ATIKU, EL-RUFAI, AND TAMBUWAL MET BUHARI IN KADUNA AMID TALS OF ANTI-TINUBU COALITION. (VIDEO/PHOTO).

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  Former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, and ex-Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal met with former President Muhammadu Buhari at his residence in Kaduna State on Friday. The visit was revealed by Imran Wakili, a supporter of El-Rufai, in a post on X, where he highlighted El-Rufaiā€™s continued respect for Buhari. The meeting coincided with reports of Atiku, El-Rufai, and Tambuwal engaging opposition leaders in Kaduna State as part of a broader political strategy. Atiku recently announced the formation of a coalition, including Labour Partyā€™s Peter Obi, aimed at challenging President Bola Tinubuā€™s administration in the 2027 general elections. The coalition, unveiled during a press conference by the Concerned Leaders and Political Stakeholders in Nigeria, seeks to unite opposition forces to unseat the All Progressives Congress (APC). In a related development, Adewale Adebayo, a former Social Democratic...

TAYLOR SWIFT COVERS THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF VOGUE MAGAZINE.{PHOTOS}.

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   Taylor Swift shared all these photos on her social media with the caption ''WELL SO THIS IS A THING THATā€™S HAPPENING. September issue of Vogue and Iā€™m so so so grateful to Anna, Tonne Goodman, Sergio Kletnoy and basically anyone who was like ā€˜yeah she can be on the Sept issue coverā€™. What an amazing experience shooting with Inez and Vinoodh''.According to the magazine '' Taylor Swift wears a Louis Vuitton jumpsuit. Rings by Cartier and Bvlgari. To get this look, try: Dream Urban Cover in Classic Ivory, Fit Me Blush in Pink, Tattoostudio Sharpenable Gel Pencil Longwear Eyeliner Makeup in Deep Onyx, The Colossal Mascara, Brow Ultra Slim in Blonde, and Shine Compulsion by Color Sensational Lipstick in Undressed Pink. All by Maybelline New York. Hair, Christiaan; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi.
Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman
Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019
ITā€™S A SUNDAY AFTERNOON in Tribeca, and Iā€™m in Taylor Swiftā€™s loft, inside a former printing house that she has restored and fortified into a sanctuary of brick, velvet, and mahogany. The space is warm and cozy and vaguely literaryā€”later, when we pass through her bedroom en route to her garden, 10 percent of my brain will believe her wardrobe might open up to Narnia. Barefoot in a wine-colored floral top and matching flowy pants, Swift is typing passwords into a laptop to show me the video for ā€œYou Need to Calm Down,ā€ eight days before she unleashes it on the world.
I have a sliver of an idea what to expect. A few weeks earlier, I spent a day at the video shoot, in a dusty field-slash-junkyard north of Los Angeles. Swift had made it a sort of Big Gay Candy Mountain trailer park, a Technicolor happy place. The cast and crew wore heart-shaped sunglassesā€”living, breathing lovey-eyes emojiā€”and a mailbox warned, LOVE LETTERS ONLY.
Swift and a stream of costars filmed six scenes over about a dozen hours. The singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko, known to her fans as ā€œLesbian Jesus,ā€ shot arrows at a bullā€™s-eye. The YouTube comedian-chef Hannah Hart danced alongside Dexter Mayfield, the plus-size male model and self-described ā€œbig boy in heels.ā€ The Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon served up icy red snow cones. Swift and her close friend Todrick Hall, of Kinky Boots and RuPaulā€™s Drag Race, sipped tea with the cast of Queer Eye.The mood was joyous and laid-back. But by the end of the day, I wasnā€™t sure what the vignettes would add up to. There were shoot days and cameos I wouldnā€™t observe. For security reasons, the song was never played aloud. (The cast wore ear buds.) Even the hero shot, in which Swift and Hall sauntered arm in arm through the dreamscape at golden hour, was filmed in near-total silence.
For weeks afterward, I tried to sleuth out a theory. I started casually. There was a ā€œ5ā€ on the bullā€™s-eye, so I did a quick search to figure out what that number might mean. Immediately I was in over my head.Swift has a thing for symbols. I knew she had been embedding secret messages in liner notes and deploying metaphors as refrains since her self-titled debut in 2006ā€”long before her megafame made her into a symbol of pop supremacy. But I hadnā€™t understood how coded and byzantine her body of work has become; I hadnā€™t learned, as Swiftā€™s fans have, to see hidden meanings everywhere. For instance: In the 2017 video for ā€œLook What You Made Me Do,ā€ a headstone in a graveyard scene reads NILS SJOBERG, the pseudonym Swift used as her writing credit on Rihannaā€™s hit ā€œThis Is What You Came For,ā€ a Swedish-sounding nod to that countryā€™s pop wizards.
After an excessive amount of ad hoc scholarshipā€”a friend joked that I could have learned Mandarin in the time I spent trying to unpack Swiftā€™s oeuvreā€”I was no closer to a theory. Pop music has become so layered and meta, but the Taylor Swift Universe stands apart. Apprehending it is like grasping quantum physics.My first indication of what her new album, Lover, would be about came just after midnight on June 1, the beginning of Pride Month, when Swift introduced a petition in support of the federal Equality Act. This legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. (It has passed the House, but prospects in Mitch McConnellā€™s Senate are unclear.) Swift also posted a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, asking him to vote yes. The request, on her personal letterhead (born in 1989. LOVES CATS.), denounced President Trump for not supporting the Equality Act. ā€œI personally reject the presidentā€™s stance,ā€ Swift wrote.
Back in the kitchen, Swift hits play. ā€œThe first verse is about trolls and cancel culture,ā€ she says. ā€œThe second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other.ā€.The video is, for erudite Swifties, a rich text. I had followed enough clues to correctly guess some of the other cameosā€”Ellen DeGeneres, RuPaul, Katy Perry. I felt the satisfaction of a gamer who successfully levels upā€”achievement unlocked!The videoā€™s final frame sends viewers to Swiftā€™s change.org petition in support of the Equality Act, which has acquired more than 400,000 signaturesā€”including those of Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto Oā€™Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrandā€”or four times the number required to elicit an official response from the White House.
ā€œMAYBE A YEAR OR TWO AGO, Todrick and I are in the car, and he asked me, What would you do if your son was gay?ā€
We are upstairs in Swiftā€™s secret garden, comfortably ensconced in a human-scale basket that is sort of shaped like a cocoon. Swift has brought up an ornate charcuterie board and is happily slathering triple-cream Brie onto sea-salt crackers. ā€œThe fact that he had to ask me . . . shocked me and made me realize that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough,ā€ she says. ā€œIf my son was gay, heā€™d be gay. I donā€™t understand the question.ā€.I have pressed Swift on this topic, and her answers have been direct, not performative or scripted. I do sense that she enjoys talking to me about as much as sheā€™d enjoy a root canalā€”but sheā€™s unfailingly polite, and when we turn to music, her face will light up and she will add little melodic phrases to her speech, clearly her preferred language.ā€œIf he was thinking that, I canā€™t imagine what my fans in the LGBTQ community might be thinking,ā€ she goes on. ā€œIt was kind of devastating to realize that I hadnā€™t been publicly clear about that.ā€
I understand why she was surprised; she has been sending pro-LGBTQ signals since at least 2011. Many have been subtle, but none insignificantā€”especially for a young country star coming out of Nashville.
In the video for her single ā€œMeanā€ (from 2010ā€™s Speak Now), we see a boy in a school locker room wearing a lavender sweater and bow tie, surrounded by football players. In ā€œWelcome to New York,ā€ the first track on 1989, she sings, ā€œAnd you can want who you want. Boys and boys and girls and girls.ā€ Two years later, she donated to a fund for the newly created Stonewall National Monument and presented Ruby Rose with a GLAAD Media Award. Every night of last yearā€™s Reputation tour, she dedicated the song ā€œDressā€ to Loie Fuller, the openly gay pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting who captured the imagination of fin-de-sieĢ€cle Paris.Swift, who has been criticized for keeping her politics to herself, first took an explicit stance a month before the 2018 midterms. On Instagram, she endorsed Democrats for the Tennessee Legislature and called out the Republican running for Senate, Marsha Blackburn. ā€œShe believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples,ā€ Swift wrote. ā€œShe also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.ā€
Swift says the post was partly to help young fans understand that if they wanted to vote, they had to register. To tell them, as she puts it, ā€œHey, just so you know, you canā€™t just roll up.ā€ Some 65,000 new voters registered in the first 24 hours after her post, according to Vote.org.
Trump came to Blackburnā€™s defense the following day. ā€œSheā€™s a tremendous woman,ā€ he told reporters. ā€œIā€™m sure Taylor Swift doesnā€™t know anything about her. Letā€™s say I like Taylorā€™s music about 25 percent less now, OK?ā€.In April, spurred by a raft of anti-LGBTQ bills in Tennessee, Swift donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ rights. ā€œHorrendous,ā€ she says of the legislation. ā€œThey donā€™t call it ā€˜Slate of Hateā€™ for nothing.ā€ Swift especially liked that the Tennessee Equality Project had organized a petition of faith leaders in opposition. ā€œI loved how smart it was to come at it from a religious perspective.ā€
Meanwhile, the ā€œCalm Downā€ video provoked a Colorado pastor to call Swift ā€œa sinner in desperate need of a saviorā€ and warn that ā€œGod will cut her down.ā€ It also revived heated debate within LGBTQ communities about the politics of allyship and corporatization of Pride. Some critics argued Swiftā€™s pro-LGBTQ imagery and lyrics were overdue and out of the blueā€”a reaction the new Swift scholar in me found bewildering. Had they not been paying attention?.Nor did it strike me as out of character for Swift to leverage her power for a cause. She pulled her catalog from Spotify in 2014 over questions of artist compensation. She stared down Apple in 2015, when the company said it would not pay artists during the launch of its music service. (Apple reversed itself immediately.) As a condition of her record deal with Universal Music Group last year, the company promised that it would distribute proceeds from any sale of its Spotify shares to all of its artists. And this summer, Swift furiously called out Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Label Group, for selling her master recordings to the music manager Scooter Braun. (When I ask Swift if she tried to get her masters from Big Machine, her whole body slumps with a palpable heaviness. ā€œIt was either investing in my past or my and other artistsā€™ future, and I chose the future,ā€ she says of the deal she struck with Universal.)
Swiftā€™s blunt testimony during her 2017 sexual-assault case against a radio DJā€”months before the #MeToo reckoning blew openā€”felt deeply political to me and, I imagine, many other women. Swift accused the DJ, David Mueller, of groping her under her skirt at a photo session in 2013. Her camp reported the incident to his employer, who fired him. Mueller denied the allegation, sued Swift for $3 million, and his case was thrown out. Swift countersued for a symbolic $1 and won.In a Colorado courtroom, Swift described the incident: ā€œHe stayed latched onto my bare ass cheekā€ as photos were being snapped. Asked why photos of the front of her skirt didnā€™t show this, she said, ā€œBecause my ass is located at the back of my body.ā€ Asked if she felt bad about the DJā€™s losing his job, she said, ā€œIā€™m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and Iā€™m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisionsā€”not mine.ā€
When Time included Swift on the cover of its ā€œSilence Breakersā€ issue that year, the magazine asked how she felt during the testimony. ā€œI was angry,ā€ she said. ā€œIn that moment, I decided to forgo any courtroom formalities and just answer the questions the way it happened...Iā€™m told it was the most amount of times the word ass has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court.ā€
Mueller has since paid Swift the dollarā€”with a Sacagawea coin. ā€œHe was trolling me, implying that I was self-righteous and hell-bent on angry, vengeful feminism. Thatā€™s what Iā€™m inferring from him giving me a Sacagawea coin,ā€ Swift says. ā€œHey, maybe he was trying to do it in honor of a powerful Native American woman. I didnā€™t ask.ā€ Where is the coin now? ā€œMy lawyer has it.ā€.I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? ā€œRights are being stripped from basically everyone who isnā€™t a straight white cisgender male,ā€ she says. ā€œI didnā€™t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that Iā€™m not a part of. Itā€™s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. Itā€™s clickbait, and itā€™s a part of my life story, and itā€™s a part of my career arc.ā€
Iā€™d argue that no heterosexual woman can listen to ā€œYou Need to Calm Downā€ and hear only a gay anthem. ā€œCalm downā€ is what controlling men tell women who are angry, contrary, or ā€œhysterical,ā€ or, letā€™s say, fearing for their physical safety. It is what Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie says to Swift in the beginning of the ā€œME!ā€ music video, prompting her to scream, ā€œJe suis calme!ā€.I cannot believe it is a coincidence that Swift, a numbers geek with an affinity for dates, dropped the singleā€”whose slow, incessant bass is likely to be bumping in stadiums across the world in 2020 if she goes on tourā€”on June 14, a certain presidentā€™s birthday.
IT'S ENLIGHTENING to read 13 years of Taylor Swift coverageā€”all the big reviews, all the big profilesā€”in one sitting. You notice things.
How quickly Swift went from a ā€œprodigyā€ (The New Yorker) and a ā€œsongwriting savantā€ (Rolling Stone) to a tabloid fixture, for instance. Or how suspect her ambition is made to seem once she acquires real power.
Other plot points simply look different in the light of #MeToo. It is hard to imagine that Swiftā€™s songs about her exes would be reviewed as sensationally today. I wonder if, in 2019, any man would dare grab the microphone out of a young womanā€™s hands at an awards show. I stared into space for a good long while when I was reminded that Pitchfork did not review Taylor Swiftā€™s 1989 but did review Ryan Adamsā€™s cover album of Taylor Swiftā€™s 1989.I ask Swift if she had always been aware of sexism. ā€œI think about this a lot,ā€ she says. ā€œWhen I was a teenager, I would hear people talk about sexism in the music industry, and Iā€™d be like, I donā€™t see it. I donā€™t understand. Then I realized that was because I was a kid. Men in the industry saw me as a kid. I was a lanky, scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague. The second I became a woman, in peopleā€™s perception, was when I started seeing it.
ā€œItā€™s fine to infantilize a girlā€™s success and say, How cute that sheā€™s having some hit songs,ā€ she goes on. ā€œHow cute that sheā€™s writing songs. But the second it becomes formidable? As soon as I started playing stadiumsā€”when I started to look like a womanā€”that wasnā€™t as cool anymore. It was when I started to have songs from Red come out and cross over, like ā€˜I Knew You Were Troubleā€™ and ā€˜We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.ā€™ ā€
Those songs are also more assertive than the ones that came before, I say. ā€œYeah, the angle was different when I started saying, I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Basically, you emotionally manipulated me and I didnā€™t love it. That wasnā€™t fun for me.ā€.I have to wonder if having her songwriting overlooked as her hits were picked apart and scrutinized wasnā€™t the biggest bummer of all. Swift: ā€œI wanted to say to people, You realize writing songs is an art and a craft and not, like, an easy thing to do? Or to do well? People would act like it was a weapon I was using. Like a cheap dirty trick. Be careful, bro, sheā€™ll write a song about you. Donā€™t stand near her. First of all, thatā€™s not how it works. Second of all, find me a time when they say that about a male artist: Be careful, girl, heā€™ll use his experience with you to getā€”God forbidā€”inspiration to make art.ā€
Without question the tenor of the Taylor Swift Narrative changed most dramatically in July 2016, when Kim Kardashian West called her a ā€œsnakeā€ on Twitter, and released video clips of Swift and Kanye West discussing the lyrics to his song ā€œFamous.ā€ (No need to rehash the details here. Suffice it to say that Swiftā€™s version of events hasnā€™t changed: She knew about some of the lyrics but not others; specifically, the words that bitch.) The posts sparked several hashtags, including #TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled, which quickly escalated into a months-long campaign to ā€œcancelā€ Swift.To this day Swift doesnā€™t think people grasp the repercussions of that term. ā€œA mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,ā€ she says. ā€œI donā€™t think there are that many people who can actually understand what itā€™s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.ā€ She adds: ā€œWhen you say someone is canceled, itā€™s not a TV show. Itā€™s a human being. Youā€™re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.ā€
An overhaul was in order. ā€œI realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control,ā€ Swift says. ā€œI knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what itā€™s like to go through something so humiliating.ā€.I get a sense of the whiplash Swift experienced when I notice that, a few months into this ordeal, while she was writing the songs that would become her album Reputationā€”and fighting off Muellerā€™s lawsuitā€”a portion of the media and internet began demanding to know why she hadnā€™t un-canceled herself long enough to take a position in the presidential election.
On that: ā€œUnfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement. He was going around saying, Iā€™m a man of the people. Iā€™m for you. I care about you. I just knew I wasnā€™t going to help. Also, you know, the summer before that election, all people were saying was Sheā€™s calculated. Sheā€™s manipulative. Sheā€™s not what she seems. Sheā€™s a snake. Sheā€™s a liar. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women. Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So I disappeared. In many senses.ā€.Swift previewed Reputation in August 2017 with ā€œLook What You Made Me Do.ā€ The single came with a lyric video whose central image was an ouroborosā€”a snake swallowing its own tail, an ancient symbol for continual renewal. Swift wiped her social-media feeds clean and began posting video snippets of a slithering snake. The song was pure bombast and high camp. (Lest there be any doubt, the chorus was an interpolation of a ā€™90s camp classic, Right Said Fredā€™s ā€œIā€™m Too Sexy.ā€) Nonetheless, most critics read it as a grenade lobbed in the general direction of Calabasas.
One longtime Nashville critic, Brian Mansfield, had a more plausible take: She was writing sarcastically as the ā€œTaylor Swiftā€ portrayed in the media in a bid for privacy. ā€œYeah, this is the character you created for me, let me just hide behind it,ā€ she says now of the persona she created. ā€œI always used this metaphor when I was younger. Iā€™d say that with every reinvention, I never wanted to tear down my house. ā€™Cause I built this house. This house being, metaphorically, my body of work, my songwriting, my music, my catalog, my library. I just wanted to redecorate. I think a lot of people, with Reputation, would have perceived that I had torn down the house. Actually, I just built a bunker around it.ā€.IN MARCH, the snakes started to morph into butterflies, the vampire color palette into Easter pastels. When a superbloom of wildflowers lured a mesmerizing deluge of Painted Lady butterflies to Los Angeles, Swift marked it with an Instagram post. She attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards that night in a sequin romper and stilettos with shimmery wings attached.
Swift announced the single ā€œME!ā€ a month later, with a large butterfly mural in Nashville. In the music video for the (conspicuously) bubblegum song, a hissing pastel-pink snake explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies. One flutters by the window of an apartment, where Swift is arguing in French with Urie. A record player is playing in the background. ā€œItā€™s an old-timey, 1940s-sounding instrumental version of ā€˜You Need to Calm Down,ā€™ ā€™ā€™ Swift says. Later, in the ā€œCalm Downā€ video, Swift wears a (fake) back tattoo of a snake swarmed by butterflies.
We are only two songs in, people. Lover, to be released on August 23, will have a total of 18 songs. ā€œI was compiling ideas for a very long time,ā€ Swift says. ā€œWhen I started writing, I couldnā€™t stop.ā€ (We can assume the British actor Joe Alwyn, with whom Swift has been in a relationship for nearly three years, provided some of the inspiration.)
Swift thinks Lover might be her favorite album yet. ā€œThere are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,ā€ she says. ā€œThis album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.ā€.I have to ask Swift, given how genuinely at peace she seems, if part of her isnā€™t thankful, if not for the Great Cancellation of 2016, then for the person she now isā€”knowing who her friends are, knowing whatā€™s what. ā€œWhen youā€™re going through loss or embarrassment or shame, itā€™s a grieving process with so many micro emotions in a day. One of the reasons why I didnā€™t do interviews for Reputationwas that I couldnā€™t figure out how I felt hour to hour. Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didnā€™t hurt as much. Five minutes later, Iā€™d feel like: That was horrible. Why did that have to happen? What am I supposed to take from this other than mass amounts of humiliation? And then five minutes later Iā€™d think: I think I might be happier than Iā€™ve ever been.ā€
She goes on: ā€œItā€™s so strange trying to be self-aware when youā€™ve been cast as this always smiling, always happy ā€˜Americaā€™s sweetheartā€™ thing, and then having that taken away and realizing that itā€™s actually a great thing that it was taken away, because thatā€™s extremely limiting.ā€ Swift leans back in the cocoon and smiles: ā€œWeā€™re not going to go straight to gratitude with it. Ever. But weā€™re going to find positive aspects to it. Weā€™re never going to write a thank-you note.ā€.
Though people will take the Perry-Swift burger-and-fries embrace in the ā€œYou Need to Calm Downā€ video as a press release that the two have mended fences, Swift says itā€™s actually a comment on how the media pits female pop stars against one another. After Perry sent Swift an (actual) olive branch last year, Swift asked her to be in the video: ā€œShe wrote back, This makes me so emotional. Iā€™m so up for this. I want us to be that example. But letā€™s spend some time together. Because I want it to be real. So she came over and we talked for hours.
ā€œWe decided the metaphor for what happens in the media,ā€ Swift explains, ā€œis they pick two people and itā€™s like theyā€™re pouring gasoline all over the floor. All that needs to happen is one false move, one false word, one misunderstanding, and a match is lit and dropped. Thatā€™s what happened with us. It was: Whoā€™s better? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? The tension is so high that it becomes impossible for you to not think that the other person has something against you.".
Meanwhile, the protesters in the video reference a real-life religious group that pickets outside Swiftā€™s concerts, not the white working class in general, as some have assumed. ā€œSo many artists have them at their shows, and itā€™s such a confounding, confusing, infuriating thing to have outside of joyful concerts,ā€ she tells me. ā€œObviously I donā€™t want to mention the actual entity, because they would get excited about that. Giving them press is not on my list of priorities.ā€
At one point, Swift asks if I would like to hear two other songs off the new album. (Duh.) First she plays ā€œLover,ā€ the title track, coproduced by Jack Antonoff. ā€œThis has one of my favorite bridges,ā€ she says. ā€œI love a bridge, and I was really able to go to Bridge City.ā€ Itā€™s a romantic, haunting, waltzy, singer-songwritery nugget: classic Swift. ā€œMy heartā€™s been borrowed and yours has been blue,ā€ she sings. ā€œAllā€™s well that ends well to end up with you.ā€
Next, Swift cues up a track that ā€œplays with the idea of perception.ā€ She has often wondered how she would be written and spoken about if she were a man, ā€œso I wrote a song called ā€˜The Man.ā€™ ā€ Itā€™s a thought experiment of sorts: ā€œIf I had made all the same choices, all the same mistakes, all the same accomplishments, how would it read?ā€ Seconds later, Swiftā€™s earpods are pumping a synth-pop earworm into my head: ā€œIā€™d be a fearless leader. Iā€™d be an alpha type. When everyone believes ya: Whatā€™s that like?ā€.Swift wrote the first two singles with Joel Little, best known as one of Lordeā€™s go-to producers. (ā€œFrom a pop-songwriting point of view, sheā€™s the pinnacle,ā€ Little says of Swift.) The album is likely to include more marquee names. A portrait of the Dixie Chicks in the background of the ā€œME!ā€ video almost certainly portends a collaboration. If fans are correctly reading a button affixed to her denim jacket in a recent magazine cover, we can expect one with Drake, too.She recently announced a fashion collection with Stella McCartney to coincide with Lover. ā€œWe met at one of her shows,ā€ says McCartney, ā€œand then we had a girlsā€™ night and kind of jumped straight in. In London weā€™ll go on walks and talk about everythingā€”life and love.ā€ (Swift has no further fashion ambitions at the moment. ā€œI really love my job right now,ā€ she tells me. ā€œMy focus is on music.ā€) Oh, and that ā€œ5ā€ on the bullseye? Track five is called ā€œThe Archer.ā€
Yet something tells me the most illuminating clue for reading both Lover and Reputation may be Loie Fuller, the dancer to whom Swift paid homage on tour. As Swift noted on a Jumbotron, Fuller ā€œfought for artists to own their work.ā€ Fuller also used swirling fabric and colored lights to metamorphose onstage, playing a ā€œhide-and-seek illusionist gameā€ with her audience, as one writer has put it. She became a muse to the Symbolists in Paris, where Jean Cocteau wrote that she created ā€œthe phantom of an era.ā€ The effect, said the poet SteĢphane MallarmeĢ, was a ā€œdizziness of soul made visible by an artifice.ā€ Fullerā€™s most famous piece was ā€œSerpentine Dance.ā€ Another was ā€œButterfly Dance.ā€
SWIFT HAS HAD almost no downtime since late 2017, but what little she does have is divided among New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Rhode Island, where she keeps homesā€”plus London. In an essay earlier this year, she revealed that her mother, Andrea Swift, is fighting cancer for a second time. ā€œThere was a relapse that happened,ā€ Swift says, declining to go into detail. ā€œItā€™s something that my family is going through.ā€.
Later this year, she will star in a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webberā€™s Catsas Bombalurina, the flirtatious red cat. ā€œThey made us the size of cats by making the furniture bigger,ā€ she says. ā€œYouā€™d be standing there and you could barely reach the seat of a chair. It was phenomenal. It made you feel like a little kid.ā€
But first, she will spend much of the summer holding ā€œsecret sessionsā€ā€”a tradition wherein Swift invites hundreds of fans to her various homes to preview her new music. ā€œTheyā€™ve never given me a reason to stop doing it,ā€ she says. ā€œNot a single one.ā€
Speaking of: Inquiring fans will want to know if Swift dropped any more clues about how to decode Lover during this interview. For you I reviewed the audio again, and there were a few things that made my newly acquired Swifty sense tingle.
At one point she compared superstardom in the digital age to life in a dollhouse, one where voyeurs ā€œcan ā€˜shipā€™ you with who they want to ā€˜shipā€™ you with, and they can ā€˜favoriteā€™ friends that you have, and they can know where you are all the time.ā€ The metaphor was precise and vivid and, well, a little too intricately rendered to be off the cuff. (Also, the ā€œME!ā€ lyric: ā€œBaby doll, when it comes to a lover. I promise that youā€™ll never find another like me.ā€).Then there was the balloonā€”a giant gold balloon in the shape of a numeral seven that happened to float by while we were on her roof, on this, the occasion of her seventh album. ā€œIs it an Lā€™?ā€ I say. ā€œNo, because look, the string is hanging from the bottom,ā€ she says.
It might seem an obvious symbolic gesture, deployed for this interview, except for how impossible that seems. Swift let me control the timing of nearly everything. Moreover, the gold seven wasnā€™t floating up from the sidewalk below. It was already high in the sky, drifting slowly toward us from down the street. She would have had to control the wind, or at least to have studied it. Would Taylor Swift really go to such elaborate lengths for her fans? This much I know: Yes, she would''.More photos below.
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