Taylor Swift covers the latest issue of Billboard.
In promotion of her new album - set to break every chart record out there on October 22 - the super, duper star talks to the magazine about a number of topics related to "Red."
To wit:
Its theme: It's all the different ways that you have to say goodbye to someone. When you're experiencing the ups and downs of a relationship, especially when you're 22 years old, they all strike you different ways. Every different kind of missing someone, every kind of loss - it all sounds different to me.
When you are missing someone, time seems to move slower and when I'm falling in love with someone, time seems to be moving faster. So I think, because time seems to move so slow when I'm sad, that's why I spend so much time writing songs about it. It seems like I have more hours in the day.
Its ballads: "Sad Beautiful Tragic" is really close to my heart. I remember it was after a show and I was on the bus thinking about this relationship that ended months and months before. The feeling wasn't sadness and anger or those things anymore. It was wistful loss.
And so I just got my guitar and I hit on the fact that I was thinking in terms of rhyming; I rhymed magic with tragic, changed a few things and ended it with what a sad beautiful tragic love affair. I wanted to tell the story in terms of a cloudy recollection of what went wrong. It's kind of the murky gray, looking back on something you can't change or get back.
On being 22 years old: [It has] been my favorite year of my life. I like all the possibilities of how you're still learning, but you know enough. You still know nothing, but you know that you know nothing. You're old enough to start planning your life, but you're young enough to know there are so many unanswered questions.
That brings about a carefree feeling that is sort of based on indecision and fear and a the same time letting lose. Being 22 has taught me so much.