Hear 21-year-old Taylor Swift get ‘overwhelmed’ imagining life in her 30s in new audio from 60 Minutes in 2011
Plus, she talked about why she didn’t want to open up about politics and her relationship to fans, both of which have changed over time. Even Taylor Swift herself couldn’t have fathomed the heights that her work has reached in her life to date; in fact, when she was 21, the now 14-time Grammy winner got “overwhelmed” even thinking about it.
Swift opened up about it in previously unreleased video from her 60 Minutes interview in 2011, which just debuted in the latest episode of the 60 Minutes: A Second Look podcast. “Sometimes I get really stressed when I think about, like 10 years from now I’ll be 30 — what’s the sound then?” she told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl at the time.
“What am I doing then? What are the choices I’ve made at that point? Oh my god, what does my life look like? And then I get a little overwhelmed when I think about 10 years, 20 years, you know, making a life. A long career isn’t my job right now sitting here at 21.” She did, however, have some very insightful thoughts about what drove her drive and success. When asked by Stahl what drives her, Swift said, “Deep wells of insecurities.” “I don’t know if any of this would have happened if I ever felt completely settled and happy,” she continued.
“You can let the success cripple you, and you can let the fear just overtake you, or you can let it fuel you and understand that, yes, you have to rise to the occasion and, yes, you have to beat what you did last time.” At the time of the conversation, the pop superstar had just released her first three albums. She’s since become a billionaire, released eight more studio records and re-recorded four of her early tracks, with two more still to come.
The re-recorded albums, dubbed the Taylor’s Versions, have been a big success, with the re-release of 1989 selling even more copies than the original did.
The podcast suggests this success is fueled by Swift’s relationship to her fans, which she also mentioned back in 2011. When Stahl commented that it feels like her fans are “giving you power” and asked Swift if that goes “into your head” and does “things to you up there,” the singer denied it. “No, it just kind of feels like pure love, which is amazing,” she said. “And what I’ve come to learn in this life is that you can never abuse pure love when you’re lucky enough to have it. And you can’t ever mistake someone’s kindness for weakness.
And you can’t ever assume that because they love me right now, if I do something to break their trust, they’re still going to be there, because I know it’s rare. And I know that it’s here in this moment because of the choices I’ve made and the music I’ve written.”
Elsewhere in the interview, she added that her fans were her biggest concern. “If you have to pick one goal, that’s the fans. They’re the ones who will keep you getting to do what you love, and I feel like they understand me, they’ve got my back, and feeling like you’ve got those people out there in the world is a wonderful feeling.”
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