Quote Of The Day By Taylor Swift: 'I Think About This Every Day Now But Instead Of It Being...'

Throughout American music history, there have been very few instances of a solo artist being as culturally and commercially dominant as Taylor Swift has been in the 2020s. The 36-year-old singer-songwriter raked in history-making amounts of money with her Eras Tour, keeps breaking sales and chart records with every new album and song release, and has established herself as a powerful and respected enough figure to get Paul McCartney to dust off "I Want to Hold Your Hand" after 62 years for her wedding.

It's been a long road to the top of the world for Swift, who started out in 2006 as a precocious writer and belter of earnest country ballads. Following an album of the year Grammy win for her diamond-certified sophomore record "Fearless" and a bold, remarkable foray into 100% solo-written material on "Speak Now," Swift began a tentative pivot to pop with 2012's "Red" and made herself fully at home in the genre on its follow-up "1989." Thus began one of the most imperial careers in pop music history, conducted with aplomb through high and low points all the way to its current apogee.

Even one of the most successful musicians of all time had her regrets and worries as her star rose higher, however. And Taylor Swift is as notable for her astronomical success as for the gutsy, outside-the-box decision that helped her cinch it — and which she made as a way to grapple with her biggest lifelong professional anxiety. The nerve and shrewdness with which she made lemonade out of her lemons is what makes Taylor Swift our Quote of the Day.

"I think about this every day now but instead of it being an intrusive thought that hurts me, it's: 'I can't believe this happened, like how lucky am I?'"

These words were said by Taylor Swift in August 2025 (via KCUR), when she appeared on "New Heights," the podcast hosted by her now-husband Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce. The daily hurtful thought Swift referred to was the memory that she wasn't the owner of the masters for her first six albums, which infamously passed into the hands of record exec Scooter Braun when he acquired Swift's old label Big Machine in 2019.

Swift's lack of ownership of her own records sparked her famous re-recording project, which saw her painstakingly recreate four out of the six Big Machine LPs and release each replica as a "Taylor's Version," featuring subtly brightened-up production and a wealth of bonus songs. The Taylor's Versions were all massively successful, but, as Swift confessed on the podcast, she was still nagged by the knowledge that the originals didn't belong to her. Finally, in 2025, she was able to buy back her old masters from private equity group Shamrock Capital, turning what used to be a daily thorn in her side into a daily source of joy and gratitude.

The Taylor's Versions of "Fearless," "Speak Now," "Red," and "1989" were central to the consolidation of Taylor Swift's invincible phase. For one thing, each of those releases was a rich, thoughtful, attention-commanding nostalgia trip in its own right, capable of topping the charts and spawning new hit singles while helping to stake out Swift's place in modern music history. Even more importantly, they generated a tidal wave of goodwill for Swift in the public imagination: Rather than sit idly by and watch others profit from her music, as artists in her position have historically been expected to, she took the reins of the narrative and made each Taylor's Version cycle feel like a hard-earned, fan-backed victory against old industry mores.

This brilliant move is arguably what gave Swift the wherewithal to eventually buy back her masters further down the road, thus bringing her story full-circle. Although she spent years being haunted by the non-ownership of her first albums, telling the Kelce brothers on the podcast that she'd been saving up money to buy her music back since she was a teenager, she made the decision not to let this painful "intrusive thought" bring her down. Instead, she used it as fuel, and set her sights on creating a situation where the pain caused by that problem would give way to relief and happiness at having solved it — even if it meant rewriting the industry's rules. Her quote is a testament to the sheer motivational power that can be derived from dissatisfaction if we take it upon ourselves to address it.

"I wanna still have a sharp pen and a thin skin and an open heart."

"I think it's important that you know that I will never change. But I'll never stay the same either."

"As the first woman to win album of the year ... twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work, and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going, you'll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you that put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world."

"Sorry, was I loud? In my own house that I bought with the songs that I wrote about my own life?"

"When I tell people how happy I am to be alone and to be living my life on my own terms and to be free and independent and empowered, the first thing they say to me is, 'Oh, don't worry. You'll find someone.' And that is so not the point!"

"The times I was told no or wasn't included, wasn't chosen, didn't win, didn't make the cut ... looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told 'Yes.'"