Eilish, along with her mother and her brother\/collaborator, Finneas O\u2019Connell, popped in to say hello — the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello<\/a> without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwo dudes walked in — I didn\u2019t know which one was him,\u201d recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. \u201cIt\u2019s really smart! Because he\u2019s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn\u2019t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.\u201d She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swift, who will celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13, has been impossibly famous for nearly half of her lifetime. She was 16 when she released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and 20 when her second album, Fearless<\/em>, won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2010, making her the youngest artist to ever receive the honor. As the decade comes to a close, Swift is one of the most accomplished musical acts of all time: 37.3 million albums sold, according to Nielsen Music; 95 entries on the Billboard Hot 100<\/a> (including five No. 1s); 23 Billboard Music Awards; 12 Country Music Association Awards; 10 Grammys; and five world tours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift\u2019s crossover from country to pop — hinted at on 2012\u2019s Red<\/em> and fully embraced on 2014\u2019s 1989<\/em> — reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift\u2019s top 20 hit \u201cEnd Game<\/a>,\u201d from 2017\u2019s reputation<\/em>, which featured Ed Sheeran<\/a> and Future<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swift\u2019s new album, Lover<\/em>, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation<\/em> — which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift\u2019s public clash with Kanye West<\/a> and Kim Kardashian-West — as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. \u201cThe skies were opening up in my life,\u201d says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She recorded\u00a0Lover<\/em>\u00a0after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. \u201cThis is a year where I have to be there for my family —\u00a0there\u2019s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,\u201d says Swift, likely referencing her mother\u2019s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the\u00a0Lover<\/em>\u00a0heart-wrencher \u201cSoon You\u2019ll Get Better<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it\u2019s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift\u2019s six pre-Lover<\/em> albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post<\/a> that it was her \u201cworst case scenario,\u201d accusing Braun of \u201cbullying\u201d her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to \u201cearn\u201d back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a \u201clength of time\u201d — 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year — starting next November, when she says she\u2019s contractually able to — in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary — claims Big Machine characterized as \u201cfalse information\u201d in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to \u201call possibilities\u201d in finding a \u201cresolution,\u201d and Billboard<\/em> sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun\u2019s acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists\u2019 rights — and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey<\/a> to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company\u2019s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview<\/a>, \u201cThere should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn\u2019t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.\u201d In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists — and make them nonrecoupable against those artists\u2019 earnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come — and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. \u201cNew artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can\u2019t make noise — but if I can, then I\u2019m going to,\u201d promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. \u201cI know that it seems like I\u2019m very loud about this,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it\u2019s because someone has to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While watching some of your performances this year — like Saturday Night Live<\/em> and NPR\u2019s Tiny Desk Concert — I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I\u2019ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn\u2019t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I\u2019m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, you\u2019ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way — on your Tumblr page.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around — they literally drag me. It\u2019s fun. That\u2019s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it\u2019s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven\u2019t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don\u2019t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that\u2019s it. But I don\u2019t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There\u2019s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you\u2019ve faced, using phrases like \u201cThey\u2019ve wanted to see this\u201d and \u201cThey hated me for this.\u201d Who is \u201cthey\u201d? Is it social media or disparaging think pieces or —<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren\u2019t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I\u2019ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That\u2019s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue — like, \u201cHey, I\u2019m getting my first wave of bad press, I\u2019m freaking out, can I talk to you?\u201d And the answer is always yes! I\u2019m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you have someone like that to reach out to?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music.\u00a0Faith Hill<\/a>\u00a0was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn\u2019t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop —\u00a0we all have each other\u2019s numbers and text each other —\u00a0but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn\u2019t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it\u2019s just two women\u2019s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one\u2019s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that\u2019s great. No one\u2019s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From a creative standpoint, I\u2019ve been writing alone a lot more. I\u2019m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover<\/em> tour, the album launch, the merch, I\u2019ll go right to my management company that I\u2019ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don\u2019t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I\u2019m in. Putting together the festival shows that we\u2019re doing for\u00a0Lover<\/em>\u00a0is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the\u00a0reputation<\/em>\u00a0launch was so different than putting together the\u00a01989<\/em>\u00a0launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation<\/em> tour\u2019s success was. What did it represent?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn\u2019t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, \u201cI understand it now. I fully get it now.\u201d There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I\u2019ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That seems especially true of your last three albums or so.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShake It Off<\/a>\u201d is nothing like the rest of 1989<\/em>. It\u2019s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don\u2019t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you\u2019ve figured out what I\u2019ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in — if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don\u2019t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We\u2019re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, and I\u2019m always trying to learn. I\u2019m learning from everyone. I\u2019m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen<\/a> or Madonna<\/a> do a theater show. And I\u2019m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they\u2019re doing and thinking, \u201cThat\u2019s really cool.\u201d You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a> on the Cats<\/em> movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, \u201cI\u2019ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cYou are it! You are it<\/em>!\u201d Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote \u201cthe kids are doing\u201d and roll your eyes. You have to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you explored TikTok at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I only see them when they\u2019re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they\u2019re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they\u2019ve made musicals cool again, because there\u2019s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He\u2019s] like, \u201cAny way we can do that is good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you\u2019ve got someone else\u2019s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn\u2019t generous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently — staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a long way to go. I think that we\u2019re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We\u2019re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn\u2019t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, \u201cWait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?\u201d I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don\u2019t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, \u201cThis is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal — not as a renegotiation ploy — and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.\u201d God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn\u2019t given to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thankfully, there\u2019s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use \u201cShake It Off\u201d in some advertisement or \u201cBlank Space<\/a>\u201d in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I\u2019m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you know how long that rerecording process will take?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know! But it\u2019s going to be fun, because it\u2019ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what\u2019s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn\u2019t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, God — I wouldn\u2019t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I\u2019ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but \u2026 I\u2019ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I\u2019ve got my family. I\u2019ve got my boyfriend. I\u2019ve got my fans. I\u2019ve got my cats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"DO](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/files\/media\/Taylor-Swift-bb29-2019-feat-billboard-sgbsobhdsjh-1240.jpg\")
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