four days ago, our first guest surprise released her second album of the lockdown. Yesterday, she celebrated her 31st birthday, and tonight she is here with us. Her self-directed documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, is on Disney+. And her new album is right here. It's called evermore. Please say hello to Taylor Swift. Hi, Taylor. Hi. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Thank you. Are you hungover? Did you have cake? How was it last night? I actually really prefer to hydrate while I dehydrate, so there was a lot of drink water, drink water. (Laughter) You mentioned, I know you've mentioned this a bunch of times, that 13 is your lucky number. You were born on the 13th. Most people think that is an unlucky number. I was also born on the 13th, so I don't know, maybe they're right. And that you've been looking forward to this birthday because 31 is 13 backwards. Yes. So until I turn 113 or 131, this will

be the highlight of my life. The numerology thing really does sort of um when it doesn't take over on its own. I sort of force it to happen like with folklore and evermore. There are 16 tracks on folklore, there are 15 tracks on evermore. Adam up, what do you get? Yeah, 31. 31. In my mind it's just the opposite, it's just 13 backwards, right, right. It's all that 31 is to me. You should go to Baskin-Robbins today. That might not be a bad way to, I know, yeah. You know what, thank you for reminding me. I'm good, they're open late. I think I do want to get into the mystery surrounding because I have a theory and a lot of people have theories but I want to look at something that appeared on the cover of folklore. And if we zoom in, we can see it says Woodvale there in the tree. Now online, people are going nuts now saying that's the third album. You've not just

recorded two albums. You're going for a third, and the third will be called Woodvale. True or false. Okay, well, this takes a bit of explanation. So I tend to be sort of, um, sort of annoyingly secret agenty about dropping clues and hints and Easter eggs, and it's very annoying, um, but it's fun for fans and it's fun for me because they like to pick up on things. Um, and they'll notice lots of things in music videos or photos or whatever. And then sometimes I take it too far and I make a mistake. And basically, uh, when I was making folklore, the album that came out back in July, I was too afraid to even unveil the title of the album to even my closest teammates in management. I didn't tell anybody the album title until right before it came out. And so I came up with a fake code name that had the same amount of letters as folklore. Chose a random name, chose Woodvale, wanted to see how it would look on the album covers.

mocked them up, and then decided I don't actually want to have a title on the album covers. And we forgot to take the fake code name off of one of them. Is that true? Is that really true? Yes, yes, that's. But this album is like the third season of Lost. People are finding clues where there aren't them. Like Evermore had a code name. It was November. And we took, we remembered to take it off all the mock-ups of the album covers before we released them this time. So we learned our lesson. So I'm gonna now spread another rumor and a theory. Okay, so Folklore starts with an F. It's three syllables. It rhymes with Evermore, starts with an E. So you've got the F, then you've got the E. Now you're going to a word that starts with D for the third album, with also three syllables and rhymes, which narrows it down to either Dinosaur or Dumbledore. One of those two will be the title of your next album. Yes.

excuse me. I'm so tired. I'm so exhausted. I've tired myself out. I have nothing left. This is pretty good. This is you with Paul McCartney on cover of Rolling Stone. That's a good picture to have. Is this a picture that will make it on the wall at your home? That, that, that's what all the walls are going to be made of. I'm building a whole new home. Just that on every wall. Every brick has a little mini picture of that. None of the old homes are going to work anymore because they don't have enough of that. You went to Paul's office in London. Now Paul McCartney is 78 years old. Were you at any point were you worried about killing a beetle? Wow. You know what? I'm really glad I didn't talk to you before. The interview was great. And I a couple of things that I thought were interesting about your interview with him. And I just think it's always fun to see artists interviewing each other. Is that you both both of you

i know this about him. I did not know this about you. You don't mind being asked to play music at parties. Is that an accurate way of putting it? Yeah, we actually like it. It's weird. It's almost like we like music because, you know, a lot of people don't necessarily love it. I was talking to Billy Joel once, and he said every time he goes to a party, suddenly a piano has been rented. Well, that's happened to me too, but it's kind of like, you know, if the shoe fits, wear it. I don't know, like, I don't like being asked to do cartwheels at a party because I can't do a cartwheel. Interesting that you would say that because I announced on the air just a couple of weeks ago that I am going to start taking cartwheel lessons, and I'm not kidding. Uh, and if you'd like to join us, Guillermo and I are going to learn. Is this a bit? It's really not real. It's 100% real. I've always wanted to know.

how to do a cartwheel. I feel humiliated when little girls do it in front of me, and I want to be able to do it. So you're welcome. We're going to get an Olympic athlete to teach us to do cartwheels. All right, I'm getting off track though. Here, I want to talk. You know, important we are going to. When we come back, I'll talk about this some other time because we both have the same shame. [Laughter] 13 and the same shame. We're really on a wavelength here. Uh, folklore, the long pond studio sessions is on Disney Plus right now. When we come back, we'll see a clip from that and more with Taylor Swift. We'll be right back. [Music] [Music] [Music] That is Taylor Swift with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver singing together socially distanced with a mask on. Justin as well. I didn't know you could sing with a mask. I guess, well, I guess the Masked Singer should have

taught us that you can, but uh, he's not kidding around as far as safety goes. Yeah, he's a great example for people all over, you know. I would say, first of all, that new album. And I swear to god, and this is everyone's laughing at me here because I mostly just listen to Huey Lewis over and over again, but I think the new album is just fantastic. It is immediately something that you jump into, and I thought it was so interesting watching you in this documentary that you directed, explaining each of the songs and talking with Jack and talking with Aaron from The National, and really explaining where. Why did you choose to do that? Because I think a lot of songwriters prefer to keep it mysterious and not give anyone any hints about what their songs are about. I think that we had an opportunity with Disney Plus to create sort of a way to not only explain how we made these albums. At that point, it was just one, but it was the same group that made the

second album so it's a really good place to go to see um what our process was like but we could we could explain it because it was made under such weird circumstances um and then we could also meet as a group we'd never been in the same room before um aaron jack and i had never all all gotten to be together so it was great we quarantined for a while and then got tested and then got tested again and then had all the precautions taken um and it was really wonderful to get to share that you know after making that album forevermore you brought in all the guys from the national was that be were they getting mad at aaron for writing great songs without them for you i think that we should start that rumor i think it's a pretty good one um yeah it was uh it was amazing because we wrote this song called coney island and i had kind of i kind of written the second verse as if i was matt berninger uh the lead singer because matt has a very

um, signature type of lyricism. And I was just sort of hoping that if I wrote lyrics that were enough like what he might sing, he might say yes and sing on it. Um, and so we had the whole band play on it. Matt said yes, it's a duet that I'm really proud of. And um, yeah, Aaron. Aaron is an amazing collaborator because he's got such, he's, he's so talented. He's so prolific, but he's also such a wonderful, kind, generous, creative person. And he has a lot of people who want to collaborate with him. So I sort of, um, I've sort of like drifted off of that. Well, you guys made quite a team there. And your boyfriend wrote some of the lyrics to some of the songs under a pseudonym, William Bowery. Why? Who chose that name? Did you choose that or did he? He did. He did. What is there a meaning to that? Is it from the Bowery Hotel? I know people have speculated. You gotta ask him because it's really

more his story than mine. Turn the camera. [Laughter] Well, I don't know if you know this, but I noticed on the Disney Plus documentary, they bleeped out the f-word, and you got some profanity on the album. Somebody on Reddit made a chart. I don't know if you've seen this, tracking the amount of profanity in your albums from year to year. It started with two dams on your first album, then you went totally clean, and now you're up to four f-words, Taylor. [Applause] It's just been that kind of year. Well, I have to say, I mean, you've been so. It is crazy how productive you have been and what you put out here. I feel like if you'd been in charge of the vaccine, it would have been done in June. Ah, that's the nicest compliment anyone. Well, thanks for being with us. Happy birthday. Merry Christmas. Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions is on Disney Plus right now. And this is her surprise new album, Evermore. It's out.

now to Taylor Swift everybody. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you so much. We'll be back with Christian. Congratulations on making it to the end of a YouTube video. Why not celebrate by clicking the subscribe button. You earned it.

Taylor Swift on Turning 31, New Album, Fan Theories, Documentary & Boyfriend’s Pseudonym

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