift: Yeah, I decided that I wanted to play this entire album for the fans long before it came out. I wanted it to be like this whole secret society gatherings and living rooms. And so I decided to have them in my houses.

Taylor Swift: We have 89 fans waiting in the living room. The entire 1989 record.

Taylor Swift: I want to come up with as many ways that we can spend time together and bond because it keeps me normal. It keeps my life feeling manageable.

Barbara Walters: Is your life at all normal?

Taylor Swift: No.

Barbara Walters: No.

Taylor Swift: Not at all. And that’s why when I go online and I go on Instagram and I see a post from Emma who lives in Philadelphia and she’s talking about how her day was at school that day. That helps me.

You still do that?

It’s the only thing that keeps me not feeling overwhelmed by the abnormality of my life.

What’s the most abnormal?

The most abnormal thing about my life is having sort of crowds form everywhere you go. And just everywhere. So that starts happening and then you have to take security everywhere you go. All of a sudden you realize that you have not been alone truly for five years.

Barbara Walters: Taylor has been a star writing and singing her own songs from the time she was 16 when her first country music album debuted.

Taylor Swift: My senior year.

Barbara Walters: She’s won just about every music award there is. Going on. before our eyes. Her autobiographical songs deal with the problems of growing up and having or not having relationships. But while her fans identify, critics have accused the two autobiographical.

Taylor Swift: If a guy shares his experience in writing, he’s brave. If a woman shares her experience in writing, she’s oversharing. And she’s she’s over emotional. Or she might be crazy or watch out shall write a song about you. Well that is joke is there is that joke is so old and it’s it’s coming from a place of such sexism.

Barbara Walters: As she has become more famous so have the boyfriends. Her hits chronicle of high profile relationships that blossom with her die and then get turned into song lyrics. But Just as her music has changed, so has her attitude toward romance.

Taylor Swift: It seems like when I move to New York love and heartbreak and all the things that used to be my main main factors in my music kind of faded to the background. Of course love is still very interesting to me as a writer but.

Barbara Walters: As a writer not as a beautiful young woman?

Taylor Swift: Now right now.

Barbara Walters: No?

Taylor Swift: I just like I just feel really happy and I’m really protective of that.

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