It's no secret that Taylor Swift has had her share of bad press over the years — particularly in 2016, when her feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian reached a boiling point with a phone call leaked on Snapchat, causing the pop star to effectively go into hiding for a year.
Taylor eventually gave her side of the drama with her 2017 album reputation, which focused largely on the negative press she received during that time. It was even the inspiration for the album's cover art:
Well, the year is now 2019, Taylor Swift is back at the top of her game and was just named Billboard's Woman of the Decade, while Kanye West is...wearing MAGA hats and painting himself silver. What a difference a few years can make!
"I’ve had several upheavals [in the press] of somehow not being what I should be," she said. "And this happens to women in music way more than men."
And Taylor says she's become a mentor for young artists in the music industry who are struggling with their own publicity nightmares for the first time.
"...I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue — like, 'Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?' And the answer is always yes!"
"I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me," she revealed, although she did not name any names.
But Taylor says she's always happy to help her fellow artists navigate the negativity.
"I take it as a compliment, because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again."
She also talked about what she sees as a lack of community within the pop world: "Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much."
But she did reveal that she and the other big pop queens have started texting each other, and TBH I would give anything to read those group chats:
Now there is a bit of [community] between the girls in pop — we all have each other’s numbers and text each other — but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.