She didn’t think this was a bad thing, though. Most of her friends had similar experiences while growing up, and she thought this shaped them into better people.

“All of my favorite people — people I really trust — none of them were cool in their younger years,” she said. “Because if you know how to be cool in middle school, maybe you have skills you shouldn’t. Maybe you know how to be conniving, like, naturally. There’s always that seventh-grade girl who looks like she’s 25. And you’re like, How do you do it?”

She felt left out when she was in middle school

Though Swift thinks she grew from being unpopular in school, it wasn’t easy at the time. She recalled trying to invite some of her classmates to the mall with her. Everyone gave her an excuse, but when she later went with her mother, she saw all the girls she called at a Victoria’s Secret.

“I just remember my mom looking at me and saying, We’re going to King of Prussia Mall. Which is the big, big mall in Pennsylvania, 45 minutes away. So we left and went to the better mall,” she told GQ. “My mom let me escape from certain things that were too painful to deal with. And we talked about it the whole ride there, and we had a good time shopping.”

Because of experiences like these, she holds her friendships close now.

“I honestly think my lack of female friendships in high school and middle school is why my female friendships are so important now,” she said. “Because I always wanted them. It was just hard for me to have friends.”

Taylor Swift said she stopped caring about being cool

Swift said she let go of a desire to be cool earlier than some of her peers may have. She left school to pursue music, and that became the most important think in her life. Others’ negative opinions of her didn’t matter anymore.

“I think that happened as soon as I left school, when I was sixteen, because then all that mattered was music and this dream that I’d had my whole life. It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it — though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.”

Before long, she was inspiring her fans to dress in the same way.