Taylor Swift Reveals the Artists Who Have Impacted Her Most As a Songwriter

The 14-time Grammy Award winner opened up about her songwriting process in a ‘New York Times Magazine’ cover story.

Taylor Swift | Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

In a new cover story with New York Times Magazine, pop superstar Taylor Swift opened up about everything from how her songwriting process starts to the track in her catalogue that people “slept on” for years (Spoiler alert: The 2017 single “Ready for It?” off of Swift’s sixth studio album, Reputation). The 14-time Grammy Award winner also shared which artists have impacted her the most as a songwriter over the years.

And while Swift noted that country music was the genre she first fell in love with, lyrically, she has been “the most intensely impacted by emo music,” and two artists in particular.

“Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba, Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz’s lyrics—how they take a common phrase and then they just twist the knife of it, right?” Swift stated. “Like, ‘I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song,’ ‘Drop a heart, break a name,’ right? Like, it’s ‘Drop a name, break a heart,’ but they switched it, and I like... those are the kind of lyrics where I would read the lyrics to those songs—or the specificity of ‘Hands Down’ by Dashboard Confessional, where I’d be reading those lyrics and I’d just finish reading a line and just go, ‘Oh my God.’”

Dashboard Confessional shared a clip of the interview on the band’s official Instagram page after the interview dropped on Tuesday, April 28. “@taylorswift has been so kind to me over the years,” Carrabba wrote in the reel’s caption “To hear her express how my songs affected her was a lovely surprise. Everything is connected. I feel fortunate to be a link in the chain.”

Meanwhile, plenty of fans chimed into the comments section to express their joy over the connection between the two artists, while others manifested a future collaboration between Swift and the “Vindicated” band.

“I love that she’s an elder emo pleaseeeeeee do a song !” one follower wrote.

“omg a Dashboard/tswift song collab would be hands down the best day,” another fan added.

“My worlds collide,” someone else stated.

“The two of you on a song together?! 😍 Yes please!” one follower pleaded.

“YES, SWEMO,” another comment read.

“Wow. I love how she gives people their flowers,” an additional user noted.

“Described perfectly. I always knew I was a swiftie because of my love for emo music and this era,” one fan observed.

Watch Swift’s complete video interview with New York Times Magazine here.

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