Taylor Swift‘s long awaited Rolling Stone interview has finally arrived.
The 29-year-old held nothing back in her discussion with writer Brian Hiatt about topics including her highly publicized feud with Kanye West, the 2016 election and the backlash she received from not being more vocal about it, and the process behind making her latest album Lover.
One item that Taylor covered in her RS interview was about the cynical people who believe everything she does is an act. Some members of the gay community supported that idea after she released the video for “You Need To Calm Down,” which was seen many as an anthem for the LGBTQ community.
The video featured many prevalent members of our community including RuPaul, Todrick Hall and the cast of Queer Eye. “YNTCD” ended with Taylor asking fans to sign her petition for Senate support of the Equality Act on Change.org. “Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.”
Still, many gay men doubted her authenticity and saw it as a stunt rather than her being supportive of us. “She’s a sell out,” one wrote on Twitter after the clip was released. “Overrated. I prefer the female singers who don’t have to sell-out to support us (Pink, Kelly Clarkson).”
“The question posed to me is, if you kept trying to do good things, but everyone saw those things in a cynical way and assumed them to be done with bad motivation and bad intent, would you still do good things, even though nothing that you did was looked at as good?,” she said in response to this topic. “And the answer is, yes. Criticism that’s constructive is helpful to my character growth. Baseless criticism is stuff I’ve got to toss out now.”
Check out Taylor’s Rolling Stone interview in its entirety here.