Taylor did an exclusive Q&A for Nashville Lifestyles magazine and she talked about ‘1989’, the making of “Shake it Off”, moving to New York City and what to do and eat in Nashville. You can read the interview below!
While Taylor Swift was busy on her pre-album launch media tour, we caught up with the singer to get her thoughts on taking time off, her favorite Music City eats, and the idea behind 1989’s wildly popular debut single, “Shake It Off.”
Did you have any idea “Shake It Off” was going to be such a huge hit right out the gate?
One of the main things Max [Martin] and I wanted to do when we went into the studio is to make something that didn’t sound like anything either of us had ever done before. I hadn’t played around with a horn section or Motown vibes, and neither had Max, so we built this song from the ground up, and it turned into this very obvious chorus. I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me to say, “haters gonna hate, players gonna play, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake it off.”The video took three days to shoot, but what was the process like to coordinate all those moving parts from concept to completion?
When you’re shooting a music video before a song is even out, I approach that with a very high level of paranoia because I’ve never done things like that before. I’ve always put out a song and then shot the video, like, two weeks later.