“I was telling my mom this yesterday when I was putting together a package for this British fan-I was writing her notes and stuff, my mom was helping me wrap presents-and she goes, “Remember last year?” Last year Red was nominated for Album of the Year. You go into Grammy week thinking, I’m not going to win and I’m fine with that and I have enough happiness and success. And if I don’t win, I won’t be sad. And the everybody comes up to you at these functions and they go, “You know you’re going to win Album of the Year; you know you’re going to win Album of the Year; I voted for you for Album of the Year, you’re going to win; you’re going to win.” And so then you start getting hopeful. So we got to the awards and they’re announcing the winner for the Album of the Year-last award of the night-and the presenter says, “Album of the Year; RRRRRRRandom Access Memories, Daft punk! And, you know, you clap because you support other people and all that. And then I didn’t want to go to after-parties. I just wanted to lay in a blanket and eat an In-N-Out burger on my couch. I found myself wanting something that anyone would want, and I was really bummed. My backup singers texted me and said, “Hey, are you okay?” And I wrote, “I’m okay, but I’d love some company. So they come over, and I was like, "Hey, do you want to hear something I wrote this week?” And I played them the demo of “Welcome to New York.” And they look at me and go, “This is an ‘80s throwback song-you’re using all ‘80s sounds on this. And I was like, "Wow, I didn’t really think about that, but I’d been doing that on every song I’ve made for this record so far. I go to sleep, and I wake up in the middle of the night at three in the morning and sit up straight, like out of a movie, and go "1989. It’s called 1989.” That moment wouldn’t have happened if I had won Album of the Year. So many things would have been different if I hadn’t experience failure-the way I live my life and my resilience-and if I hadn’t been harshly criticized every step of the way. So that’s what gives me faith that even if you made a mistake in the past, or you didn’t do something quite as well as you wanted to, these are things we learn from-it’s not useless.”
"Do you know how many sit downs I got at the label about that? A lot of me making this album was me going in the studio, making something I loved, and showing it to the label and getting a principle’s-office discussion. Like, “Young lady, you know you’re not going to sell as many albums if you’re not labeled as country.” I wasn’t kicking and screaming, but I was very firm about the fact that to call this album a country album would be the biggest mistake. Because when you’re trying to fool people, you insinuating that you think they’re stupid. And insinuating that people aren’t going to see through your transparent motives is the one worst mistake you can make as an artist who is supposed to respect their fans. That was my argument. I got really, really lectured about not putting my name on the title on the front of the album cover―that was fun. And then it was suggested to me that we use a different picture for the album cover because, they kept saying, “We need eyes, lips, hair on an album cover. You know no one’s going to know who that is.” And I was like, “That’s the point. We’re starting over.” Also, the reason I didn’t put my face on the album cover is because I didn’t want people to fully diagnose the emotional DNA of this album before it came out. If I’m smiling, it’s a happy record; if I’m frowning, it’s a sad record. I wanted people to be able to detect no emotion on my face. It was just taken on this ‘80s Polaroid camera that I have. I knew that I was doing something that I fully believed in when I was confronted with these people on my team, who were only going by what they knew―which is that there hasn’t been a successful country-to-pop crossover, really ever, who has sold as well as their country career did. They’d say “You’re not going to sell as much.“ and I would say, “I don’t care. This is the album I made, this is what I’m going to call it, this is how I’m going to label it.” I knew that I’d made songs that my fans would like; I was like, “You guys don’t know them like I do. You sit in an office, I’m out there at shows with them, I’m on tumblr talking to them, I know what they want from me.” Thank God it worked out. If we’d sold one album less than a million in the first week, it would have been two years of “Taylor, we told you.” So glad we sold almost 1.3 [million] in the first week.”
It just sounds far too childish and out of place on the album. I think I'll be a bit annoyed if it gets a proper video treatment when Style didn't.
