How Taylor Swift expresses what she can’t say

For someone who knows her way around a song lyric, Taylor Swift can get awfully tongue-tied, said Craig Mclean in the London Independent. The 20-year-old country singer didn’t know how to respond when Kanye West famously interrupted her acceptance speech at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, or when John Mayer ended their brief romantic fling. So she’s put her feelings in biting song lyrics instead. “When something really big happens and I have a million different feelings and emotions running through my mind, a lot of times it’s hard to figure out what to say. I don’t like to feel like I might hurt somebody’s feelings. Or it might come off in a way I can’t control.” It began in high school, when she had trouble making friends. “I would write songs about how my days at school were really lonely. And I would get through those days by saying to myself, ‘It’s okay ’cause I can write a song about this later.’” It may not be the healthiest approach, she admits, but it’s given her a career. “In my music, I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life. I couldn’t put the sentence together the way I could put a song together.”

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