Taylor Swift just opened up about a song she wrote at 22 that she kept hidden for years, and her honesty is hitting fans right in the feels. In a new career retrospective with the Recording Academy, Swift admitted she felt washed up and boring while writing “Nothing New” back in 2012. She left the track off her original “Red” album, saying it felt like “a sad night with a bottle of wine.” It finally saw the light of day in 2021 on “Red (Taylor’s Version)” as a duet with Phoebe Bridgers.

 

The most powerful part of her interview came when she talked about revisiting the song at age 30. “When I was like 30 and I was rerecording it, I was like, ‘Oh no, this hits. This hits.'” The song deals with fears about aging out of the music industry, something Swift clearly worried about even as she was becoming one of the biggest stars in the world. She also reflected on her debut single “Tim McGraw” and how eerily accurate its forecast of her career turned out to be.

It’s a wild reminder that even the most successful people deal with imposter syndrome and anxiety about the future. Taylor Swift was literally at the top of the world at 22 and still thought her moment had passed. Spoiler alert: it definitely had not. How do you handle moments where you feel like you’re falling behind? Drop a comment below.