By Alyssa Boddicker
Loving her was red. Taylor Swift shines as the futuristic cover star of American Vogue‘s May issue, channeling serious Sia vibes with her short, almost platinum hair, bare eyes and bright red lips. In the latest issue she talks about all things life, love, and just what exactly she’s going to do now that her 1989 World Tour has ended.
Vogue followed Taylor back to her childhood home, in Reading, Pennsylvania where she grew up on a Christmas tree farm until her family moved to Nashville when she was 14, where her music-making history began. The magazine travelled with Taylor through the sights of her hometown and even back to her childhood house, where she pulls a classic Taylor move and charms the current owners to let her show the magazine crew around.
Flash forward to the present day, where instead of horseback riding in Pennsylvania, she’s wearing couture gowns that make her look more like a disco ball than a muddy-booted farm girl. The power stance on the shot on the left, shows just how much authority Taylor demands, just like this past year where she single-handedly changed the music industry’s treatment of artists when she refused to put ‘1989’ on Apple Music until they paid their artists.
“It’s such a surreal, emotional thing,” Swift says. “When you’re a little kid, you’re riding the same roads to school every single day, hundreds of times. When you come back, you snap into that strange nostalgia.”
When she travelled with the magazine back to visit her hometown, the main reasoning of her return was for one of her best friend’s weddings, where she was not superstar Taylor Swift but rather a doting maid of honor. The saying “always a bridesmaid” may have been definitive of Swift during her ‘Red’ days, but since then she has been happily dating DJ Calvin Harris for over a year. In the magazine, Taylor talks about the relationship with excitement. “I’m just taking things as they come,” Swift says. “I’m in a magical relationship right now. And of course I want it to be ours, and low-key… this is the one thing that’s been mine about my personal life.”
As for what Taylor Swift has planned to do next, “I have no idea,” she says, with a sigh that’s more blissful than anxious. “This is the first time in ten years that I haven’t known. I just decided that after the past year, with all of the unbelievable things that happened… I decided I was going to live my life a little bit without the pressure on myself to create something.” We would want a break too, after all you don’t become the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammy’s twice without a little hard work.
Absolutely cannot wait for the next Swift venture? Well you only have to wait a few weeks, as she is to co-chair this years Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s Gala, also known as the Met Gala, where fashion’s best is sure to take this year’s futuristic theme to next level, and Taylor Swift will be at the forefront of it all. We can’t wait.
–
The May issue of American Vogue will be on select stands later this month.
–