Taylor Swift has admitted she is paranoid the world is waiting for her to mess up.
The Bad Blood songstress, 25, told NME magazine that she relies on phone calls to her mother to keep her anxiety under control.
“I’m in the news every single day for multiple different reasons. And it can feel, at times, if you let your anxiety get the better of you, like everybody’s waiting for you to really mess up – and then you’ll be done,” she said.
“A lot of the time I need to call my mom and talk for a really long time, just to remind myself of all the things that are great and all the things that matter.
“If you do something that defines your character to be not what the public thought you were, that’s the biggest risk.”
Taylor, who is known for acts of generosity including a recent 50,000 US dollars (£32,650) donation to her backing dancer’s nephew who is suffering from cancer, also said she struggled with being labelled the good girl of pop.
“It’s not about trying to be perfect. Not to try and sound like the good witch in The Wizard Of Oz or something, but I really do want to do good things with what I have, and that’s it.
“I don’t think my brain could cook up very shocking things for the sake of being shocking,” she continued, referring to the outrageous behaviour of some of her fellow starlets.
Swift became embroiled in a highly-publicised Twitter spat in July with singer Nicki Minaj when she interpreted one of Minaj’s tweets about missing out on an MTV Video Music Award nomination as an attack on her.
She declined to talk about their recent verbal bust-up but revealed she soothed the feud with a text message.
“I send text messages now. If there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding, I go to someone’s management, I get their number and I text them. It’s an important lesson for anyone to learn in 2015.”
Taylor admitted “it took a while” but she is on “such good terms now” with rapper Kanye West, who infamously took the microphone from her at the 2009 MTV VMAs to say she didn’t deserve her best female video award.
Kanye pretended to repeat the incident at this year’s Grammy Awards when singer Beck won best album. But he seems to have learnt his lesson, as Swift revealed in an anecdote about a recent dinner.
“I was at dinner with Kanye a week after the Grammys, he stops what he’s saying and he goes, ‘What is this song? I need to listen to this every day.’
“I said, ‘It’s Beck, it’s on an album called Morning Phase, I think you’ve heard of it…’ We just burst out laughing. And he says, ‘Hey, sometimes I’m wrong.’”
One thing Taylor doesn’t have to worry about is her next album.
Asked if the idea of topping 1989 scared her, she replied: “Nooooooo. How could the next one be as big? Maybe the next album will be a bridge to somewhere else. Or maybe I’ll just go ahead and change everything.”
The world tour for her 1989 album will end in December after seven months on the road, and Swift said she is unsure of what to do with her new-found freedom.
“I think I should take some time off. I think people might need a break from me. I’m going to… I don’t know. Hang out with my friends. Write new music. Maybe not write new music. I don’t know,” she admitted.
To read the full interview, NME magazine is available from Friday.
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