Taylor Swift Recalls Some of Her Lowest Days — and How She Wants ‘Me!’ to Lift Others
Taylor Swift's new song "Me!" (and its bubblegum-happy corresponding video) is so joyful it almost bleeds happiness out of the speakers, but the usually bubbly star admits that her life is not always kittens and pastel rainbows.
Ahead of a show-opening Billboard Music Awards appearance on Wednesday (May 1), where she'll give the live debut of the song with the also-featured Brendon Urie, Swift tells radio deejay Zach Sang that she's had some really dark days.
"There have been times where I needed to take years off because I just felt exhausted, or I felt like, really low or really bad," Swift divulges.
The once-country megastar explains that recognizing those low points — and learning how to rise from them — is something that everything needs to learn to do for themselves. "One thing to always keep tabs on is the fact that we have to know that there is no ‘happily ever after’ where we're just happy forever," says Swift.
Much of the plot of her last album, Reputation, was rooted in a very public, very ruthless and very much ongoing battle with Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian — and how Swift made it out alive.
There are already apparent themes from her next project, like that she's gone through a metamorphosis and is emerging a beautiful, albeit unique, butterfly. On April 26, the day she dropped "Me!", Swift made an unannounced appearance at a Nashville butterfly mural that only superfans had suspected was her genius.
"Happiness is always going to be a struggle and a challenge we have to try and meet. Self-worth is always going to be something, it’s a process of trying to get there," she says.
Luckily, Swift and her huge legion of fans now have yet another uplifting song to add to their own personal playlists to listen to when things get tough.
"Even in the moment when I’m feeling really, really low, I think it will be helpful when I get to go on stage and play this song and see other people singing it back to me, so it’s not just a song that’s for, ‘Oh, put this song when you feel good about yourself,'" she continues, expressing her hopes for the new music. "Put this song when you don’t feel good about yourself, and maybe that will help you get back to a point [where you do] ... I definitely don’t feel good all the time, and I don’t think anybody does."
"Me!" is the first single from an album Swift says is done. She admits she likes to tease her fans, leaving clues about what's to come, and that she can have more fun with it when she knows what her next project looks like. She's "really, really proud" of what's on the way, she says. Like all Swift albums, this TBA album tells a story and says a lot with in-depth lyrics.
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