Taylor Swift Talks Career Evolution; Jabs Fellow Pop Stars' Sexually Charged Images (Video)

The 22-year-old appears on “The Today Show” to plug her new film, “The Lorax.”

5:37 PM PST 2/14/2012 by THR Staff

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It has become a right of passage for many former teen idols to shed their squeaky-clean images, making way for more “adult-like” behavior.

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For Taylor Swift, however, the thought of abandoning her family friendly roots in favor of a Miley or Britney style evolution is not at all appealing.

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“Hopefully it becomes a natural evolution of songwriting. I’m never gonna have the moment where I’m like, ‘I’m a woman now, guys. I’m only gonna write dark songs and I’m gonna dance in my bra all the time.’ That’s not really me,” Swift told Jenna Bush Hager in a Today interview. “I hope things will gradually evolve into growing up as people naturally grow up. I find that 22 is an age where a lot of times artists feel like they need to be like, ‘I’m a woman now, guys.’ But I don't know, I feel like it should happen naturally for me. “

Swift is on track to release her next studio album sometime this year, as she told THR back in October, “I like to take two years to make a record.” Appearing on the cover of Vogue last month, Swift said that her Speak Now follow up would be about “crash-and-burn heartbreak.”

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“I think that the way you live your life has to kind of come from a place of what you want your kids and your grandkids to look back on your life and read about you or think about you and the story you want to tell,” Swift said of her public persona. “I think that has to come from a place of, ‘This is the person that I want to be.’ But on a bigger scale, in my life, who I choose to be as a person in this life really does affect other people.”

Watch more from the interview in the video clips below.

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