The 25-year-old singer says, 'I'll come up with a line that I think is clever, like, 'Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream.' '
- Oct 10, 2015
AceShowbiz - Taylor Swift opens up about writing process of her hit song "Blank Space" in an interview with NME. The 25-year-old songstress shares, "Writing that song was a journey. It was one of those things where I would be writing lines years before I ended up constructing the song."
"I'll be going about my daily life and I'll think of like, 'Wow, so you only have two real options in relationships, like it's going to be forever or it's going to go down in flames.' I'll jot that down in my notes," she continues, "I'll come up with a line that I think is clever, like, 'Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream.' "
"I just pick them and put them where they fit and construct the bridge out of more lines. I'd come up with in the last couple years. It was really more like a crossword puzzle. 'Blank Space' was like the culmination of all my best ones, one after the other," adds the "Shake It Off" hitmaker.
Taylor says her dating experience from 2012 to 2013 really affects her. "They thought I was dating too much because I dated two people in a year and a half, but whatever - we'll leave it there," she explains. " 'Oh, a serial dater. She only writes songs to get emotional revenge on guys. She's a man hater. Don't let her near your boyfriend.' It was just kind of excessive and, you know, at first it was hurtful and then I kind of found a little comedy in it."
However, Taylor thinks her character in the "Blank Space" music video "is so interesting though." She explains, "If you go and read these gossip sites and they describe how I am, [it's] so opposite my actual life. You know, I can get these guys. I'm just like a nightmare and I'm clingy and I'm awful and I throw fits and tantrums and there's drama. But then they leave. They can't stay away so they come back. But then I drive them away again. [I'm] emotionally fragile and just [this] unpredictable mess that just ... Oh my god."
Calvin Harris' girlfriend then reveals how she created the character in the music video. "I painted a whole picture of this character," she shares. "She lived in a mansion with marble floors and she wears Dolce and Gabbana around the house. She wears animal print, unironically. And so I created this whole character, and I had fun doing it."
"Once the song was written, my favorite line of the song was, 'Got a long list of ex lovers. They'll tell you I'm insane. But I've got a blank space, baby, and I'll write your name,' " she continues. "I watched as it got so misconstrued. It turned into, 'Got a lonely Starbucks lovers. They'll tell you I'm insane.' Whatever it was, I was saying something about Starbucks, which was kind of like the most delightful misunderstanding about this song, which was written about misunderstandings."
Taylor is fine with people who didn't find the irony in her lyrics about being a vindictive girlfriend. "Half the people got the joke. Half the people really think that I was really owning the act that I'm a psychopath, which is fine," she says, "Either one is fine as long as they know the semblance of the words, even if they're incorrect. It was number one for like eight or nine weeks, so I have no complaints as to how things turned out."
