Original subtitles

I think that the lesson is

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that you shouldn't care so much if you feel

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misunderstood by a lot of people who don't know you, as long as you feel

understood by the people who do know you, people who will show up for you,

the people who see you as a human being.

From the beginning, she became part of my life.

Her voice just makes you feel like you're not alone.

She was my rock before she was Taylor Swift.

I just fell in love with how she celebrated girlhood.

It was permission to yearn.

Yep, exactly. Permission to yearn.

She allows women to connect back to that 16-year-old self.

That time in their life when every single glance is, like, apocalyptic.

She's created a community on a scale that's probably

never been done before.

Taylor, right here.

The biggest pop star on the planet, Taylor Swift. Good morning.

- That's a bold introduction, I liked it.

- She wasn't the little girl from Nashville anymore.

Every time she releases an album, she's selling millions.

- How are you gonna spend Valentine's Day?

You gonna see Jake?

- And then she suddenly becomes the serial dater,

running through men like paper.

- And what started off as just innocent,

"Hey, I write songs about boys,"

it almost became weaponized.

- She's blonde, she's wealthy, she's white.

All these kind of start stacking up against her.

- No matter where you turn,

There was Taylor.

Enough of this Taylor Swift person.

- Kanye, is Taylor Swift a bitch?

- All of a sudden, she's this liar who's deceitful

and trying to manipulate people.

- She was being called a snake.

Hashtag Taylor Swift is canceled.

- This was really just a life and death moment.

- I absolutely loved the force with which Taylor came back.

- Whenever adversity comes her way,

she comes back like the Avengers.

It's like not only does she win,

She wins big.

- Oh, like, she's just write songs about her ex-boyfriends,

and I think, frankly, that's a very sexist angle to take.

- You just can't win a media war against Taylor Swift.

You know, it's a fool's errand.

I think it's undeniable.

She's the most powerful musical artist in the world.

- When you look at this performance on the eras tour,

I hate to throw around a word like worship casually,

but she certainly commands that level of devotion

from fans that you do associate

with large religious movements.

- She has a sense that there's a story that she's telling.

The story was always about fans,

and it's always about her deep connection with them.

- She started in country music,

which really prides itself on authenticity.

And so that really kind of cemented this, you know,

connection bringing, you know, fans together with Taylor.

- I mean, country is a really notoriously white genre

of music with conservative, the small C values.

So Taylor coming up through country really cemented her

into this lane of being America's perfect,

blonde, all-American sweetheart.

- The American people,

when we pledge our allegiance to the flag,

feel renewed respect and love for all it represents.

- Ever since the disaster, a wave of patriotism has been

spreading across America.

- Blue collar fans and family, proudly showing their colors and

embracing the music that

gives voice to the lives they live.

- I started dragging my parents to festivals and fairs and

karaoke contests when I was like 10 and came to Nashville

for the first time when I was 11. And I had this demo CD of me

singing karaoke music and walked

into every major record label and was like, "Hey, I'm Taylor.

I'm 11. I want a record deal. You know, call me."

So, you know, what I can see here is that as

she's talking about how she tried

to get her career off the ground, you know, she's very charming.

You know, she's a little bit

self-deprecating and the fact that she realized, "Okay, that

wasn't going to work."

But at the same time, she's extremely confident. What pre-teenager

has the gumption to go into a

big record label in Nashville and say, "I'm talented enough. Give me

a record deal." Who does that?

Dear Diary, Sorry about the long wait. Boy, do I

have a lot to tell you.

New York, the best.

I met a guitar slash country singer named Taylor Swift.

She was nice, and I think we can be friends.

I was 12.

My family and I went to Point Pleasant Beach,

which is the New Jersey shore.

They had this boardwalk called Jenkinson's,

and I heard country music playing

and found Taylor on this little makeshift stage with

about 20 people around her

playing these songs I'd never heard. I was absolutely

mesmerized from the get-go.

I stood there and listened to her play. She was so

talented and beautiful.

I was just in awe of her, her stage presence.

Watching her there, singing "Lucky You," she was confident

and she was just having fun.

Here, Taylor is singing about a young girl who was born very

different than everybody else.

And she dances, and believes in true love,

and has hopes and dreams.

Taylor sang about things that I cared about

and that I related to.

She was my age, which was wild to me.

She was up there in front of everybody.

I could never imagine doing something like that.

When Taylor was done playing,

her brother Austin was there with her,

handing out demo CDs.

And so, yeah, I went over, talked to her for a very little bit,

and had her sign a little demo CD for me.

I stuck it in my Walkman and put on my little headphones,

tuned out the world, and just listened to these two songs

on repeat for years.

That CD was my constant.

That CD was my, to not sound incredibly weird, but my friend.

This photograph is of me and Taylor.

It's the picture that was taken, my mom took it,

of our first encounter.

You know, it's just a picture to a lot of people,

but it was a core memory for me

because of what happened right after.

- As of today, I am--

- I'm sick of this, I'm sick of this.

- The red partner.

- I'm sick of this, it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous.

I don't have to take this from you.

- That's really interesting to see

because the relationship that her and I had

was more like two girlfriends.

I mean, we just cracked up all the time.

The very first time that I met Taylor,

when I said, "Taylor," I said, "What's your goal?"

She says, "I want a gold record."

And what that means is that you need

to sell 500,000 copies of a record.

And I'm like, "Great, let's go meet 500,000 people."

- No one told us it was country night.

Y'all wanna hear some country music?

- Mommy's in that video.

- Yeah.

- Is that you right there?

- You can see that Taylor was incredibly driven

and incredibly determined and incredibly young.

In 2007, we did 300-ish shows.

We lived on a tour bus that had been previously owned by Cher,

so it was like decked out in

leopard print.

I slept on the bottom bunk and she was on the top bunk.

Sort of was like having a little sister that was also your boss.

She was somebody who always knew what she wanted.

I would see her being interviewed constantly, speak to radio

stations, signing autographs.

- Her eyes are so gorgeous, they're so amazing.

- My mom took me for my birthday

when I didn't have any friends, yeah.

- You can see she was very excited.

She would sign autographs to anyone

as long as they were willing to stand and wait for her.

So sometimes that lasted hours and hours.

- She wanted people to feel better when she left

than before she arrived.

You can't teach that in business school.

You can't teach that anywhere.

You either have it or you don't have it.

The first Taylor Swift song I heard was "Teardrops on My Guitar."

My dad and I have always bonded through music.

We were at my parents' house in New Jersey and we had just

finished dinner and he put

it on the speaker.

My dad picked me up in his arms and he

told me to lay my head on his shoulder and we were

slow dancing around the living room to Teardrops on My Guitar,

and he told me, he whispered

in my ear, I will never forget this, he whispered in my ear,

"One day you're going to dance

with someone that you love just like this."

Teardrops on My Guitar is just such a wonderful, beautiful,

slow, sad song to just kind of weep to.

# Drew looks at me #

# I fake a smile so he won't see #

- She's comparing herself to the girl

that her crush is in love with.

She's wondering, you know, why not me?

- She sees herself as, you know, the odd one out,

as the weird girl, as the not popular girl.

# And she's got everything # # that I have to live without #

- But she's saying, when you're a young woman,

it is so easy to compare yourself to others

and think, oh, if this little thing changed,

then this person will like me.

- You know, I got a call from my editor,

and he said there's this new artist, Taylor Swift,

I think you need to go interview her.

I was running a recorder because I was with her

for many hours, just following her around.

One thing I have to say about the tapes

is that you hear somebody who is pretty honest.

In 2008, the financial crash happens, right?

And the world is kind of plunged into this global recession.

Music sales drop, particularly CDs,

but Taylor does this quite incredible feat

of bucking that trend and actually selling albums.

She taps into this market that is not really being served

by the music industry at this moment in time.

Young women and girls who are looking for someone

who can essentially be a proxy for their feelings, right?

Someone who they can relate to, can sing songs

that they feel have been written for them

and about their lives.

- I just fell in love with how she celebrated girlhood

and how she gave me permission to feel

all my big feelings.

- It was permission to yearn.

- Yeah, exactly, permission to yearn.

- It really wasn't a mold for it.

You know, she wasn't sexy.

She wasn't doing this like girl, woman thing,

like a Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera.

- That was a very important message for that time

because it showed that women

didn't need to be sexualized to be famous.

- 2009 was a big year for Taylor.

She was having such a wonderful time.

I was really looking forward to the VMAs.

Ate some popcorn and sat down on the couch

and turned on the VMAs and was watching it

and it was going great.

And then I got this amazing high when Taylor won her award

and was like, "Oh my God, I'm so excited for her."

And she looked so happy.

And then all of a sudden somebody runs up on stage

and my stomach dropped.

- I'm really happy for you, I'm gonna let you finish.

But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.

- As he was talking, you just saw her face fall.

She looked so vulnerable.

The way she was sort of like playing with the award,

it's heartbreaking.

And I can't imagine thinking all of those people

are booing you.

- At that moment, I am so proud of her

because she stayed quiet.

That was a conversation that Taylor and I had

years before that, humility and grace.

So I said, "Somebody give Kanye a hug."

We cannot buy that kind of publicity.

Now they're all going to Yahoo and Google.

Who's this Taylor Swift?

Who's this Taylor Swift?

Boom.

Kanye West was huge, you know?

At the time, he was one of the most prolific and celebrated

rappers and producers in history.

Taylor Swift grew up listening to songs off his first album.

When that happened, the day after,

Kanye West immediately went on television to apologize.

You can see he regrets it.

he wishes he didn't do it.

- I immediately knew in the situation that it was wrong

and it wasn't a spectacle or just, you know,

it's actually someone's emotions, you know,

that I stepped on and it was very, it was just,

it was rude period and, you know,

I'd like to be able to apologize to her in person.

- It really kind of sets Taylor up

to be this kind of woman who's always in the victim position

and she takes to music to kind of right some of these wrongs.

- Being here is incredible.

I'm excited and I'm nervous.

And you know, whenever I'm feeling strong emotions

about something like this,

I usually write a song about it.

- She's a storyteller.

She is the primary character in most of the stories

that she tells, whether she's telling them in the songs

or here, in how she's presenting herself to the public.

And when somebody hijacks your story,

it's hard to know where to go with that.

# You might be expecting me to say #

# Something bad about Kanye #

# And how he ran up on the stage #

# And ruined my VMA monologue #

# But there's nothing more to say #

# 'Cause everything's okay #

# I've got security lining the stage #

- But see, here's, this is one of the things

I think it's just, she appreciates the humor,

she appreciates the story.

She's back in control of the narrative.

She has an incredible amount of wealth and privilege,

but she is still able to write that underdog's narrative,

right, really, really well,

because I think she has felt it, you know,

and has experienced that, that in the past.

##

You can see here, she is the kind of person who takes

what she does, even as a small kid, very, very seriously.

She's very poised, especially from a very young age.

You know, people didn't know what to make of her. She was

in high school, still

taking regular classes, and then jetting off to sing the

National Anthem.

She's the straight-A student, she's the goody -goody, she's the

perfect girl. In her school,

kids are saying, "Ew, you're weird, like, why are you even doing

that? You have frizzy hair."

I think whatever she experienced, she felt very deeply.

Taylor takes slights very seriously.

She has always written about the things that she has felt

most deeply, and so those are

the kinds of things that came out in her first songs.

[MUSIC]

- She's like, do I have to do that, like to play this song?

Am I gonna have to play that crazy chord you're playing?

Taylor and I started writing in 2003.

She showed me a song that she wrote called The Outside.

and just feeling like she was, you know,

she wasn't part of the group, the gang.

And she also knew, I think,

that she had something special to offer the world,

so that makes it a little tougher to fit in.

But I remember when she was singing the song

and she was in the studio, and this is the lyric sheet.

So she's got the lyric sheet on a music stand.

With a pencil, she put the world over here,

and she's over here, and the world is here.

That's how outside she felt.

So how can I ever try to be better?

Nobody lets me in.

I can still see you.

This ain't the best view on the outside looking in.

- A couple of months after I got back from New Jersey

and I had met Taylor,

I encountered a situation that was something

that a child should never have to encounter.

And I was so grateful to have Taylor.

and her CD was something of armor for me.

She was somebody I would write to in my diary

because I couldn't talk to anybody else.

Hi, Taylor.

I hid in my room and blasted "Lucky You" all weekend.

It's getting bad.

I put stacks of books in front of the doors

and check if they moved.

I asked for locks, but no way, Jose.

I want to live somewhere happy,

but I'm scared of everything.

I listen to "Lucky You" in the shower all the time

and that was not always a safe place for me.

And so when I had her music playing

and I was singing her music and I was okay and I felt safe.

Something about her voice just makes you

feel like you're not alone.

She saved me.

Hey guys, thank you so much.

No, I think I'm going to carry them as long as they let me have them.

This is the dream come true.

It's, um, it's like, I've never been presumptuous about dreams.

And, um, when you have crazy dreams, like, I wonder what it would be like

to win a Grammy someday, I, I never actually could fathom that it might

happen until I was walking up there and winning one.

By 2010, she's finally made it.

She's having hit records in the pop realm.

She's winning awards after awards.

And finally, she is at the Grammy Awards

to sing a very high-profile performance with Stevie Nicks,

who is someone that she idolizes.

# In life you've never seen # # a woman taken by the wind #

And she can perform maybe as up to her usual caliber.

She was on a massive stage.

She's singing with someone she greatly admires.

I think she just had an off night.

You know, people say that she's out of tune,

that she sounds flat,

that she doesn't hold a candle to Stevie Nicks.

And she famously attracts the ire

of a music critic called Bob Lefsetz,

who is notorious for not holding his punches.

Taylor's performance was, quote, dreadful.

Now everyone knows Taylor Swift can't sing.

He asked, did Taylor Swift kill her career overnight?

I'll argue she did.

In one fell swoop, Taylor Swift consigned herself

to the dustbin of teen phenoms.

Taylor's too young and dumb

to understand the mistakes she made, he wrote,

suggesting that she should have used Auto-Tune.

You know, at heart, you know, she's a perfectionist

and she wants people to like her.

And to this point, she's received a lot of praise

for her writing.

To read something like what Bob left that said

would be devastating.

- I think after you're backed into a corner

with all of this criticism,

I love how Taylor's reaction is not to cower,

but to reach out and take up even more space.

# Someday I'll be # # living in a big old city #

# And all you're ever # # gonna be is mean, yeah #

- Taylor Swift did not take Bob Lovesitz's criticism

lying down.

Here, she is standing up for herself.

Like she did so many other times

when she went through something hard,

she wrote a song about it.

- And the fact that she's performing

almost on top of the world in this video

really emphasizes that point.

She approaches her songs as a way to kind of settle scores, as a

way to have the last word,

as a way to kind of tell people what she really thinks and

how she really feels.

And it was just a real anthem for just keep

doing your thing and be happy, don't be mean, don't be like those people.

This one really means a lot to me because this is for a song

called "Mean" that I wrote.

And there's really no feeling quite like writing a song about

someone who's really mean to you

and someone who completely hates you and makes your life miserable

and then winning a Grammy for it.

There is a great deal of satisfaction on that face right

there in that screenshot.

It lets her control the narrative in a way that nobody can take

away. You don't pick fights with

somebody who's going to sell 10 million copies of the song that

they end up writing about you.

- There have not been many conflicts

that Taylor has not been able to turn to her advantage.

- You know, it might suck now.

Someone's bullying you, someone's being mean to you,

but someday I'll be living in a big old city

and all you're ever gonna be is mean.

See, every girl that was bullied knows every word to mean.

- 100%, 100%.

- Come on, Taylor.

Taylor, are you dating Taylor?

You got Taylor's mom's seal of approval.

- Kiss, kiss, kiss.

- Kiss, kiss, kiss.

- Give her a kiss, man, I gotta make some money on my video.

- Where Taylor does differ from, you know, other artists

is that she also invites people in

to speculate about that personal life.

Some of the songs on here, all of the songs on here, are

about boys and love.

Yes.

Anyone in particular?

There are a couple people that they're about, actually.

Like maybe, um, that guy?

There's one that's about that guy, but that guy's not in my

life anymore, unfortunately.

You know, she knows that when she writes about unnamed exes

and people that she's dated,

but she leaves clues for fans to figure out who they are.

She is inviting a certain journalistic impulse

to kind of figure out, "Who is it, then?"

And when I look at that person,

I'm not even going to be able to remember the boy

who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds

when I was 18.

She's making it clear that, you know,

she's going through exactly what her songs are talking about

and exactly what her fans are talking about.

And, you know, and I think also, though,

she probably didn't realize at the time

that anything she was talking about was going to be, you know, magnified.

Hi, Taylor.

How are you going to spend Valentine's Day?

Are you going to see Jake?

She probably didn't realize that her dating various different

men would invite this much

tabloid speculation.

But all of a sudden, you know, she's not talking about

some jock in high school.

She's talking about a big movie star.

She's talking about another pop star.

And I think that level of blowback she was not quite ready for.

All right, let's talk about your number one hit.

We're never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to get back together.

Who's that about?

Here's what I'll do.

You don't have to say.

I'm going to show pictures.

I don't know what I'm--

You're supposed to ring one.

But I don't want to.

I don't want to.

All right, I'll ring--

Don't send me angry emails.

I don't want to get them.

I'll hold it for you.

[LAUGHTER]

What are you doing to me?

- Stop it, stop it, stop it!

- Okay, all right, all right.

- This makes me feel so bad about myself.

Every time I come up here,

you put like a different dude up there on the screen.

- She's showing that she's trapped,

but she feels like she has no right to complain about it.

- They just decided one day at 19 that she was a slut,

and so every person you date from here on out

is only adding to that thing we already knew about you.

- Yeah.

There's these unachievable expectations

that are placed upon young women and girls,

where it's like, oh, have fun, but not like that.

Oh, be successful, but not like that.

- You're getting these great songs out of breakups.

- Oh, come on.

- Do you really want to be in the relationship?

- No, okay, this is like--

- I think maybe you don't want to release it

for like 15 years.

Get about four or five more albums out of heartbreak,

then settle down.

Does that not make sense?

That's a pretty good game plan for you, Taylor.

- You can thank me later.

- Yeah.

- I look at this, though, and it makes me so mad

because she is clearly uncomfortable.

People don't want to talk about her music

after a certain point.

They want to talk about her personal life.

- If I could talk to my 19-year-old self,

I'd just say, "Hey, you know, you're gonna date

"just like a normal 20 -something should be allowed to,

"but you're going to be a national lightning rod

"for slut-shaming."

- Here at this point, she's very much trying to say

how unfair it is that she is getting treated this way.

You know, it's very indicative of the sexism

that she's always faced in the music industry.

- I just wanted to show the legs,

'cause as I was telling you ahead of time,

you're gonna walk home with more

than maybe just a trophy tonight.

I think lots of men.

- There's a split second,

which I find so interesting on Taylor's face,

where she is shocked that someone has told her this.

Like, she's basically being accused of being promiscuous

on live television on a red carpet.

- I'm not gonna walk home with any men tonight.

-I think Taylor thinks of her childhood as incredibly idyllic.

- One incredibly significant thing about Taylor Swift

is that her parents were well-to-do

and they did not "need" her money.

This was a family project to get Taylor to stardom.

- I think that was always the plan for her,

to be as famous as she is now.

What I watched was all the tools being put in the box

to get her there.

If there had been no Andrea,

there would probably be no Taylor Swift.

She was functioning as a manager, as a personal assistant,

but also as a mom.

I mean, she essentially gave up her life

to help her daughter pursue her career.

- There are so many people that deserve

to be thanked for this, but I'm just gonna thank one.

And that's the person that used to love

to go to lunch with her friends

and cook dinner for her family

and sleep in her bed every night.

And she gave that all away and left it all behind

to go on the road with her 16-year-old daughter.

And then she was sleeping in rental cars

and in airplanes with her mouth hanging wide open

'cause she was so tired.

And so, Mom, thank you so much.

I love you.

This is for you.

- It was a really emotional moment

and pivotal for them to be able to share that

and for her to be able to thank her.

Those things that she said in that speech were so accurate.

You know, she gave up everything

for her to have that opportunity.

I think you always think your parents need to sacrifice for you.

Realizing that they don't have to, and they choose to, is

something different.

That's what I saw.

This is the moment where she moves to New York and kind of

almost like reinvents herself,

kind of like every other young woman

who moves to New York ever does.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud and happy

to have a young lady who's now become,

believe it or not, the biggest pop star on the planet.

Taylor Swift, good morning.

- That's a bold introduction, I liked it.

- Well, six of the top 10 are yours.

- Yeah, it's been good.

During the 1989 era, I think she was very much over

the only being asked about who she was dating.

So she was like, "Fuck that, I'm gonna move to New York.

"I'm going to hang out with my girlfriends.

"I'm going to live my life a little

"and not have it be about a boy."

- With "1989," it's really clear what Taylor is doing.

She is reinventing herself as a new kind of musician,

a more mature songwriter.

It's a really difficult transition

for a lot of musicians to make,

and she just does it so well.

and the songs are, you know, enormously catchy.

You know, you would be hard -pressed to find a music critic

who doesn't agree that that album

is a kind of pop masterpiece.

# Nice to meet you, where you been #

# I could show you incredible things #

- I mean, right off the bat,

I mean, I think you'd have to be living under a rock

to not know that "Blank Space" is lyrical retaliation.

"I'll be the crazy cat lady."

And in the first moment, it's just her with her cat,

just like.

# I saw you there and I thought, # # "Oh my God, look at that face" #

# You look like my next mistake #

This is ushering in a new era of, "I know I have a reputation."

# So it's gonna be forever, or # # it's gonna go down in flames #

Those are the only two options.

We're gonna be together forever, or it's going to go down in flames.

There's no just normal relationship.

# 'Cause you know I love the # # players, and you love the game #

I really think she's like talking to the media there like you

love the game I play like I sell

Your news I sell your magazines. I sell like I all those

clicks on your site because of me.

To say I've got a blank space baby, and I'll write your name.

It's a nod to every time she goes on a talk show and it's

like well, who is it now?

Who is it now? Who is it now and to turn that into this little

well, I've got a blank space.

- Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle, that we

are all created equal.

This morning, the Supreme Court recognized that the

Constitution guarantees marriage equality.

- The American dream is dead. But if I get elected

president, I will bring it back

bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before,

and we will make America great again.

- Fight back, fight back, no peace, no peace!

- Taylor can only talk about certain things

in certain ways at certain points in her life.

Then there's also the world around her changing.

- Taylor!

people expected more from pop stars.

But, you know, she had a track record at that point

of talking about her own personal issues.

You know, she was talking about her life.

- For me, I feel like at 22, it's my right to vote,

but it's not my right to tell other people what to do.

- Right there, right there, sister.

Come on, come on, come on.

- So, you know, what I can see here

is that she is so careful about what she says in public

and is always very thoughtful

and careful about what she says.

Politics was potentially part of her life,

but it wasn't anything she necessarily talked about.

People forget how young she was.

I think she was still trying to figure out

what she stood for, what she wanted to say.

She was just living her life and enjoying her success.

- Taylor is basically riding high

and she's got the girl squad.

You know, this group of women

that she would surround herself with,

Karlie Kloss, Gigi Hadid.

People looked at the mainly white,

very attractive, conventionally successful women.

What's up with that?

Because it's female friendship, it's about solidarity,

it's about her, you know, not just being defined by men,

but by the women she hangs out with.

I think she thought that that was going to be

above any kind of criticism or judgment.

- She would have, you know,

amazing over-the-top 4th of July parties,

and they would all be Instagrammed,

and, you know, she would be hanging out with her friends.

I mean, she was enjoying being young,

and she really, she faced a lot of backlash for it.

- People just thought,

this all just seems a little bit manufactured.

Like, do you seriously want us to believe

that on one night you're hanging out with Lorde,

then you're going for dinner with Selena,

then you're hanging out for a sleepover with Lena Dunham,

and it just seems a little bit kind of unbelievable.

- No matter where you turned, there was Taylor.

Enough of this Taylor Swift person.

- People wanted more and more and more and more from her.

And they were like, "Whoa, you're too much.

"You're too much."

- She was everywhere.

She deserved to be.

And she worked so freaking hard to get where she was.

But the public didn't see that.

And they wanted to tear it down.

- In the mid-2010s, she's riding high off 1989

and this feud that she's had with Kanye West

is slowly kind of defrosting.

She's also talked about how she wanted to be liked.

You know, this whole kind of good girl,

people-pleasing side to her kind of came out,

especially given that she'd grown up

listening to Kanye's music.

it felt important to her to gain and win back his respect.

She even presents the MTV Vanguard Award to him at the VMAs,

and that is widely perceived to be a sign

that they've just squashed the beef.

-So I guess I have to say to all the other winners tonight,

I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish.

But Kanye West has had one of the greatest careers

of all time!

- I mean, it's a really sweet video.

And I think it really says something

about Taylor's approach to relationships

and really terrible slash fascinating

from a hindsight perspective.

- I am honored to present the 2015 Vanguard Award

to my friend, Kanye West.

- And she's also using humor to defuse the situation, right?

- It's like, why poke the bear again?

You know, why bring it back up?

And then here's this video of Kanye and Taylor.

It seemed like two friends wanting to support each other's growth

and willing to do anything

for each other.

- In 2016, Kanye West released a song called "Famous"

where he basically raps, you know,

"I made that bitch famous,"

referring to the VMAs stage invasion.

# South side niggas # # that know me best #

# I feel like me and # # Taylor might still have sex #

# Why, I made that bitch famous #

# Goddamn #

# I made that bitch famous #

- It's shot in a way that feels non-consensual.

And I think it's no surprise that Taylor

has actually described it as a form of revenge porn,

even though that is just a wax figurine of her lying in bed.

- Taylor is like, "Hey, you called me a bitch,

"and that lyric is really offensive,

"and I'm really uncomfortable with you using my image

"to be naked in bed with you.

"I didn't know that this was happening.

You didn't ask me if this was okay."

- Taylor hits back and says,

"I did not give permission to be referenced in this song.

Like, I did not, you know, approve this lyric."

And unfortunately for Taylor, at this point in time,

Kanye West is also married to Kim Kardashian,

who also has a really ironclad understanding

of how to work a media narrative

and how to come out looking like the underdog.

Kim proceeds to edit up a video of this phone call

to make it sound like Taylor gave her full-blown approval.

- When Kim tweets this video,

She adds a snake emoji and the internet ran with that.

She was being called a snake.

It was part of hashtags.

The hashtag Taylor Swift is over party.

Hashtag Taylor Swift is canceled.

She could have saved a million babies

and solved world hunger and nobody would have cared.

It wouldn't have mattered.

-Kanye, is Taylor Swift a bitch?

-People blew this out of proportion.

I mean, she was getting death threats.

-To have something at that magnitude

just go completely off the rails,

and there was no stopping that train, no matter what she did.

-I think it must have been really horrendous

for Taylor to have to go through this.

Because she starts her career as this homespun,

folksy country gal from Nashville, Tennessee,

then all of a sudden she's this liar who's deceitful

and trying to manipulate people

and has been caught red-handed.

And I think that was part of the glee

with which people were taking her down with

because he vindicated all these things

that people have been saying about her

and depressed about her playing the victim.

So I think if you're a fan,

you were probably very confused and puzzled,

like which of these Taylors is actually real?

Which is the real Taylor?

- I think she felt she couldn't do anything to stop it.

We didn't really know where it was gonna go from there.

We hadn't really seen anybody come back from that.

- Who knows what would come next?

So she had to retreat and regroup and figure out

because could this be the end of her career?

- I've been doing this for 15 years and I'm tired of it.

- I'm just tired of the,

just,

just feels like it's more than music now at this point.

And just most days I'm like, okay.

But then sometimes I'm just like,

it just gets loud sometimes.

- Her reaction to it, you know,

really shows that the message came through

loud and clear for her.

And it was extremely distressing.

She was the internet's villain,

and everyone decided to, you know, gang up on that.

- Everyone was posting #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty,

#TaylorSwiftIsCancelled.

When there's this false narrative that everyone believes,

how do you respond to that?

She goes absolutely radio silent.

No one hears from her, no one sees her out in public,

which is the antithesis of the Taylor

that we had come to know.

- Take a look at this photo.

See, there's speculation that she may be in that suitcase.

- Okay.

- I just don't get it.

We were used to having access to her.

She was an ever -present person in our lives.

- She knows at that point

that the world is kind of getting sick of her,

that they've reached saturation point with Taylor Swift,

and she makes an executive decision to kind of withdraw

and kind of cut off access in a way that, you know,

wasn't very common for Taylor Swift.

- Thank you.

- Watching Leigh-Anne Rimes,

we see that she has a very unique connection with her fans.

When she is on stage, you know,

there's just kind of that unspoken bond.

For Taylor, Leigh-Anne Rimes is the perfect role model

to really make connections with fans.

- When Taylor was really young,

she went to a Leigh -Anne Rimes concert.

She's at the very front row.

- She looked down and I was like,

"Leigh-Anne, did you get my letters?"

And she goes, "I sure did, Taylor."

And that was the moment where, literally,

it all just clicked for me,

that if I could ever make one little kid feel that way,

or one person feel the way she made me feel,

then it would all be worth it.

- You could see her eyes glow talking about it.

That moment, I think, solidified for Taylor

how important it is to connect with your fans

and how there is no wall if you don't want there to be.

I think that was a really defining moment for Taylor.

Going to her concert and being seen by Leigh-Anne

and being respected and understood

and given the time of day,

I think planted that seed of nurturing a fandom

and making every single person that she comes across

feel that exact same way.

MySpace is an awesome new thing.

It's an online website where people

can really connect with artists.

Typically I get about 600 emails a day.

I read all the guest book entries.

I want to be a part of these people's lives.

I think it's important to keep that personal contact.

That's the most fun thing for me,

is to hear what people think,

and all the different stories of people

the first time they heard the song,

how it affected them.

I just love all that.

- Watching that, you can see it was really important

to her to connect with people.

The stories that people tell, like she mentioned,

she does take those to heart.

- She had already been building her bond with her fans

and building her brand online.

So she knew how to do stuff that the rest of the business

had not figured out yet.

I don't know of any Nashville artist

that took my space as seriously as Taylor took my space.

- When I saw that she was hand-delivering

Christmas presents to fans, it didn't surprise me.

These weren't generic gifts.

She took the time to go on their social media profiles

and find out what they were into,

what they were interested in.

She has always been a lover of people.

The people have never let her down.

So why would you change?

Why would you stop?

- She took her time

and she stepped out of the limelight a little.

She had to turn off her comments,

which eventually led to her deleting her entire Instagram

because it was just flooded

with bullying, harassment, snakes.

She then returns, not with the kind of typical

social media presence that her fans aren't used to.

I think the whole world stood still

when that first snake came to her Instagram.

And we all knew something was coming,

but we couldn't figure out what it was.

And collectively, as a fandom, I think we all held our breath.

I absolutely loved the force with which Taylor came back.

She took her narrative, she rewrote it,

took that motif of a snake that was

used so violently against her, and made it

into an entire era, like, wow.

- It's gonna go down in history

as one of the biggest, like, moments in pop culture

because to be silent, unseen for years,

and then drop that music video.

# I don't like your little games #

# Don't like your tilted stage #

# The role you made me play #

- She is visually showing us

the place where the internet left her

after this incident, in the ground.

And here she is, a zombie, rising out of the ground,

saying, "No, I don't like your games."

# Oh, look what you made me do #

# Look what you made me do #

- The idea of, "Look what you made me do,"

She's telling all the haters

and everyone who's been critiquing her,

you know, you made me change this.

This is your fault.

She is not, you know, playing the victim.

She is not playing the wallflower.

She is saying, you all were so mean and nasty to me.

This is how I'm reacting.

You know, she's reclaiming her narrative.

She's reclaiming her reputation.

- I'm sorry, the old Taylor

can't come to the phone right now.

Why?

Oh, 'cause she's dead.

The world was changed when Taylor said,

"I'm sorry, Taylor can't come to the phone right now."

So iconic.

What's with that bitch?

Don't call me that.

Y'all.

Oh, stop acting like you're all nice.

You are so fake.

Look, there she goes, playing the victim again.

So by the end, basically, she's also sort of, you know,

making fun of herself.

She has all of her old selves.

And she's basically saying, you know, "Ugh, you're so

pathetic," you know, before anyone

else can criticize her, she's criticizing herself,

which was a really bold move.

I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.

Well, you know what, if that's how you're going to think of it,

I'm going to get there first.

I'm going to be the one that's mocking myself before you can mock me.

Well, everything reaches saturation, doesn't it? I mean, a

brand, chocolates, coffee,

whatever we consume. So a clever brand is constantly

replenishing or reinventing itself.

and it's the same with an artist because otherwise you get

stuck with the same audience.

So in a way you're heading towards a cliff. It can be like

falling off a cliff edge,

it can happen overnight. Over the years I've worked with

some of the greatest names in

entertainment including Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones,

David Bowie for 40 years,

Prince, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Spice Girls,

Sex Pistols, I mean a lot.

you've got to be brave and you've got to take the risk and keep

rewriting the story because fans

grow up and fans move on to other things so you want to be

reinventing yourself it's a constant

you need that momentum perpetual momentum taylor's really

fantastic the way she does that.

There was a bit of a bait and switch that happened with this

album when we put out look

what you made me do, and I'm like guys this album's going to be

one thing and when the album

came out. It's legitimately an album about finding love throughout

all the noise. If you can find

something real in spite of a bad reputation, then isn't that

what matters the most to you?

I think when you watch this footage of Taylor, she's very much in

this big sister mold where

she's kind of relatable and protective and strong. And I think

that's what people really appreciate her for.

Reputation is kind of a weird album for me

because it's such a shift

stylistically. It was her first album about being in a deep long

-term relationship. It was

about the start of her relationship with Joe Allen.

Where before, she could write a song about somebody that

she had broken up with

and not worry about their reaction.

Now she's writing a song about the most intimate moments of her life

because that's what she's always written about.

The person that she's writing about is still going to want to be

around her at the end of the day.

She meets this person and it's like,

"Oh, you're meeting me at the worst, lowest place that I've

been in public perception,

and you still like me? Oh, that must mean you really like me."

What I love about this song, she's singing about a love

that she could recede into.

It's a calm love, it's a safe love, it's a love despite

the world hating me.

I don't have to listen to all of you because I have this,

and this is, you know, bringing me so much love and joy.

You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs.

Donald Trump can be heard making some extremely crude comments

about himself and women.

I have tremendous respect for women.

-Have you ever done those things? -Women have respect for me.

And I will tell you, no, I have not.

-Women will be silent no more!

-Stories flooded social media and painted a picture

of just how many people endure sexual abuse

and harassment every day.

-In Denver today, Taylor Swift testified

that a former radio host groped her

while they were posing for a photo.

He lost his job and sued the pop star she countersued.

They got to hear from Taylor Swift.

They knew that within a couple hours of this happening,

she had told her mother.

She was very adamant about what happened.

She was appropriately angry.

So in 2017, which is the same year the allegations against Harvey

Weinstein are exposed for the

first time in the press, Taylor Swift takes an ex-radio DJ

called David Mueller to court.

And she alleges that in 2013 he put his hand up her skirt and

sexually assaulted her during

a photo meet and greet.

He sues her for defamation and she counter-sues him for sexual

assault and the whole thing

plays out in court in public.

One of the questions she's asked is, "There's a photo of you

allegedly being assaulted by

this man.

Why isn't the front of your skirt wrinkled?"

And then she goes, "Because my ass is not on the front of my skirt."

The jury sided with the pop star.

had been assaulted, and in keeping with her wishes, Mr Muller

was ordered to pay a dollar

in damages.

It gives courage and inspiration to all people, not just women,

but to all people, to have

the courage to draw lines.

The interesting thing about the #MeToo court case is I get the

sense that maybe part of

her just snapped and said, you know what, actually, I'm not

going to stand for this anymore.

Time magazine puts her on the cover with other whistleblowers,

including Ashley Judd, who

is one of Harvey Weinstein's first victims. Here is a moment

where she just wants to make

a point that women won't stand for this kind of treatment.

This day a year ago was the day that, uh, the day that the

jury decided in my favor and said that they believed me.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry

to anyone who ever wasn't believed,

because I don't know what turn my life would have taken if somebody,

if people didn't believe me

when I said that something had happened to me. And, um, so, I guess I

just wanted to say that we have so,

so, so much further to go and I'm so grateful to you guys for

being there for me during

what was a really really horrible part of my life.

It marks a little bit of a turning point in how open she was

willing to be about politics and

the stance that she took on issues, because following this she releases

a track called 'You Need To Calm Down', which is about

supporting LGBTQ rights as an ally.

The music video was incredibly glossy, filled with LGBTQ+ celebs,

and was widely seen to be centering Taylor

rather than queer people.

People wanted someone to say something serious and meaningful

and deep and thoughtful,

and they didn't think that a kind of glossy pop song

with a colorful music video cut the mustard, basically.

I think it shows up this idea that Taylor can't win, even

when her intentions are good.

Around this time that Taylor starts being a bit more of a

political animal, there is

a kind of bigger question in the room, right?

With Donald Trump in the White House and America being more

divided than ever before, is Taylor

they're gonna talk about Democrat versus Republican.

So Taylor coming up through country

and doing things like performing the national anthem

at sports games really cemented her

into this lane of being like a perfect

kind of all-American domestic goddess.

- There are people who are critical

And younger people, too, that are critical,

that she's not political enough,

that she's too late to the party with her politics,

that, you know, she's too white.

Like, they just don't want to give time

to a blonde, white woman.

-Would I make a good politician?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm an 18-year-old girl.

It's like, I'm not gonna sit here

and go into my political views

because that's not what I chose to do.

I chose to do music.

But, honestly, it's just really good to see women progress.

That's a canned statement.

It's tough because you're never going to win an argument

when it comes to religion or politics, period.

- And because of things that Taylor can't control,

the fact that she's young, she's blonde, she's wealthy,

she's white, she's American,

Taylor has always walked that tightrope.

If she doesn't speak about politics,

she's seen as pandering to the right.

If she does speak about politics,

she's seen as being a performative ally by the left.

And I think what changed is that, first of all,

she started getting associated with far-right causes.

- White supremacists have found

an interesting person to idolize.

Taylor Swift has been named

by one fringe group of white supremacists.

And they think that, hey, you know, she's blonde,

she's white, and she secretly hates the Jews.

Adolf Hitler quotes were attributed to her

and put on pictures of her and went viral,

making it seem like she'd said all these awful things.

And I don't doubt that there would have been

some part of her calculation

when it came to speaking out more publicly about politics,

where she wanted to distance herself

from this kind of heinous fan group

that had somehow attached themselves to her.

-Thank you so much for this.

And I just wanted to make a mention of the fact

that this award and every single award given out tonight

were voted on by the people,

and you know what else is voted on by the people?

Is the midterm elections on November 6th.

Get out and vote, I love you guys.

- I think that's brave to come out and tell people to vote.

But what is harder is to come out

as a party political animal and to tell people explicitly

to vote for one person over another.

We are less than three weeks out until the midterms,

and Tennessee Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn

is up in the polls.

But we know that the one poll that counts is November 6th,

and we're determined to be winning on November 6th,

and the early vote starts today.

It all really comes to a head

with the 2018 midterm elections,

where a Republican senator called Marsha Blackburn

from Tennessee is up for re-election.

And this is a senator who has voted against equal pay,

against gay rights.

- I can't see another commercial

and see her disguising these policies

behind the words, "Tennessee Christian values."

Those aren't Tennessee Christian values.

I live in Tennessee.

I am Christian.

That's not what we stand for.

I need to do this.

I need you to just...

I just need you to forgive me for doing it,

'cause I'm doing it.

- Watching the Miss Americana documentary

and her tearful conversation with her father,

where it is quite clear that she's asking him

for forgiveness for what she's about to do.

- Why do you think Taylor Swift, out of nowhere,

decided to get political?

- This is what I used to love about Taylor Swift,

that she stayed away from politics.

She was just all about music,

all about female empowerment.

- Yesterday on Instagram, she wrote,

"I've been reluctant to publicly voice

"my political opinions.

"I feel very differently about that now."

But I mean, I think many people are impressed and some are

frightened about the fact that

Taylor Swift can send out, you know, one tweet and 35,000

people will register to vote in

12 hours, right?

It's having that kind of reach.

Let's say that I like Taylor's music about 25% less now, okay?

All right, this is the big story.

Taylor Swift is slamming music executive Scooter Braun after he

acquired the record company that

owns her music, Big Machine Label Group, which released

Taylor Swift's first six albums.

Scooter Braun being a great businessman said, "Wait,

the Taylor Swift catalogs

available for purchase? Count me in!"

Which brings us to Scooter Braun.

Um, yeah.

Here's someone who managed the guy that walked on stage

and took my award.

And it wasn't about business at that point.

It was personal.

Right from the get-go, Taylor directed the session. We wrote

three songs in the first

two days that we were together, and two of those are on the

debut album, Taylor Swift.

After we'd written a few songs, her dad started saying, "Hey Rob,

look at that. Here's another

15 that she wrote, or here's, I mean, there's, I have tons of these.

These are all from like back,

way back. I mean, she's as young as 11 on some of these. I mean,

most of these have never seen

the light of day. So here's 16 songs, copyright 2003, the same

year we started writing. None of

those are anything you've, you've ever heard. Anytime I write any

song with anybody, it goes

in a file just like in case someday it becomes a hit. I can go,

well, here's what it looked like

before, you know, the day we wrote it. "Place in this world." It was

a really strong idea because

it was really what her life is. And she just says, "I don't know

what I want, so don't ask me,

because I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm trying to see

through the rain coming down,

even though I'm the only one who feels the way I do." What's cool

about that is like every kid

feels that way, but millions of kids were able to relate to that

line. You see what I'm saying?

She had a plan, and she wasn't going to go off that plan.

And she was not going to be stopped.

And people were telling her, no, left and right.

You're too young.

Let these other songwriters guide you.

She was having none of that.

I know there were people that wrote with her

that I wrote with that said, yeah, I wrote with her.

It's like, she didn't want to listen to any of my ideas.

Like, well, yeah, but did you listen to her ideas?

Because that's all you need to do.

- Late 2004, I had a regular standing gig

at the Bluebird Cafe, and I just suggested

maybe we just do a show at the Bluebird.

What you're trying to do is get all the record labels

to come see the show and give her a recording deal.

- Scott Borchetta just came forward and said,

"I'm starting a new label,

"and I want you to be my first artist."

and who wouldn't want to hear that?

- Big Machine was the label that believed in her,

that supported her, that gave her the ability

to do what she wanted to do,

which was to write her own songs

and to sing and perform her own songs.

And it was a big risk for Scott Bechetta to kind of say,

"This is the artist we're staking everything on."

- So Taylor, on behalf of Big Machine Records

and our partners, Universal Music Group Worldwide,

- We are so proud to present to you this plaque

that indicates you have sold more than 20 million records.

- And they had, by all accounts,

a really productive and long and fruitful relationship

up until the point where she left to go to the Republic

and Scott Bechetta ended up selling Big Machine

to Scooter Braun.

Taylor Swift says her new record deal

gives Swift more control over her own music.

- As far as we know, Republic promised

as part of this new deal, she will own all her masters.

And that was, as we'll see,

a really important thing for Taylor.

She wanted to have full control over the songs

that she was writing and making,

which she did not get to do with Big Machine.

- I knew he would sell my music.

I knew he would do that.

I couldn't believe who he sold it to

because we've had endless conversations about Scooter Braun,

and he has 300 million reasons

to conveniently forget those conversations.

- Scooter Braun, he's the guy who discovered Justin Bieber,

he's responsible for working with people like Ariana Grande,

and crucially for this story,

he is also the person who worked with Kanye West

during the whole "Famous" saga.

- The definition of the toxic male privilege

in our industry is people saying,

but he's always been nice to me

when I'm raising valid concerns about artists

and their rights to own their music.

And of course he's nice to you.

If you're in this room, you have something he needs.

The fact is that private equity

is what enabled this man to think,

according to his own social media post,

that he could buy me.

But I'm obviously not going willingly.

I'm watching that and I'm going,

"Oh my goodness, she's handling this perfectly."

It's important for Taylor to get the credit

that she deserves, especially in a culture

where, in many cases, female artists are not given

the credit that they deserve for the work they put in.

And if there is one thing that people in Nashville know,

if you were on the wrong side of Taylor Swift,

you were on the wrong side.

She writes about it on Tumblr,

and she says that this is her worst case scenario,

and she compares him taking control of her masters

to him controlling a woman,

which is quite a bold and audacious claim, right?

She basically regards Scooter Braun

as having had a real hand in the kind of harassment

and bullying that she received

at the hands of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Justin Bieber, who is on Scooter Braun's side,

understandably says, "Why are you saying this?

"You know your fans are gonna bully Scooter."

And lo and behold, they do.

- No one stole her music.

No one made her sign a bad record deal.

Those were the types of record deals

that everyone signed at that time.

And Scooter Braun made a very good business decision.

End of story.

The decision that Taylor made to turn the fans loose

on Scott and Scooter with only half of the conversation,

I was a little disappointed.

Death threats started happening.

And this is something that should have been

discussed behind the scenes.

- When it gets to a place where there's death threats

and there's offices being called

and people being threatened in the manner that,

I just think it's got out of hand

and I think people need to come together

and have a conversation

because that's not what this is about.

That's not what we got in this industry for.

- The Taylor Swift fan army, the Swifties,

are really protective of her.

And I think that comes from this relatability

that she's cultivated with them,

the sense that she's let them into her inner world

and given them, in many ways, ammunition

to go out and take people on

that they perceive to have done her dirty.

But I think the important thing to know

is that she didn't really call them out

or tell them to back off.

They are called fans for a reason, it's short for fanatics.

Now could you re-record?

- Oh yeah.

- Might you do that?

- Oh yeah.

- That's a plan?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- In order to wrestle back control of the masters,

she decides to re -record all the albums

that Scooter Braun now has the master recordings for.

Her re-recording the albums is her way of saying, you know,

artists need to own their work.

Like, this is their body of work.

These are their babies.

These are the things that mean the most to them.

And artists deserve to own that,

and artists deserve to be compensated for their work,

and artists deserve to, you know,

be able to have control over their work, you know,

and be able to, you know, use it in the way they see fit.

# - I'm so sick of # # running as fast as I can #

##

##

# 'Cause if I was a man #

# Then I'd be the man, # # I'd be the man, man #

- With the American Music Awards performance,

she's performing the first song off her new album

with a bunch of kids dressed in shirts with the names of all the albums she's

going to rerecord, the ones that

Scooter has the masters for. And she's performing a

song called The Man,

which is basically all about how she would be treated better if

she was a man. And that is

widely perceived to be about the treatment she's endured at the

hands of someone like Scooter Braun,

who arguably would probably treat her very differently if she

was a male rock star or

musician. And I think really it speaks to a kind of deeper narrative

that was going on in society

of the time where people, especially women, were just fed up of

being told to kind of sit down and shut up.

I started writing in diaries when I was 13. So these are

the four deluxe editions of this

album and each one contains 30 pages of my diary entries from

my life. Because, you know,

metaphorically, I've been sharing my diaries with you for years, so

I figured why not just do it.

Taylor's so excited. And yeah, I think that sums up who Taylor

is. She just wants to give to her fans.

August 25th, 2003, 13 years of age. I think I might

just live through this year,

two exclamation points. I just hope I can keep up. This year

could be fun. I don't care what

people think of me now because I won't let them bring me down.

Watching her there reading her

diary entries showed how important it was to her and she has this

deep appreciation for her youth

that not many people have. Having connected with Taylor through

my diaries I was like oh my god.

I was interested to see if she felt the same way that I

did when I was her age.

Like, what was she going through?

I was finally maybe going to get to have some insight into that little

girl that saved me, changed my life.

I didn't usually post online about Taylor, except like on her birthdays.

I laid everything out on my bed.

I had a laptop propped up and my kitten crawling around.

And I had in that pile my demo CD that I had just gotten out

because I wanted to listen to it and panned over it

in a very short video.

And I posted it to Instagram.

And I don't know if I just tagged the right hashtag or what,

but the post got swept up into the Instagram Swifty fandom.

People were so interested in the story.

Somebody had found one of my birthday posts for Taylor,

and it's the picture from 2003.

I'll post it every year just as a memoriam.

Wish her a happy birthday and all of that.

And then so many people were interested.

It was all kindness and love and support

and it comforted me.

It gave me the courage to tell a little bit of the story.

The post was shared throughout the fandom.

it effectively went viral.

And generally, they were all wanting Taylor to meet me.

So when I got a message on Tumblr,

having been in the fandom,

you know when that message comes through,

it's usually paired with a secret sessions invitation.

I was at work, my heart dropped, I started crying.

I could not keep it together.

You know, you get there and Taylor has made like a spread of food,

cookies and pizza and whatever,

whatever else. She just goes all out and everybody knows we're gonna

get ushered into a living room

where we sit down and we listen to the album that nobody's ever

heard and you could feel it. Like,

the excitement was just electric and then becomes the time of meet

and greet. Sort of walked into

into this other part of the house and like, there's Taylor.

And she's smiling and she says my name

and everything just dropped away.

And she just wraps me up in the biggest hug.

I didn't know I needed it and she doesn't let go.

She holds on until you are ready.

When she talks to you, you're the only person in the room

and she wants to know everything,

and we joked back and forth,

and she said she liked my hair,

and it was like she was a friend.

She, at one point, thanked me,

thanked me for being there all those years,

and I didn't really know I needed to hear that.

I mean, I would've been fine never hearing that,

but I don't know, it broke me in the best way

that she appreciated it.

- Taylor announces this genre-busting,

world-spanning, epic world tour called The Eras Tour.

You know, it's a kind of way for her to thank people

for sticking with her through every single phase

of her life, through the controversies,

through the scandals.

And that was certainly borne out by the fact

that people were absolutely dying to get tickets.

- Thanks to my wonderful granddaughter, Jennifer Strong,

who introduced me to Taylor many years ago,

we have both become diehard Swifties.

- When Taylor announced the Eras Tour,

I would call her up and say, "Grammy."

- Oh my goodness, we have got to get tickets and go to this.

- And I said, fine, I'm up.

You know, I would love to go,

and we're gonna try to get tickets.

We struggled, and we struggled to get through,

and I caved.

I said, Jennifer, I can't last any longer.

I am going to bed.

I go to bed, and lo and behold,

at quarter to 3 a.m. in the morning, success.

- Grammy. -What, what?

- We're going to see Taylor Swift.

- We're going?

- Yes.

- And where?

- In Paris.

- Fantastic, oh my God, oh my God, oh, fabulous.

Unbeknownst to me, Jennifer had filmed that

and it ended up on TikTok.

So suddenly I had an awful lot of followers

looking at grandma in her nightgown,

getting excited in the middle of the night

like a crazy woman.

- Fans are still talking about Taylor Swift's love split.

- Yeah, with Joe Alwyn, they weren't together for six years.

It does seem to be that they have split.

It's interesting, People Magazine

are talking about a source said that Joe struggled

with Taylor's level of fame

and the attention from the public.

- There was a video of her that came out of her

on the heiress tour singing "Lover" and she was crying.

You know, it's not a sad song,

But it's sad because, I mean, we can only assume

you're no longer with the person you wrote it about.

- Yeah.

Like, we see you, we hear you, we love you.

And we got you, we'll catch you.

- What does she say?

Easy they come, easy they go.

I jump from the train, I ride off alone.

I never grew up, it's getting so old.

Help me hold on to you.

Oh my God, I could cry.

Just this fear that you're a person

that cannot truly ever hold on to anyone.

'Cause I'm sure when people look at Taylor Swift,

they're like, "What's Taylor Swift?"

Like, who could ever leave Taylor Swift?

But at the same time, like,

who could ever date Taylor Swift?

Like, that's Taylor Swift.

That's a lot, you know?

And imagine being her.

- I think growing up as Taylor Swift must have been awful

because think about it this way.

She's a teenage girl when she starts making music.

She does go to school,

but she doesn't really finish school

in the kind of traditional sense,

'cause she's being homeschooled.

Even that kind of classic coming-of-age moment

where you move to the big city

and get a bunch of new friends,

dating maybe the wrong kind of guy,

getting embroiled in messy love affairs,

even that is up for debate on social media.

I think it's enormously difficult

to grow up with that kind of scrutiny on you.

I think she really is a kind of bellwether

for how we as a society view women,

because she is in many ways the perfect kind of blank space, right?

She's, you know, conventionally pretty, attractive, white, American.

She is a stand-in for so many of the things that we are worried about,

that we're concerned about as a society,

because she is that kind of perfect Miss American Girl.

And, you know, when you become a symbol of a much greater whole,

America itself, you are always going to have people

who are going to project a lot of things onto you.

- You know, a mirror ball is the sparkly thing in the room

that everyone looks at and goes, ooh, and ah, and ah,

but like, it's broken.

It's shattered.

It's in pieces.

and it still shines and it still reflects back

what you want to see.

And I think that's just the most beautiful way

to describe the emotion of feeling

like you need to put on a performance

for people to like you.

- When you are only whatever people need you to be,

that weighs really heavily on your soul

and you kind of lose yourself in the process.

You know, there's that old phrase

where it's heavy as a head that wears the crown

and you kind of get a sense of that in Mirrorball,

where she's worn this crown for so long

and it's worn down so heavily on her,

it's completely just kind of worn her out.

- So, you know, I've been writing songs

and playing shows since I was about 12 years old.

And so I kind of developed, as a human being,

a coping mechanism of going through something

or feeling extreme emotions,

writing songs that include those emotions,

and then playing them for you and going,

"Have you guys ever felt this way too, or is it just me?"

And then when you do that, or you sing along to the songs,

it makes me feel like I'm not alone.

So that is the whole process I go through.

- Often you'll find that great artists, there's an insecurity.

I mean, this need to be loved.

And the only moment they feel happy

is when they get the applause from a crowd.

I mean, I'm not gonna be a psychiatrist here,

but then that need to connect

and feel warmth back from an audience.

Plenty of artists will tell you that,

there's that moment on stage

and the energy they get from an audience.

So to keep connected with the fans

is also gives you security and gives you strength.

- Taylor has notoriously loyal fans.

And I think the Eras tour, you know,

underline that with like a big, you know, fat red pen.

They were there to support her

as much as she was putting on a show for them.

They were there to make her feel supported

and feel validated.

- I got it!

- If an alien came down and watched the Eras tour,

they would think Taylor Swift's a cult leader

and good for her.

The connection with the fans was something

I had hardly ever seen before.

It was way beyond just being music,

and it did almost have an element of spirituality to it.

- Church gives you built-in community.

Taylor Swift's music and fandom gives you built-in community.

Absolutely.

Take me to church, mama.

Taylor is Jesus, quote.

- Who is gonna give you that guidance

of how you should be living your life?

And Taylor Swift was that for millions and millions of people.

It became the trademark of the Eras tour

that you would show up with a bunch of friendship bracelets

to trade with people.

You would make them with the song lyrics or with song names.

And the friendship bracelets are an excuse

to go up to someone that you've never met before

and find that commonality and be like, hey, this is for you.

She's saying that all of us are on our own individual path,

but it doesn't have to be a lonely experience.

You can find other people

and enrich your life with these other people.

- You can look on the Eras tour

as being the ultimate kind of rebuttal

to all those people who said that famous,

the scandal would end her career

and that she was irrelevant.

There is no greater kind of clap back for a woman,

I think, than commercial success,

particularly in the music industry,

which continues to be so dominated and controlled by men.

- You know, Taylor Swift is something America can agree on,

particularly after she started dating

one of the biggest football players in America.

- Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are engaged

and the world wants your reaction, sir.

- Well, I wish them a lot of luck.

- Suddenly, the girl who was in the bleachers

is very much the top cheerleader.

I think it's undeniable that the, like, cross-marketing with the

two of them is pretty unbelievable.

I don't know how you top the Eras tour as far as being a billionaire.

I don't know how you top that.

I hope what comes next for Taylor is that she has found her person

and that she gets to experience the things that most

people get to experience

and that some people just give the girl a break for once.

Ultimately she's created a safe place for millions of

women around the world.

True feminism doesn't always have to look like what you

think it's gonna look like.

It can look like wearing a dress and boots, but also standing up to the

men in the room.

I think she says to young women that you

matter, which I think is sadly still a message that

still needs to be said today.

As she's performing, he's smiling and she's laughing.

saying, "You're on your own, kid, but that's okay."

# You're on your own, kid #

# You can face this #

# You're on your own, kid. Always have been #