GQ Taylor Swift Cover

I didn’t realize this, but Taylor Swift has never covered an issue of GQ (US) before now. I always think of her as dominating the magazine covers and while that’s true, it’s usually women’s magazines and music mags. If we’re being honest, almost entirely women’s magazines. She hasn’t covered Rolling Stone in over a year!

Anyway, yes, Swifty covers the November issue of GQ. It’s a sexy, men’s magazine-style cover too, as in… Swifty looks damp, she’s wearing something tight with a some cleavage and they gave her awful bangs a windswept, JBF-look. All in all, not a terrible cover and I’m glad it’s a more natural-looking shot on a Malibu balcony as opposed to Taylor in a studio, laying on her back spread-eagle with her thumb in her mouth. GQ isn’t releasing their cover story until next week, but they’re promising a lot:

For her first-ever cover with GQ, Taylor Swift spent time with writer Chick Klosterman, giving an intense and wide-ranging interview, while dodging paparazzi and, at one point, taking a surprise call from one of the few humans who is almost as famous as she is (and still makes her start struck!).

As Klosterman writes, “If you don’t take Swift seriously, you don’t take contemporary music seriously… There’s simply no antecedent for this kind of career: a cross-genre, youth-oriented, critically acclaimed colossus based entirely on the intuitive songwriting merits of a single female artist. It’s as if mid-period Garth Brooks was also early Liz Phair, minus the hat and the swearing. As a phenomenon, it’s absolutely new.”

[From GQ]

Garth Brooks and Liz Phair? What the what? I mean, I kind of understand the Liz Phair reference, but putting Phair together with Garth Brooks to describe Taylor Swift? No. Even when Taylor was country, she was still pop. She was still a crossover artist. I would argue that in the early part of her career, she just made twangy pop and she just dropped the twang with her past two albums. Anyway… I’m looking forward to the interview. As they say, I’m sure she did take some “surprise calls” from some of her collected A-list friends.

View image | gettyimages.com

GQ cover courtesy of Michael Thompson/GQ, additional photo courtesy of Getty.