Why Taylor Swift Can’t Stop Singing About Haters: ‘You Don’t Have to Forgive and You Don’t Have to Forget’
In a candid new interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Taylor Swift chatted about her new album, Lover, and why she continues to sing about her haters, rather than leave the drama behind.
Swift has had no shortage of drama
Swift is no stranger to dealing with haters. As many people will remember, Swift’s drama with Kanye West started when he hopped on stage at the 2009 VMAs and interrupted her acceptance speech.
As part of the deluxe version of Lover, Swift included excerpts from her diary, including one entry dated Sept. 18, 2009, written five days after she won the award for female video of the year for “You Belong With Me.”
“Ahh… the things that can change in a week,” she wrote. “If you had told me that one of the biggest stars in music was going to jump on stage and announce that he thought I shouldn’t have won on live television, I would’ve said, ‘That stuff doesn’t really happen in real life,’ Well… apparently… It does.”
Why does Swift sing about her haters?
Taylor has a very good reason for singing about her haters. When the interviewer noted, “Almost every album you have a song where you address the haters, at least one song, sometimes more than one song. Why is that? Why sing to the haters?”
The singer shared: “When they stop coming for me, I will stop singing to them.” She added: “People go on and on about you have to forgive and forget to move past something. No, you don’t. You don’t have to forgive and you don’t have to forget to move on. You can move on without any of those things happening. You just become indifferent and then you move on.”
She says she does believe in forgiveness, however, noting, “Yes, absolutely. Like, for people that are important in your life who have added, you know, who have enriched your life and made it better, and also there has been some struggle and some bad stuff, too. But I think that, you know, if something’s toxic and it’s only ever really been that, what are you gonna do?… Just move on. It’s fine.”
Swift did share that she’s working on “standing up for myself,” explaining: “I’m still always the first person to say sorry when I’m wrong, but I’m getting better at standing up for myself when I’m being wronged.”
What does she have planned for the future?
When Swift was asked what she plans to do in 20 or 30 years, she shared that she can’t really speculate, noting, “No, ‘cause that puts me into what I call a panic spiral. I cannot do that. I’ve never been able to do that.”
She added, “It just freaks me out when I zoom out too far, I freak out. Do I know where I’m gonna be or even want to be in 20 years? Absolutely not. Not taking a single day for granted.”
She only looks six months ahead, “just because I have to plan shows,” adding, “I don’t know what I’ll do after this album and I think that’s great. It’s actually really ungrateful to just assume that you have 20 years. Like, be stoked that you have today.”
