Taylor Swift slays as a platinum blonde on the cover of Vogue

You’d think with all the media coverage of Taylor Swift, we’d know everything there is to know. But in the latest issue of Vogue, it’s more evident than ever that we’ll never know everything about a famous person. . . because they’re people, with a backstory, childhood friends, parents, and dreams. In an interview for her May Vogue cover — where she absolutely slays with gorgeous platinum blonde hair— Taylor discussed her childhood, nostalgia, and the never-ending frustration she endures from the media picking her life apart.

The interview took place at the wedding of Taylor’s best friend in Reading, Pennsylvania, where Taylor grew up. Taylor also opened up about growing up on her parents’ Christmas tree farm and having to admit to her mom that she didn’t really like horseback riding after years of riding competitively. “It’s such a surreal, emotional thing,” she told Vogue. “When you’re a little kid, you’re riding the same roads to school every single day, hundreds of times. When you come back, you snap into that strange nostalgia.”

Because clearly, school-aged Taylor is very, very different from current Taylor — for one thing, everyone now knows her name. The media has been relentless, she explained — and for a long time, she was known for who she dated. “You know, I went out on a normal amount of dates in my early 20s, and I got absolutely slaughtered for it,” she told Vogue. “And it took a lot of hard work and altering my decision-making. I didn’t date for two and a half years. Should I have had to do that? No. I guess what I wanted to call attention to in my speech at the Grammys was how it’s going to be difficult if you’re a woman who wants to achieve something in her life—no matter what.”

Over the years, Taylor has learned how to deal with the rumors — by just letting them be. “If they say you are pregnant, all you have to do is continue to not be pregnant and not have a baby,” she said. “If the rumor is that you have fake friendships, all you have to do is continue to be there for each other. And when we’re all friends in 15 years and raising our kids together, maybe somebody will look back and go, ‘That was kind of ridiculous what we said about Taylor and her friends.’”

That, she hints, is the reason why she’s been keeping quiet about her relationship with musician Calvin Harris. “I’m just taking things as they come,” she told Vogue. “I’m in a magical relationship right now. And of course I want it to be ours, and low-key . . . this is the one thing that’s been mine about my personal life.”

But what’s coming next for her professionally? “I have no idea,” she said. “This is the first time in 10 years that I haven’t known. I just decided that after the past year, with all of the unbelievable things that happened . . . I decided I was going to live my life a little bit without the pressure on myself to create something.”

But don’t fret — she’ll certainly keep making music. “I’m always going to be writing songs,” she explained to Vogue. “The thing is, with me, I could very well come up with three things in the next two weeks and then jump back into the studio, and all of a sudden the next record is started. That’s an option, too.”

Taylor Swift does have tiny, short-term goals for herself, outside of her music dreams. “I want to be a well-rounded person who can make a good drink,” she said. “. . . [And] to be able to save somebody if they’re drowning. So CPR, all the various kinds of chest compressions. People tell you little tips, but that’s different from actually taking a class and getting certified. . . [Once,] I got it in my head that I couldn’t do a split, and I was really upset about it. And so I stretched every single day for a year until I could do a split. Somehow I feel better knowing that I can.”

And here we thought we couldn’t love Taylor more.