Taylor Swift is one of the biggest stars on the planet. And after nearly two decades in the music industry, the singer is revealing how she deals with the magnitude of her fame.
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Recently, the “Opalite” singer sat down for The Icon Sessions, a career retrospective conversation presented by the Recording Academy’s Songwriters & Composers Wing.
During the conversation, she shared how she doesn’t allow public perceptions of her to get in her way creatively.
“I go through several processes and coping mechanisms that I’ve gone through over the years,” she shared. “And one of them is saying, ‘You chose this. You chose this every day. You could have opted out of this any day before it got unmanageably big.’ And I decided not to because I love it that much.”
And for Swift, “that’s just where it begins and where it ends.”
“Everything that comes with this ultimately is worth it as long as I get to still make music,” she said.
Swift also has very clear perspective about who she’s making her music for.
“I realized that I’m making music because I’m playing for the fans,” she said. “I’m putting this out for people who care about it and who look to music as a way to cope with their life in the way that I did.”
“I think that if you can actually go through all those checkpoints and realize that putting out music you’ve made that you love so much is not the path to universal validation, if you’re still doing it, then you love it for the right reasons,” she added.
Swift is also a 2026 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee.
“I had to be taught how to entertain the crowd and learn choreography, and be less annoying, and navigate the industry, and fiercely protect my own sanity,” she shared during her speech.
“I had to learn all of that over time through difficult lessons, and massive amounts of trial and error, and chaos, and calamity.”