Taylor Swift On The Life Of A Showgirl, The Eras Tours & Her Engagement!

I love the line where you're like, just give me a best friend who's hot. Yeah. Do you think you've achieved that now? A hundred percent. I mean, like, yeah, look what I got. Oh my God, the ring! We are joined by someone who made a UK chart history this year as the first female artist to achieve 13 number one albums in the UK. She's won Grammys, Brits, all the awards. She made history with her record-breaking Eras tour. She got her master's back. She's a performer, a businesswoman, an icon. We're, of course, talking about the showgirl herself. Taylor Swift! That was a great intro. That was good. You really pulled out all the stops there, Fleur. Beautifully done. You know, we're just really honoured that you took the time to come and see us and have a tea. Thanks. You're very busy. I mean, you know, this is top priority. I wanted to come see you guys. You've been so supportive and so amazing. You've got a new album coming out, which just is, I mean, it's out. It's out. It is out. It's incredible. We love it so much. We've been listening this morning. We have been listening. Oh, my goodness. I just need a second because I can't breathe. Can we all just like... Can we just pause? I'm going to really struggle to hold this together. But on behalf of everybody listening, I will try and ask you a question. I think we all have like an album or song of yours that defines an era in our own lives, right? So like for me, Midnight's was a very healing era for me, like got me through some bad times. What would you say this era, this new album is for you? Well, one thing about this album that I think is really exciting is that oftentimes when I make a record, we then take all this time to plan out how we're going to put it out and make sure that we have vinyl for everybody. So there's like a lag time between when I made it and when it enters the world. Oftentimes your life can change drastically between this point and this other point. And for like, for example, my last album, Tortured Post Department, by the time that album came out, I was in a completely different point in my life. So it was like, it's an interesting feeling sometimes putting albums out into the world. With this one, the coolest part is that it is absolutely the place that I still am in my life. You know, the music matches the moment that I'm in. So it's so much easier to come in here and like talk about music that completely accurately like reflects what's going on in my life. So that's really fun. I would say that this album is a complete and total snapshot of what my life looks like right now. Okay. Because I read that you wrote it kind of about what was happening behind the scenes during the ERAs tour. I mean, it sounds like there was a lot happening behind the scenes during the ERAs tour and a lot to be joyous about, but you know, there's light and shade in the songs that we heard for sure. Like that tour being so huge for so many people, was that one of the most intense experiences of your life? Definitely. Yeah. What was it about it? Not just the scale, but that made it so intense because, you know, summing up, almost summing up your whole body of work in one performance must have been extraordinary. Oh, it was a blast. It was so fun, but it was also so many other things. You know, like when you're on tour for two years and every night is a three and a half hour show, the biggest threat, I think one of my favorite things that anyone, like a mentor has said to me is Stevie Nicks always said when it came to anything in her personal life, she was like, just don't threaten my show. Don't threaten my show. My main goal for two years was get myself to that stage and give everything to that crowd, wherever the crowd is for three and a half hours every night. So you're combating, you're like, don't get sick. Don't let any outside noise into your head. Focus on only this one thing. If you do get sick, you're doing the show anyway. If you're sore, you're injured, you're hurt, you're pretending that you're not and doing the show anyway. And so that was a really, really astonishing challenge. And I'm really proud of how we all handled it. Not just me, but also my band and my crew and my amazing fellow performers on the stage. Like every one of those people has to be at the top of their game and operating with that same mentality. So did you stop yourself from doom scrolling? Oh, I really am not much of a scroller at all. Like I don't have the apps on my phone because it's really effective, right? Like they know what I want to see and they're going to show it to me. So it's like, I'd rather just spend like those hours doing something else or like planning something fun for the fans for the way we're going to put out this album or baking, or like, I have a lot of hobbies and I didn't really have as many hobbies when I spent a lot of time scrolling. So you replaced scrolling with hobbies. Yeah. Brilliant. It's been so much fun, like kind of mandating a different relationship with social media. Like I can get sent things and like, I can see, I'll see everyone, so I'll see like your funny reels. Like you're hilarious. You're great. You're a great, great follow. But yeah, like I think that when there's so much of any type of opinion about me, it's like, that's not, don't put that in my brain. Like anything you put in your brain, it's gonna like internalize. I'm just like, I have a real priority on being like, peaceful and happy. I'm kind of all the time, but yeah. But not over something. I'm not gonna like, you know, have a messy, like dramatic feeling about something that doesn't actually matter and isn't really real. Cause there's a lot of like, we live in a moment of like a lot of rage baiting and a lot of like, people are, people like getting attention has now been monetized. So you have to just know like what world we live in and kind of choose what reality you want to be in. Yeah. Now we have been loving, loving the album. We've listened to many a tune. My personal favorite is Wishlist. Oh really? It's a vibe. Yeah. It's a straight up vibe. I was like. A lot of shoulders. A lot of that. Oh, that makes me so happy. That was actually the last song that we finished on the record. And that was when I knew the record was done. Really? That was when I knew I was like, we're done guys. We're good. I love the line where you're like, just give me a best friend who's hot. Yeah. Do you think you've achieved that now? A hundred percent. I'm like, yeah, look what I got. Oh my God, the ring. Sorry, the ring. The ring is even bigger in real life. Oh my goodness. Stunning. You would love him. I have a question actually. Does he have any hot gay friends? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Okay, I'm single. I also have a lot of those as well. In the UK? Yes. That doesn't matter where. Yeah, I mean, I feel this feels offline. This feels like for maybe later we just, you know, I get out my phone. But yeah, you would absolutely love him. He's a blast. He's just the most fun person. Life of any party, even when it's just us. So it's like. Yeah, that is the goal, isn't it? Find the best friend who you think is hot. Yeah. Yeah, it's like amazing. What a combination. Somebody who makes you laugh and is hot. That is the- We have to say congratulations to you on the engagement. Thank you. It's amazing. We spoke to Ed actually, Ed Sheeran, a few weeks back. And he told us he's constantly asked to perform at people's weddings. So is he singing at your wedding? Oh, I mean, it would be hard to keep him from it, I think. Yeah, he has that energy. Because that's the thing, is he's like, I'm always being asked to sing at weddings. It's like, Ed, if there's a stage, you know that you'll be on it. He knows what people want and he wants to give people what they want. That's the fun thing about our friendship is we both love performing and we love writing. We love singing. So it's like, we're like, oh, don't make me sing. All right. You know what I mean? As you wheel in your own piano. As you're up there explaining to the house band, you're like, shake it off. It's three chords. We're first for starting here. We're going, you know. But that's the thing, is like, we love what we do. We love to get up on stage. It's actually not that hard to talk either of us into performing at anything. I saw him last weekend, actually, at a wedding of one of our best friends. And we were just talking about how much we love when he came out on stage with me at Wembley during the Aeros tour. And we were talking about how when we're in a room and we're like rehearsing or writing or working together, there's really like a sort of strange, like mind melt thing that happens between us two. And we've always had it. We always will. So he had a great wedding. Like a couple, oh God, what was it? Like eight years ago, maybe? Yeah. In the forest, you know? It was like a woods wedding. It's everything you want, isn't it? I think it was Time Magazine, Person of the Year. Big up. They said your lyrics give women and girls permission to know that their internal voice matters. And I think that's absolutely where your music comes from. And Opal Light is, I think, the song that we all need right now because you're saying like, it's all right. And a lot of us need that. Is that your intention when you're writing to like really hit that connection? Thank you for saying that about that song. I'm so glad you liked that one. Oh, it's amazing. Because you say, when you know, you know, but how do you know? Yeah, so that song was so much fun to write because it goes through all these situations where oftentimes in life, when we go through something that doesn't work out, whether it's in our personal life or in our friendships or in our career path, we oftentimes look at it as this like major setback. Like we've taken a step back, but actually I've found that so many of those instances in my life have, based on how you respond to it, can catapult you forward in growth, in wisdom, in perspective. And I think those are the things that I've tried to like find to be the most attainable qualities and the most aspirational qualities in growing up is like, can you react to certain situations in a way that benefits you and the people around you and essentially like acquire wisdom because of it. And so Opalite is a song about like kind of forgiving yourself for having gone through something that didn't pan out the way you wanted it to. And it's because it says, you know, like all of the perfect couples like would look at you and say like, when you know, you know, and when you don't, you don't. And when you're not in that situation, when you don't know, you know that you don't know. And so it's like, it's giving yourself permission to like not have it all figured out or not marry the first person you ever dated, you know, like stuff like that. Like it's, I'm just happy that that song exists. And also like that chorus, I'm really just stoked about how like absolutely infectious and borderline narcotic it is. That's exactly what it is. Shocking, shocking melody. So we're going to play the first single, The Fate of Ophelia. But before we do, can you please just give us headlines on what it's about? I just had this fixation on Shakespeare characters that I fall in love with and I can't stand to see them meet a tragic demise. I can't, I don't want that to be what happened to them because I like, wait, are you talking about Ophelia's, she died? What do you mean? Yeah, how dare you? I was really excited to see what happened with her and Hamlet. They seemed great. And I kind of going back to like the song Love Story, which I wrote when I was a teenager, I was just like, I can't watch Romeo and Juliet not work out. What do you mean they both die? They don't in my version of things. So it's just like, you just like turn, you just like turn the movie off before the bad ending. But this is a little bit like that where The Fate of Ophelia talks about how, you know, Ophelia was driven mad by love. And it talks about, the hook says like, you know, you dug me out of my grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia. So it's a love song. And it's also just got one of like the catchiest post hook kind of sections that I'm pretty proud of. So, oh my God, it's crazy to talk about this music. It's been a secret for over a year. I can't believe we managed to get you on the show, Taylor. Yes, amazing. Thank you for inviting me. And somehow we managed to not ask any questions about Wood, which is an incredibly interesting actor. I'm so disappointed that you didn't have a seat. You missed opportunities. It's a whole other chapter, friends. Go listen to that right now. The Life of a Showgirl is out right now. It's Taylor Swift, everybody. Thanks guys.