Taylor Swift Names Her Top 3 Influences — and Yes, Her Two Cats Make the List
Taylor Swift earned a place on this year’s TIME 100 list of the year’s most influential people and performed at the annual gala in New York City on Tuesday night, and now the pop star is revealing who and what inspires her.
In the No. 3 spot: blog and social media platform Tumblr.
“I go on Tumblr and it’s like a window into what my fans are going through,” Swift, rocking her new pink dip-dyed hair, says in a video for TIME. “They post about their lives. They post about what they’re into. They post about what they think is cool, what they think is unjust or problematic and they basically are very, very expressive and it makes me feel like I can know them better. They’re also posting like cool pictures that I like of just things completely unrelated to their lives or my music or anything.”
The 10-time Grammy winner admits, “I definitely go down the rabbit hole a lot sometimes — so much so that then I need my brain to take a break.”
RELATED: Taylor Swift Surprises Fans Ahead of New Music Release at Butterfly Mural in Nashville
RELATED VIDEO: Taylor Swift Steps Out with New Pink Dip-Dyed Hair — Is It Another Clue Fresh Music Is on the Way?
Swift, 29, goes on to name former Beatle Paul McCartney as her second biggest influence.
“I look at Paul McCartney and I see how he’s had just this amazing career,” she continues. “He’s created just unparalleled art and probably been faced with more pressure than most people. And he’s always been known to be kind to people, respectful, and also really selfless as a performer. I really like it when you go and see a show and you want to see those songs that you loved like you want to hear all that old, iconic classic stuff, and I like it when a performer knows that and will give that to their fans.”
But Swift likes 76-year-old McCartney’s newer work, too. “He’s still got it!” she says.
And of course, Swift couldn’t help but put cats in the No. 1 spot on her list. “I’m obsessed with them,” the “Bad Blood” singer, who’s a cat mom to Olivia and Meredith, gushes in the video. “They’re just a real joy to live with.”
Swift will also star in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of Cats alongside James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen and Rebel Wilson.
RELATED VIDEO: We Tried It: Becoming One of the Cats on Broadway for a Day
“When a role came up in a movie called Cats, I just thought, I’ve got to do this,” Swift says. “This is my calling in life to do this for the ladies. So I went to cat school, which they have on set readily available for us. Learned how to be as much like a cat as I possibly could.”
