Be My Forever

“You just have to allow yourself to know that in your life you’re gonna make mistakes so it’s not the end of the world if you do. Everyone out there is a human being who makes mistakes all the time so if you make a mistake, it’s kind of relatable.”

“We were in LA, we had a show at the Wiltern, and Taylor and I have been texting that day… [On calling Taylor Swift just Taylor] Miles, my son, calls her auntie Tay Tay. Yeah, we were just texting and she said, ‘hey, wait - are you in LA? I’m in LA and I gotta work on this, do you wanna do this with me?’ So we literally wrote that song with T Bone Burnett at his studio in under three hours. Wrote it and recorded it in under three hours cause we had to get back to soundcheck for our show. So it all happened very much in a serendipitous way. [On how writing with Taylor was] Really easy, she’s such a great writer as we all know. And you know, when you’re writing with friends it’s just like sitting down to dinner with a good pal, it doesn’t feel like a first date, you’re just able to talk about life and the lyrics can come really easily. And then we’ve got T Bone Burnett playing guitar - that doesn’t suck. [On how she became friends with Taylor] Just in town, through the music… I mean it’s amazing how music can make friends and that’s kinda what happened with us too, just slowly over time she got to know what kind of music I was making in Civil Wars and I don’t know, we just became fast friends at that point.”

“The last movie that had a major impact on Swift was the acclaimed 2018 documentary on Fred Rogers and his daytime public-television show. “I was watching this movie sitting in bed bawling; all of a sudden, society decided that Mister Rogers had poisoned the youth of America by telling them each that they’re special,” says Swift, who watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood every day after school as a kid. “I was so upset because my mom raised me with [his] mindset: You’re special, everyone’s special, everyone’s an individual and deserves to have a beautiful, happy life and do what they love.” After the film, the singer-songwriter called her mom in tears. “She’s like, ‘Are you okay? Have you been in an accident?” recalls Swift, laughing. “I’m like, [mock cry-shouting] ‘He was just trying to do a good thing!” She adds that the things she learned on the program continue to resonate in her own life. “I try to tell fans: ‘You’re special. You actually are. You’re not replaceable, you’re not worthless.””

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