Joseph Kahn on working with Taylor Swift (The Morning Show, June 26th 2020)

Joseph Kahn talks about his working process with Taylor and why he considers it to be an ideal collaborative relationship (The Morning Show, June 26th 2020). Quote:

“That [his working relationship with Taylor] is specifically the type of ideal relationship, that’s why I think I’ve done 8 videos with her - because there is no record company, it’s just literally her and me. Whenever we do a video there is literally no one else involved in it, it’s just a dialogue between her and I. If I do an edit, if I do a shot or anything, there’s no approval process, it’s just that she and I just see eye to eye. That’s why I think those videos came out so great. It’s just two creative people getting to be creative, which is a very unusual situation in such a big world like the record industry where you’re trying to sell billions of records. [On LWYMMD] I think it’s a pretty collaborative effort where she and I will pitch each other ideas. Generally sometimes she comes in with a general thing that she would like to do and then I will respond with my version of it, and maybe translate it. On LWYMMD she had the song… Actually, you know what - on that one I actually met with her in Texas during the Superbowl. I met with her in a trailer, cause she was performing there and she actually played like five or six songs for me. And we were talking about different ideas for particular songs and LWYMMD was the one that we literally decided in the trailer - as we were listening to it - that that would be the first single. [On what public doesn’t get to see about Taylor] Gosh, you know what - the weirdest thing about her is she is kinda who you see. Her entire life is kind of an open book, so I feel like the person that I’ve worked with, with the person that the public generally knows - is who she is. Actually I told Taylor that one of the biggest problems with her is that she explains herself so well that she doesn’t give room for everyone else to interpret - like a lot of artists say nothing and then they are ciphers that you write whatever you wanted to it, but Taylor will likely say, ‘This is who I am.’ And it is who she is. [On favorite video he directed] Well, it is like picking a child, but last night I was watching Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams, and I think just by the production level of going to Africa, with the scale of that thing and the way that I feel like I told a narrative story all the way through - that video is gonna be pretty hard to beat.”

Source: https://7news.com.au/the-morning-show...