Taylor Swift Reveals the Clever Inspiration Behind Her Hit Song "Blank Space"

Updated on Oct 9, 2015 at 6:45 PM

It's been nearly two years since Taylor Swift thought she won album of the year for Red, and she's finally opening up about how it felt. In a new interview with Grammy Pro, Taylor talks about coming to terms with her loss, the hard part about the media spotlight, and more. The pop star, of course, has come a long way since then. She released her incredible new album, 1989, and is making her way around the world with sold-out stadium performances. She's got a blossoming love with Calvin Harris, she refuses to play the media's game, and she's already making 2015 into her best year ever. Keep reading to see her insightful quotes about pushing harder to create good music, the inspiration behind "Blank Space," and how to comfort yourself when you lose.

On what to do when you lose: "You have a few options when you don't win an award. You can decide like, 'Oh, they're wrong, they all voted wrong.' Second, you can be like, 'I'm gonna go up on the stage and take the mic from whoever did win it' . . . Or third, you can say, 'Maybe they're right. Maybe I did not make the record of my career. Maybe I need to fix the problem, which was that I have not been making sonically cohesive albums.'"
On what she did after she lost: "I remember not going to after-parties. I went home and I cried a little bit, and I got In-N-Out Burger and ate a lot."
On media scrutiny of her dating life: "The media decided that I dated too many people. You know, you're sitting at an awards show, and you know there's gonna be a joke about you being a serial dater in the monologue, and you're just sitting there like, 'I'm 22, and this is rude.'"
On how it eventually led to her writing "Blank Space": "Instead of writing a song like, 'It's so rude, stop picking on me,' I kind of sat back and thought about how complex this character was that they'd drawn up for me. And I just thought, 'This is amazing.' I need to write a song from this girl's perspective. If you want to play this way, we can play this way, and I just decided to be her for one song."
On the moment she thought she had the Grammy in 2014: "When they announced the Album of the Year winner it was like, 'And the album of the year goes to . . . Reeeeeandom Access Memories, Daft Punk!' And they really dragged out the 'reeee.' And for a second there, I kind of thought we had it, and we didn't."
On the buildup in the days before the show: "Going up to it, everybody comes up to you and they're like, 'Oh, you got this, you're gonna win, you're gonna win,' and I wish they wouldn't do that 'cause you don't know if you're gonna win, and someone else could very well win, and someone else very well did."