Taylor Swift couldn’t shake off watching candidates she endorsed lose to their Republican opponents in the midterm elections.
The 30-year-old musician broke her political silence in 2018 to endorse candidates in her home state of Tennessee, including Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen. Bredesen, Tennessee’s former governor, lost the vacant Senate seat to then-Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn. Before the election, Swift wrote that Blackburn’s voting record “appalls and terrifies” her.
During an interview with Variety published Tuesday, Swift claimed that watching Bredesen lose after receiving her endorsement was more painful than her perceived snub by the Grammys for her album Reputation.
“Definitely, that was a bigger disappointment for me,” she explained. “I think what’s going on out in the world is bigger than who gets a prize at the party.”
Swift claimed her decision to speak out about politics was difficult because many people supported her for staying out of partisan issues.
“Every time I didn’t speak up about politics as a young person, I was applauded for it,” she said. “It was wild. I said, ‘I’m a 22-year-old girl — people don’t want to hear what I have to say about politics.’ And people would just be like, ‘Yeahhhhh!’”
[Read more: Taylor Swift: Trump’s election made me ‘obsessed’ with politics]
The singer noted that watching the Dixie Chicks struggle after speaking out against former President George W. Bush prevented her from talking politics during her country music career.
“These days, with social media, people can be so mad about something one day and then forget what they were mad about a couple weeks later. That’s fake outrage,” she said. “But what happened to the Dixie Chicks was real outrage. I registered it — that you’re always one comment away from being done being able to make music.”
Swift’s endorsement of Bredesen sparked an increase in voter registration in Tennessee during the 2018 elections but didn’t push him over the edge. Blackburn defeated Bredesen by more than 10% of the vote to become the first female senator from the state.
