Taylor Swift has been known to accept feedback from fans and critics, but there’s one request she refuses to heed: “Go away.”
Ahead of the premiere of her Disney+ docuseries, “The End of an Era,” Swift appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to discuss her recent achievements and milestones.
When Colbert asked Swift who she could turn to for advice, she listed rock star Stevie Nicks and pop producer Max Martin as confidants.
“What I look up to the most in people is career longevity — career longevity, friendship longevity, longevity in their relationships, you know? How do you keep a good thing going?” Swift said.
“I think there are certain corners of our society that really love that and look up to longevity,” she continued. “There are also corners that are like, ‘Give someone else a turn! Can’t you just go away so we can talk about how good you were?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t want to.'”
Swift has faced accusations of overexposure throughout her career, but particularly in the last few years. Her cross-continental, 149-show Eras Tour, which concluded in December 2024, garnered extensive media coverage and consistently went viral on social media. The New Yorker said Swift had achieved “complete domination over popular culture.”
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When Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department” halfway through the tour’s two-year run, fans and critics alike called the album overlong and overindulgent. When it topped the Billboard 200 for 17 weeks, fans of other artists complained that Swift was sabotaging her fellow pop stars, including Billie Eilish and Charli XCX, by preventing their albums from reaching No. 1 on the chart.
Swift’s newest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” was met with similar reproach. In his review for The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber wrote, “‘Showgirl’ is the sound of an overworked and overexposed entertainer reaching the mountaintop to find something worse than disappointment: burnout.” Swift’s prolificacy and sales tactics have been described as shameless and excessive.
Still, Swift has refused to shrink away from the spotlight. The first two episodes of “The End of an Era” will be available to stream on Friday, along with an extended version of her Eras Tour concert movie, featuring a new segment with songs from “The Tortured Poets Department.” The remaining four episodes of the docuseries will be released in pairs over the next two weeks.
During her interview with Colbert, Swift also joked that she prefers to think of herself as “passionate” and “hyperactive,” rather than a workaholic.
“When I take time off, it’s always just like, I can’t slow down the fact that I need to get up and do a lot of things today. But I can change what those things are,” she said. “I can figure out how to chill out, but I’m never gonna be a chill person.”
