Taylor Swift sees Red
FOR her fourth studio album, Red, Taylor Swift has decided to take her music a step away from her comfort zone.
You have two choices when youre making your fourth album you can do things the way youve always done them or you can change... and I love the idea of evolving and giving fans something new to listen to and a new direction to follow, says Swift in an interview courtesy of Universal Music.
The result is Red, a 16-track album with 10 songs written by Swift. The rest are collaborations with people that she had wanted to work with, including Max Martin and Johan Shellback (Swedish songwriters and producers), Ed Sheeran (London-based musician) and Snow Patrols Gary Lightbody.
At 23, Swift is a six-time Grammy winner, and Time magazine has named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. With over 22 million albums sales and 50 million song downloads, each of her three studio albums has sold in excess of 5 million copies worldwide. Her third album, Speak Now, sold more than one million copies during the first week of its release.
Red has a multiple-week No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, setting a new record for the highest digital sales week ever for a female artiste. The song also claimed the No. 1 spot at iTunes in 32 countries around the world.
You opt to do things differently in terms of writing and recording Red. Why?I just felt that I really wanted to push myself and stretch what I do artistically. For my last album, Speak Now, I wrote every song and writing alone became sort of a comfort zone. I need to surround myself with people who do things differently than I do, and I want to learn from it.
Tell us about your appreciation for other genres.I think its adventurous and fun to explore the edges of whatever youre doing. I like it when you have people who are in a certain genre but they explore other genres. I ! love music and am a fan of different influences. I love music thats good, and so Ive allowed that to rub off on me. I want to collaborate with people who make good music and to not worry about the genre.
Is there pressure to repeat the success of your previous albums?The pressure will come if I dont feel that my fans like what I do. We put out all these songs (on iTunes) before the record comes out to see which ones fans like best. I get a good vibe if they love these songs. As long as I get those bases covered, the pressure doesnt feel so bad.
Tell us about the writing process for Red.I wrote State Of Grace at the beginning and it helped me define the rest of the album. Theres a line in that song that says love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right and thats like a warning for the rest of the album. This is what happens if you dont do this and that. As soon as you listen to that song, you know the two ways this can go you can be good to people or you can, you know, not play fair.And both outcomes are reflected on the record.
You said Red is like a door to push yourself into a different direction creatively.Red was a song I wrote halfway through the making of the album. The song is about correlating different emotions to different colours and all of a sudden, it hit me that the emotions I felt during the entire process (making the album) were red emotions. All the intense ones happy and angry and it changed my outlook on where this album is going. The song is very different, very descriptive and it has an edge to it that expanded what I wanted to do.
You celebrate the carefree side of being 22 years old with a song titled 22.The idea for the song came while I was on a plane. I ran with it into the studio with Max and Johan. They loved it too, so we worked on it and wanted to write a song about my summer holiday with friends. We are in our 20s and we dont know anything and its awesome! Its also fun to embrace that and thats probably one of the biggest choruses ! on the re! cord.
Red is now available at all leading music stores and on iTunes.
With Red, Swift wanted to try something new in terms of writing and recording the album.