What Keeps Her Up at Night

Taylor Swift after dark.

- CRAIG JENKINS

TAYLOR SWIFT HAS been training all her life to be the artist she is today. A natural inclination toward synthesizing problems through painful, earnest koans and an ease with uncomplicated melodies made her a superstar in Nashville's country-music ecosystem. By 2012, she had teamed up with dance-pop hitmakers and seized control of the circuit as a seemingly unflappable public figure-one with CMA charm and just a touch of VMA smarm. Lately, what's become more fascinating is everything Swift has done to escape the genteel, apolitical perfectionism that made her famous: the unexpected twists in her catalogue, the tiffs with her peers, the battles over authorship and respect. Her progression from writing songs about storybook romances to ones about not fitting into cookie-cutter gender roles dovetails with a larger shift toward a simpler fantasy: the desire to be truly free.