Taylor Swift was the big winner at last night’s Billboard Music Awards, which shouldn’t come as some big shock. I didn’t watch them, but I saw some coverage and I was pleased to see that Swifty isn’t doing that “OMG, LITTLE GIRL GASP!” thing that she usually does when she wins an award. Swifty ended up winning eight awards in total, including “Top Artist”. You can read more about her winning streak here. I’d like to give her the award for “Best GIF of the BMAs” – go here to see.

Swifty wore this blue Zuhair Murad from the Pre-Fall 2013 collection. I am… underwhelmed. Swifty has two consistent red carpet looks: glittery, sparkly and tight OR long and flowy and princess-y. I am happy that she didn’t do a full-length gown and I’m glad she chose a bright, pretty color. But the design of the dress is just kind of… boringly showgirl. And OMG, please Swifty, please change your bangs. They are terrible. Also: what’s going on with her bolt-ons? I know she had them at one point, but I’m starting to wonder if she had the first ones taken out and she had smaller ones put in.

Shania Twain was also there! I think so much of Shania’s beauty, and I have my fingers crossed that she hasn’t and won’t ruin her face with lots of plastic surgery and Botox and such. Shania wore Pavoni by Mikael D. Very princess-y. I bet Swifty wishes she had worn this.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I have literally no idea what Taylor Swift’s Met Gala look was all about, or what she was trying to achieve or whatever. Swifty wore one of her favorite designers, J. Mendel. And as such, she looked like she always looks, because she always wears J.Mendel on red carpets. We’ve seen versions of this dress on her a million times before. I guess that’s why Swifty tried to mess it up a bit with her hair and makeup? Her hair – which is naturally curly – looks crimped. And her makeup doesn’t work, I don’t think. I just think this whole look is a FAIL. Also: did she get her bolt-ons taken out?!!?

Amber Heard in Emilio Pucci – God, I just hate everything about this. Amber is actually a pretty woman with a great figure, and she can pull off lots of different kinds of looks. She could have done “punk” really well. But she chose this fussy, lace dress that covers her figure and blends in perfectly with the carpet. It’s terrible. It ages her. It’s just an ugly dress. And her hair is bad too.

Emilia Clarke in Ralph Lauren. She looks beautiful, she looks like a bombshell. I wish she would show up to, like, the Golden Globes like this. Because I think it’s wasted on the Met Gala. She doesn’t look right for the event at all. But does she get some points for looking pretty in general?

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Taylor Swift’s last foray into real estate was a disaster. Okay, not really, but it was a PR disaster. Last year, after only dating high school student Conor Kennedy for a few months, Taylor bought the multi-million dollar property right across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. Then, in her Vanity Fair cover story, Taylor tried to half-ass a denial about the real estate purchase only to be called out by the VF journalist, who looked into the real estate deal. It seems that Swifty did actually make the purchase (through her shell company) and then she flipped it for a profit after a few months had passed. So, at least Swifty made some money off of it, although her reputation did get dinged and plus she just continues to look like the kind of young woman who real-estate-stalks her boyfriends.

Anyway, Taylor’s new real estate venture doesn’t seem to come with a boy attached, so I just don’t know what to think. According to TMZ, Swifty just bought a $17 million Rhode Island mansion. IN CASH.

Taylor Swift is a certified BALLER — TMZ has learned that not only did she just buy a Rhode Island mansion for $17 million … but she did it with straight cash, homey!

As TMZ first reported, Swift was eyeing the 11k-plus-square-foot mansion for a few weeks now, having toured the place back on April 15.

According to our real estate sources, the asking price on the house (which sits on 5.23 acres) was around $20 mil, but Swift got it for $17.75 mil.

We’re told Swift wired the money over and movers were spotted at the house early this morning. Maybe Taylor is better at closing the deal than we thought.

[From TMZ]

A month from now, will we find out that Swifty has some new boyfriend, perhaps a teenage son of some Rhode Island hedge fund manager or something? Perhaps. But having seen the estate (I’m including a photo below), I think Swifty bought it because the house looks like a giant wedding cake, or perhaps a pile of meringue or whipped cream. That appeals to her Alice In Wonderland sensibilities.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I have never found John Mayer attractive. At all. He ALWAYS reminded me of the try-hard poseur boys in college who try to act like they’re sensitive poets but really they were just standard-issue date-rapey bros. My knee-jerk revulsion towards Mayer always made me harshly judge the women that dated him too. How could they kiss that face without vomiting? That’s a real question. What was wrong with Katy Perry that she could let THAT on top of her? What was wrong with Jennifer Aniston that she took THAT back after he publicly dumped her? GROSS.

And don’t get me started on Taylor Swift. I think I gave her more sympathy initially about Mayer just because she was SO young when they were fooling around. He was in his 30s, and I think Swifty was all of 18 or 19. But in the years that followed, I kind of think Swifty might have played Mayer a little bit. She got the last laugh – she wrote a song about how he’s a gigantic douche, after all, and John was so irritated that he whined about it to Rolling Stone. Whatever happened between them, God only knows, but I’m sure it involved tea parties, crochet, cuddlefesting, douchebaggery and LIES. So Mayer and Swifty ended years ago… I think, like, 2010. Is she still pissed off about it? Us Weekly says yes.

Sunday, April 7, should have been a great night for Taylor Swift. She was nominated in five categories at the Academy of Country Music Awards, she had a gorgeous scene-stealing gold dress for the red carpet, and she was scheduled to perform with Keith Urban and Tim McGraw — a star she once sang about in her first-ever single, “Tim McGraw.”

But things took a turn when the “22″ singer discovered that John Mayer was slated to take the stage first at the Las Vegas event, sources reveal in the April 29 issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.

One insider says Swift, 23, put on “a stink” about her ex-boyfriend’s performance. “She said she had to go on earlier than him,” the source tells Us of the songwriter, who had a brief romance with Mayer in 2010 and later wrote the song “Dear John” about him.

The country star got her way in the end, but a second insider says Swift “was just really bitter that night” — especially after she didn’t win anything.

“After she didn’t win anything, she bailed on a postshow dinner party,” explains a second insider. While Swift’s rep calls the story “absolutely false,” the insider adds that “John just being there irked her.”

[From Us Weekly, print and online editions]

What I find more interesting than the Mayer stuff (which is admittedly fascinating to me for some reason) is that Swifty truly gets bummed out when she doesn’t win anything. Swifty’s been on a losing streak all of this year. My favorite was when Adele won Best Song at the Golden Globes and the camera panned to Swifty’s sad little bitchface, which is totally better/more preferable than her OMIGOSH I WON surprise-face. Anyway, as for the Mayer stuff… it kind of sounds reasonable to me that Swifty would have demanded to go on before Mayer…? That doesn’t sound like a breakup-angst thing, it sounds like a young artist who can pull strings and make demands at an awards show, and like she wanted to go on before a “minor” artist like Mayer.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Taylor Swift covers the new issue of Wonderland and I am loathing most of the photoshoot. I don’t know who shot the thing, but it feels like the person studied at The School of Uncle Terry’s P0rn Lighting. There’s one shot which I kind of liked – the one where she’s seated and wearing Elton John glasses and it looks straight out of a Harper’s Bazaar circa 1969. I guess I also have to give props to whoever decided to force Tay-Tay to forgo her beloved red lipstick too. Huzzah! She looks so much better without the red. As for the interview… sigh….

On relationships: “Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.”

On what her future holds: “I have no idea if I’m going to get married or be single forever or have a family or just be on my own. You know, paint in a cottage by the ocean by myself. I’ve kind of realized that I have no idea where I’m going to be next year, or in six months, or in two months. I mean, I know where I’ll be on tour in two months, but no idea where I’m going to be mentally, emotionally, dreams, goals, wishes, hopes. I just have no idea and I’m kind of into that. You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that’s great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.”

On having her heart broken: “You’re never feeling just sad. Maybe you wake up and you feel sad, and then you get angry, and then you feel like “I’m fine.” And then you feel confident, and then you feel a sense of doubt, and then you’re insecure, and then there’s jealousy, and then you’re back to sad – and then you feel fine again.’

[From The Mail]

And then you feel sad. And then you feel hungry. And then you feel boy-crazy. And then you feel like calling your publicist and leaking something damaging about your ex to Us Weekly. And then you feel sad. And then you feel like “Hey, I’m going to put on some red lipstick!” Yes, this is how Tay-Tay thinks.

I’m trying really hard not to nit-pick Taylor’s statement about not planning her future. I believe more young women should plan for their future, plan for home ownership, financial independence, plan for the children they want to have (if they want to have kids). Yes, when you’re 22 or 23 years old, you don’t have to have everything figured out and that is exactly the time when you should be making mistakes and learning life lessons, but for Taylor Swift, it feels more like, “I’m not going to form any opinions or make any plans until I get a husband and he tells me what my future is going to be!”

Photos courtesy of Wonderland.

Here is a tale of two country music blondes and how they deal with their stagnating styles in different ways. Some say Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift are nemeses. Some say that the drama between them in manufactured by the media because everybody loves a good girl-fight. I don’t know. All I do know is that Swifty really, really needs to change up her look because she looked flat-out terrible at last night’s Academy of Country Music Awards.

Swifty wore this gold, sparkly Dolce & Gabanna dress which… I guess the good thing about it is that her bolt-ons aren’t spilling out. But we’ve seem similar looks on Swifty a million times before (and she’s done this “sparkly metallic dress, hair back” looks better in previous appearances too), and at this point, it’s her default and it’s aggressively boring. I know the ACMs are not some mecca of high-fashion, but this is really cheap-looking and pageant-y even for Swifty. And I just can’t with the ponytail and bangs at this point. Ugh. Something nice: I’m glad she’s not wearing red lipstick and I like her earrings.

Quite honestly, I was expecting Carrie Underwood to wear a sparkly pageant gown like Swifty’s for the ACMs. That’s Carrie’s default too, although she usually goes strapless and sparkly, with big blonde pageant hair. So imagine my surprise when I didn’t really hate that Carrie changed it up. Carrie’s dress is Naeem Khan, a big, bold print that actually looks pretty good on her, right? It could have gone horribly wrong, but I think it works…? I especially like the black belt. My least favorite part? The hair. I don’t mind that she pulled it back and still managed to make it “big” but it looks too messy for the dress.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Have you forgotten why you disliked Taylor Swift so much? Can she come out and get pap’d on the regular again? Because she is! These are new photos of Tay-Tay at Bristol Farms yesterday in LA, doing some light grocery shopping. What’s your grocery shopping schedule? Unless I’m sick or I just had some brain fart and forgot something important, I only go grocery shopping once a week and I get everything I need. Since I just live with my dog, my grocery needs are pretty simple and I don’t even keep a list. I always need the same thing. Dog food, yogurt, ginger ale, bananas, some stuff from the deli. Still, I manage to fill up the cart every week. I’m amazed by people who go grocery shopping every other day. Maybe it has something to do with having kids and running out of stuff more often? But then how do you explain Swifty’s general lack of bags? She must have just run out of a few things: tampons, glittery nail polish and apples?

I put this in the links last week, but it’s worth repeating – Swifty is going to guest-star on the season finale of New Girl on May 14th. Taylor’s songs have been featured on New Girl before – Nick Miller memorably danced to a Swifty song to make Jess feel better after she had been dumped. But Swifty isn’t going to star as herself, she’s going to play “a character named Elaine, who is an ‘important guest’ at the wedding of Cece (Hannah Simone) and Shivrang (Satya Bhabha).” First of all, ten bucks says Cece doesn’t even go through with the wedding. Second of all, if Swifty sings, it’s going to be a Twee-Off, Bangs-Off disaster. If Jess and Elaine do a duet… well, it better not be one of Swifty’s songs. But! It would be funny if Swifty came on as a love interest for Schmidt or Nick. Just to mix it up.

Also – Swifty has partnered with Keds on a full-range collection of sneakers. You can see the collection here. All of them are perfectly appropriate for a tween or even a teen. But I fear roaming bands of 20-something hipster girls wearing these Keds.

PS… Does Swifty not own any sweatpants?

Photos courtesy of Owen Beiny/WENN.com.

Here are some new photos of Taylor Swift exiting her NYC hotel yesterday, on her way to a concert in New Jersey. I would just like to take a moment and praise Swifty… I know, I’m not usually the person to see for pro-Swifty senitments, but here we go. I like that she’s been keeping her head down since the anti-Swifty backlash following her Vanity Fair cover. I also like that she doesn’t seem destined for a Justin Bieber-like meltdown. Whatever negative stuff you can throw at Swifty, she actually has pretty decent PR instincts, and she knows when to back away and let her image have a “rest”. Swifty keeps her PR image tight, and that’s admirable in someone so young, I think. OK, nice moment over.

Do you realize that Swifty has been without an official boyfriend for three months? It’s been SO LONG! Yeah, she might be boning Ed Sheeran and/or that blonde surfer dude, but nothing is “official” until Swifty does a cutesy photo-op with the guy. So in her hour of loneliness and need, is it crazy that she would reach out to an ex? What if that ex was Conor Kennedy?

Are Taylor Swift and Conor Kennedy headed for a reunion? It might be so! Harry Styles can rest easy, but Taylor may “never, ever” want to get back together with him, but she might feel differently about Conor! Since her split from Harry earlier this year, Taylor has been suffering from “crippling loneliness” that Conor has been helping her through. Are they getting back together?

Conor, 18, has been a real shoulder for Taylor, 23 to cry on in recent months, as not only has she suffered another break up, she is being teased mercilessly for dating so many guys.

“Conor has been a real source of comfort to Taylor recently. She is suffering from crippling loneliness,” a source tells Grazia magazine.

However, don’t be hoping for a reunion between Taylor and Robert Kennedy‘s grandson just yet.

“They get on really well, but it was just a fleeting romance. She loves that he listens to her worries and he has been a real crutch. He’s the most down-to-earth person she’s dated.”

Taylor and Conor have a real bond, as she has been there for him in tough times also. She was a real rock for him following his mother’s suicide in 2012.

[From Hollywood Life]

Yeah, this originally came from Grazia, so it’s not the most reliable thing in the world. But I do think Swifty would consider an 18-year-old Kennedy boy “down-to-earth”. Or that in her mind, she’s got real problems and she needs to vent on an 18-year-old who lost his mother a year ago. But other than that… I think this might be possible. I never really thought Conor and Taylor’s love story was over last year. I always believed they would eventually get back together. Maybe they’ll see each other during Conor’s spring break? Or maybe they’ll get back together for his summer break (before he goes back to prep school for his senior year in 2013-2014).

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and TNYF/WENN.com.

Does Taylor Swift have a new boyfriend? Of course she does, even if her people are denying the reports already. I tend to think Swifty is one of those girls who constantly needs to have a “crush” on someone, but not necessarily be in a relationship. Her M.O. seems to be: crush on a guy for a while, finally get the guy, go completely insane over the guy, make the guy pose for photo-ops within a few days of officially “dating”, buy property close to the guy, meet the guy’s family and then, after two weeks have passed, get dumped by the guy over the phone. Then she spends a month or two stalking him after he dumped her, and then she writes some songs about him and then she’s on to the next one.

Anyway, Swifty and Harry Styles broke up in early January. She’s been due for a new crush/boyfriend for a while. And she might have found the crush with super-blonde surfer John John Florence, and I’m not even joking about his name. His name is John John Florence. He’s 20 years old and a pro surfer. Here he is:

Skin damage from too much sun and salt water, yes. But he’s a cute guy with beautiful eyes and he has the kind of hair Taylor looks for in potential boyfriends. One of her biggest priorities is “hair”. The rumor mill went into overdrive when tabloids reported that John John and Taylor have been flirting and texting with each other. John John even seemed to hint at a relationship in a recent interview, but Swifty’s people are trying to shut it down:

It doesn’t sound like Taylor Swift is angling to catch a wave with John John Florence. Rumor has it that the 23-year-old singer recently initiated contact with rather adorable 20-year-old pro surfer and that the pair have been growing closer via text message ever since. Or not.

Sources assure E! News that “there is no truth to this at all,” and that “Taylor is not dating—or texting—this guy.”

She could do worse than the Hawaiian-born Florence, who won the Vans World Cup of Surfing in 2011, but it does seem far-fetched that she’d be embarking on such a thing at this time.

Swift is on her way to Charlotte, N.C., having just kicked off her Red Tour last week. And, last we checked, that’s a long way from Hawaii.

The romantic tale appears to have been spurred on by Florence’s response when an Australian TV reporter asked him two weeks ago during a surfing event in Queensland if he could provide some insight into “a little bit of something” she had heard about him and Swift.

“Yeah, you know, it’s kind of a secret thing going on right now,” he replied, smiling. “Can’t bust it out in the public just yet.”

[From E! News]

Sounds like Taylor has John John on the backburner and right now she’s focused on her tour. My guess is she’s going to get with Ed Sheeran while they tour together and then she’ll get with John John a few months from now. Surprise! They were texting each other the whole time.

Here’s video of John John surfing:

DONE Trailer 2 from John John Florence on Vimeo.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Here are some new photos of Taylor Swift over the weekend in LA – the costume changes are because she was literally changing costumes because she was filming a new music video. I’m sure the Swifty fans could tell you what her new single is, but I cannot. Swifty JUST released “22” as her third single and music video off of Red, so…? You’re guess is as good as mine. I know that Swifty has been pretty annoying lately, but these photos have given me a serious case of jealousy for her legs. She has those long, coltish legs that are just a gift of genetics. I will never have those legs. Sigh.

In other Swifty news, you know how she seemed to mock Harry Styles in particular during her performance of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” at the Grammys? Part of the song has a speaking part where Swifty does a put-on dude’s voice, and during that part, Swifty made her dude’s voice sound “English”. This came just a month or so after Harry (reportedly) dumped her (although Swifty’s version events was slightly different in her epic Vanity Fair interview). Then Swifty performed at the BRIT Awards, singing “I Knew You Were Trouble”… while Harry was sitting there in the audience! So of course when Swifty was asked about what that was like, she provided us more insight into her soul:

She is famous for writing songs about her menagerie of famous ex-boyfriends. And it seems the subject of Taylor Swift’s most recent failed relationship is no exception. The 23-year-old singer has finally revealed her 2012 hit single I Knew You Were Trouble is about her ex-boyfriend Harry Styles.

Speaking about her spirited performance at the 2012 Brit Awards in front of Harry and his One Direction bandmates, the singer was asked how she felt performing the number while her ex was watching.

Taylor told The Sunday Times: ‘Well, it’s not hard to access that emotion when the person the song is directed at is standing by the side of the stage watching.’

Speculation had been rife that Taylor had penned the song about the One Direction star when they first briefly dated in Spring 2012, and the star appeared to confirm the rumours were true in the interview with The Sunday Times magazine.

Speaking about her performance of the song at this year’s Brit Awards where she stripped down to a sultry black outfit, she said: ‘You’re balancing the analytical side of your brain which is telling you where to go and how to go there, with the other side of your brain, which is saying “Feel everything you’re singing, and show it on your face. Feel everything exactly as you felt it when you wrote the song.”‘

[From The Mail]

Hahaha, I thought she didn’t ever, ever discuss which songs were about which spurned ex? Oh, well! She does this all the time – she plays coy and uptight, claiming that she won’t discuss who the songs are about or who broke her heart, but then she’ll drop enough hints so that every song is pretty much an obvious blind item. So now we know “Trouble” was always about Harry Styles? I really thought it was about John Mayer. Truly. Because HOW could the song not be about him? There should be sirens going off whenever he speaks to a woman – “RED ALERT JOHN MAYER IS A D-BAG RED ALERT RED ALERT”. But sure, now we know – it’s about Harry. Poor Harry.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.