Taylor Swift may be the tourist ambassador of New York and the queen of the charts -- with her record-breaking 1989 currently on top -- but back when she was 12, she lost out to some kid in a talent competition because said kid had just a little more New York pride than the future "Shake It Off" singer.
In an interview with Billboard -- as the magazine's "Woman of the Year" -- Swift spoke about her relationship with the city, which she used to visit all the time for auditions when she lived in Pennsylvania as a child.
"I went to a Knicks game a few weeks ago, and people were like, 'Oh, it's your first Knicks game!'" Swift told Billboard. "I actually have a photo of my first Knicks game. I was 12 years old and I was in a halftime talent competition, but I didn't win because the kid who won sang 'New York, New York,' and I was like, 'Here's a song I wrote about a boy in my class...'"
Some things never change, it seems.
Too bad she hadn't penned "Welcome To New York" yet -- an original jam beats a cover hands-down.
Swift is aware, however, that some people doubt her ability to rep The Big Apple (which is a nickname no one in New York uses, by the way) -- as critics and other musicians were less than enthused about her ode to the city.
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"When you write a song, you're writing about a momentary emotion," Swift said of the optimistic song. "If you can capture that and turn it into three-and-half minutes that feel like that emotion, that's all you're trying to do as a songwriter. To take a song and try to apply it to every situation everyone is going through -- economically, politically, in an entire metropolitan area -- is asking a little much of a piece of a music."
"I'm as optimistic and enthusiastic about New York as I am about the state of the music industry, and a lot of people aren't optimistic about those two things," she added.