Taylor Swift has been writing songs since she was a teenager. She has touched on the romantic relationships in her life since the beginning, but she said the way she approached the songwriting has changed. While Swift believed her early songs were full of naive visions of love, she got more honest in her 2014 album 1989.

Taylor Swift said she covered romances differently on ‘1989’

1989 marked Swift’s departure from country music and into pop. It also represented a change in the way she covered romance. 

“In the past, I’ve written mostly about heartbreak or pain that was caused by someone else and felt by me,” she told NPR. “On this album, I’m writing about more complex relationships, where the blame is kind of split 50-50.”

She tried to portray relationships more realistically than she had in her early teenage years.

“I’m writing about looking back on a relationship and feeling a sense of pride even though it didn’t work out, reminiscing on something that ended but you still feel good about it, falling in love with a city, falling in love with a feeling rather than a person,” she said. “And I think there’s actually sort of a realism to my new approach to relationships, which is a little more fatalistic than anything I used to think about them.”

Swift felt proud of the new themes in her music. They showed a more honest and mature version of herself.

“I used to think that, you know, you find ‘the one,’” she said. “And it’s happily ever after, and it’s never a struggle after that. You have a few experiences with love and relationships, and you learn that that’s not the case at all. Lots of things are gray areas and complicated situations, and even if you find the right situation relationship-wise, it’s always going to be a daily struggle to make it work. So those are different themes that I don’t think people have really seen in my lyrics before.”

Taylor Swift said a ‘1989’ song was a good example of how she approached relationships

Swift said the song “Wildest Dreams” off 1989 was a good example of how she approached romantic relationships.

“That’s actually a really good example of the way I go into relationships now,” she said. “If I meet someone who I feel I have a connection with, the first thought I have is: ‘When this ends, I hope it ends well. I hope you remember me well.’ Which is not anything close to the way I used to think about relationships. It’s that realization that it’s the anomaly if something works out; it’s not a given.”

At that point, Swift’s most recent relationship was with One Direction’s Harry Styles. 

She wanted to give fans insight into her life

While some of the themes on her albums have changed, Swift said her primary goal is always to give fans a look into her life. 

“People have essentially gotten to read my diary for the last 10 years,” she said. “I still write personal songs, and sometimes people like to put a very irritating, negative, spin on that — as if I’m oversharing, as if it’s too much information — when this has been the way I’ve lived my life and run my career the entire time. So I do think it’s really important that I continue to give people an insight into what my life is actually like, even though it comes at a higher cost now.”

Swift rarely gives interviews these days, but fans are able to keep up with her through her lyrics.