kay

therapist: and what do we say when we feel like this?

Basically, I was playing around with the idea of quiet confidence. There’s something so sick about quiet confidence; somebody who, they’re not arrogant, they’re not cocky, like, that’s obnoxious. But, there are certain people who just walk in and they don’t need to be arrogant because there’s something beaming from within them that they probably aren’t even in control of. And when you meet a person like this, you’re like, ‘Why do I want to walk over there and talk to that person?’ I can’t explain it, but I think it’s this quality. It can be a really shy person, it’s not like you gotta be loud. Some people just seem like they know who they are, they don’t need to brag about it. And I think that’s such an interesting quality because I can’t really explain it. And so I wrote a song about that. I mention a street called 16th Avenue, and that’s a street in Nashville where I used to write songs. The songwriting/publishing houses are on that street, so if you’re wondering if I just picked a random number, I didn’t.

Lover is a whole lot of album to process, but it's not exhausting, per se. Rather, it's musically and lyrically rich, fulfilling in the same way that staying up all night and having a heart-to-heart conversation with an old friend is. Swift sounds comfortable enough in her own skin to invite listeners into her orbit more than ever. She proves once and for all she's a lover, not a fighter.