It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Taylor Swift has made The New York Times‘ new list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. It may surprise you to learn what song and album of hers she feels people “slept on.”
“Oftentimes when I love [a song or album] to a certain degree, that tends to match up with people,” Taylor says. “And it could be that it doesn’t match up with the way people feel ’til six years later.”
For example, she says, “I loved the Reputation album. I was like, ‘You guys say what you want. I know what I did. I love it. Like, go with God. Like, sorry. You can come around if you want. It’s O.K. if you don’t."”
“And then, like six or seven years later, people are like, ‘Oh my God,"” she continues. “Like, ‘…Ready for It?’ Like, people slept on that song!”
Taylor goes on to say that the first time she felt, “I don’t care if people hate this because I love it so much,” was when she wrote “Love Story.”
She says, “I wrote the song ‘Love Story’ when I was 17, sitting in my bedroom, mad at my parents because they wouldn’t let me go on a date with a guy who was too old so I shouldn’t have been on a date with him anyway.”
She jokes, “And this is why you need to discipline your kids because they might write songs that go #1.”
Other songwriters on the list include Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson and Lana Del Rey.
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