Taylor swift's latest album "Red" sold 1.2 million copies in the first week, making the highest sales in a decade. She spoke with NPR's Guy Raz about her album, success and her inspiration for music.
Swift spoke about the theme of her record and she felt well connected to it. When asked about "Love is so short, forgetting is so long," a quote from poet Pablo Neruda she said: "I absolutely connected to it. I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one."
Swift has never fallen in love with someone, but finds many categories to write on love or love lost and heartbreak.
She defines how feelings towards different people change as it may not be the same emotion towards two different people.
"So I think that there are all these different mixtures of emotions that go into individual feelings that you feel for individual people. And, yeah, most of the time it doesn't work out," she said. "And being 22, you're kind of in a crash course with love and life and lessons and learning the hard way, and thankfully, I've been able to write about those emotions as they've affected me."
Speaking of her fan obsession for Shania Twain, Faith Hill and The Dixie Chicks, Swift spoke about how she grew as a singer.
Singing at karaoke contests, national anthems, was a sign of love towards music. She also tried auditions in New York for Broadway, but couldn't get through, which did not let her hopes down. When she learned guitar when she was 12, she started writing her own songs and boost her confidence.
Swift described her idea of a song in her new album "The Last Time," which she sang with Gary Lightbody of the band Snow Patrol, was about an unreliable guy who leaves his girlfriend in a state where she is unaware if the guy will return.
"The idea was based on this experience I had with someone who was kind of this unreliable guy," she said. "You never know when he's going to leave, you never know when he's going to come back, but he always does come back. My visual for this song is, there's a guy on his knees sitting on the ground outside of a door.
"It's a really fragile emotion you're dealing with when you want to love someone, but you don't know if it's smart to," she said.
