Taylor Swift offers a glimpse into her self-imposed exile after her public feud with Kanye West, as well as her romance with Joe Alwyn, in the new Netflix documentary Miss Americana.
The singer reveals how she was affected when the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended worldwide after West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, shared edited clips of the now infamous phone call when the pair discussed the lyrics to West’s song Famous, in which he rapped, “Me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous”.
She says: “When people decided I was wicked and evil and conniving and not a good person, that was the one I couldn’t really bounce back from, because my whole life was centred around it.”
Discussing the trend, she says: “Do you know how many people have to be tweeting that they hate you for that to happen?”
She adds that she disappeared for a year because she thought that was what people wanted, before she returned with comeback album Reputation.
Swift also says that during that time she was falling in love and, although she does not name Alwyn directly, there are a string of phone videos that appear to have been filmed by him.
She says: “I felt really alone, I felt really bitter, I felt sort of like a wounded animal lashing out.
“I figured I had to reset everything.”
She adds: “I was also falling in love with someone who had a really wonderfully normal, balanced, grounded life and we decide together that we wanted our relationship to be private.”
One of the home videos shows Swift performing Call It What You Want as she sits on the floor playing the guitar, and at one point she mouths “I love you” to the person holding the camera.
There is also footage apparently filmed by Alwyn of Swift driving a car while kissing his hand, and of them walking in a park together.
Later in the film he is seen on camera backstage at one of her concerts as they embrace and he kisses her on the forehead.
The second half of the film addresses Swift’s decision to go public about her political beliefs, and her decision to endorse Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate in 2018.
It also features a new track, Only The Young, her most political song to date, in which she sings: “The game was rigged, the ref got ticked, the wrong ones think they’re right, you were outnumbered this time.”
She also refers to “the big bad man and his big bag clan, his hands are stained with red”, adding: “They aren’t gonna help us, too busy helping themselves, they aren’t gonna change this, we’ve got to do it ourselves.”
At the end of the lyric video, a card appears on screen reading: “Register to vote and get election reminders. Go to vote.org to learn more.”