Critical and fan reaction to Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, may have been mixed, but the star says that she’s happy to “welcome the chaos” of people’s opinions on her work.
Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Swift argues - not unreasonably - that “the rule of show business is if it's the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you're helping. And I have a lot of respect for people's subjective opinions on art. I'm not the art police. It's like, everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want.”
Which, of course, is true - it’s simply that, if you happen to be Taylor Swift, there are going to be a lot more people voicing many more opinions than if you weren’t the biggest pop star on the planet.
Whatever critics and ‘the internet’ want to say about the album, though, Swift appears to be more than happy with it, viewing it as part of the big picture of her oeuvre. “We're doing this thing for keeps,” she confirms. “I have such an eye on legacy when I'm making my music. I know what I made. I know I adore it.”
‘We’, of course, is Swift and producers Max Martin and Shellback, the two Swedish pop masterminds who she worked with on the record. With the album launch weekend now out of the way, Swift has been lifting the lid on the making of The Life of a Showgirl, posting studio photos on Instagram and telling Lowe and her fans a little more about the writing and recording process.
“I oftentimes have a recorder going while we're writing - me and Max and Johan [Karl Johan Schuster - AKA Shellback]”, says Swift. “Our vibe is very, like, stream of consciousness. ‘You sing this line, I sing the next line. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you say two minutes ago? That second note was better in that. Can we go back? Run it back. What did you say there?’”
Swift released some of these “Voice Memos from when we were writing” as part of a special iTunes edition of the album earlier this week (it’s no longer on sale). “You actually get to hear us come up with these ideas in the moment, in real time, and it's pretty wild,” she reckons.
The star clearly places a high value on her relationship with Martin and Shellback, too: “I'm very lucky to get to experience that with people like them who are just… I mean, they're geniuses, in my opinion, and I feel elevated every time we work together,” she says.
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