Taylor Swift has written an essay about the power of pop to accompany her front cover of British Elle magazine.
The Shake It Off singer has posed for a rare magazine photoshoot for the publication's music issue, which is fronted by her wearing a bright yellow Gucci dress. The 29-year-old has avoided giving interviews in recent years, and she continued this trend with Elle by writing an essay about the power of pop.
In the essay, Taylor, who is known for writing personal lyrics, fights back against the notion that pop music has to be generic and universal to appeal to everybody, arguing that listeners want personal details that they can connect to.
"We like being confided in and hearing someone say, ‘this is what I went through' as proof to us that we can get through our own struggles. We actually do NOT want our pop music to be generic," she wrote.
"I think a lot of music lovers want some biographical glimpse into the world of our narrator, a hole in the emotional walls people put up around themselves to survive. This glimpse into the artist’s story invites us to connect it to our own, and in the best case scenario, allows us the ability to assign that song to our memories. It’s this alliance between a song and our memories of the times it helped us heal, or made us cry, dance, or escape that truly stands the test of time."
She cites Camila Cabello's Havana and Drake's In My Feelings as examples of popular songs which contain "extremely personal details", and explained that it's a "fun challenge" trying to squeeze these into a catchy melody.
"I thrive on the challenge of sprinkling personal mementos and shreds of reality into a genre of music that is universally known for being, well, universal," she continued. "You’d think that as pop writers, we’re supposed to be writing songs that everyone can sing along to, so you’d assume they would have to be pretty lyrically generic... AND YET the ones I think cut through the most are actually the most detailed."
Taylor's cover shoot appears to confirm fan theories that the singer is about to launch new music.
