Taylor Swift: ‘My Confidence Is Easy To Shake’
Once touted as a teen idol and a genre sensation, Taylor Swift is neither of those things today: At 22, she has become one of the biggest commercial forces in all of pop music. Her latest album, Red, sold 1.2 million copies in its first week — the highest such sales total in a decade. She spoke with NPR’s Guy Raz about success, setbacks and why, in a career that began at 14, so many of her songs have dealt in love and heartbreak. Hear the radio version at the audio link on this page, and read more of their conversation below.
GUY RAZ: You quote the poet Pablo Neruda right on the first page of the liner notes. The line is, “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” And it seems like that line sort of sets the theme for this record.
TAYLOR SWIFT: It really does. When I read that line, I absolutely connected to it. I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.