Taylor Swift was in England yesterday! She went to jolly old England for Election Day, which is just a weird thing to do. I don’t think so little of Swifty to assume that she doesn’t care about politics – if anything, I bet she supported Pres. Obama (she dated a Kennedy, for the love of God!), but she didn’t want to discuss her politics in public because she doesn’t want to A) alienate any conservative fans she has and B) let her fans believe that she would care about anything other than BOYS BOYS BOYS. So maybe she voted absentee in Tennessee, and then she went to England for a pre-Christmas celebration which had her switching on the Christmas lights at a shopping center and giving a performance in support of her new album. Even I have to admit – whatever she’s doing, it’s working. She’s selling albums like hot cakes.

Anyway, getting back to the only real thing that Swifty cares about, there are two quotes from recent Swifty interviews that I wanted to pick apart. Here you go:

Swifty on BOYS and relationship advice: “My advice about guys has to do with how you prioritize them. They can be a part of your life but never let the guy BE your life. They can live in your world, but never make the guy your world. Knowing who you are and being independent and strong will be attractive to the right guy. Trying too hard to impress a guy or putting him before your friends and family shows you’re not OK with who you are. One of my goals is always to be OK with who I am aside from love and boys.”

On who ‘Red’ is based on: “The idea was based on this experience I had with someone who was kind of this unreliable guy. You never know when he’s going to leave, you never know when he’s going to come back, but he always does come back. My visual for this song is, there’s a guy on his knees sitting on the ground outside of a door. And on the other side of the door is his girlfriend, who he keeps on leaving — and he keeps coming back to her, but then he leaves again. He’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m going to do this to you.’ And she’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m asking you this: Don’t do this again.’ And she’s wondering whether to let him in, and he just wants her to give him another chance, but she doesn’t know if he’s going to break her heart again. It’s a really fragile emotion you’re dealing with when you want to love someone, but you don’t know if it’s smart to.”

[From Hollywood Life and NPR via HuffPo]

For Swifty’s relationship advice and her message of “self-love, self-knowledge, then be in a relationship” – it’s a great message to give to young women. Unfortunately, Swifty is a crappy messenger. I’ve had girlfriends like this – capable of giving you really great, empowering, inspirational advice about loving yourself first and loving the dude secondarily, and all of those girlfriends were total disasters when it came to their boyfriends. They were all codependent doormats who could never follow their own advice.

As for Swifty’s “hints” about who the entire Red album is about… Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake. It’s Jake. It’s not John Mayer.

Photos courtesy of WENN.