• Taylor Swift recently spoke to The New York Times about her songwriting process and career.
• Swift said she worried people would grow tired of her after she found success as a teenager.
• “The entertainment industry love-bombs women,” Swift added.

When Taylor Swift was 22, she wasn’t feeling 22. At least not in the way her iconic song describes.

In reality, she sat alone in a hotel room and doom-spiraled about her career trajectory.

“It sounds ridiculous, but at 22 years old, I felt completely washed up,” Swift recently told The New York Times. “I felt like maybe the only thing that made me special was that I was this, like, ‘teen phenom,’ whatever I was looked at as.”

As is her custom, Swift wrote a song about these feelings. In the chorus of “Nothing New,” she sings, “How can a person know everything at 18, and nothing at 22? And will you still want me when I’m nothing new?”

“When I was 18, I had the ‘Fearless’ album come out, and I had my first international No. 1s, and everybody was like, ‘Oh, this writing, it’s so true, it’s so honest. It feels like she deserves to be here,'” Swift explained. “And then there was this big upheaval of, ‘No, she doesn’t. No, she doesn’t. She sucks, actually.'”

“Nothing New” was originally left on the cutting-room floor. Swift later rerecorded it as a duet with Phoebe Bridgers and released it on “Red (Taylor’s Version)” in 2021. Swift is the only songwriter credited.

Swift shared these recollections with The New York Times for the paper’s list of The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. Swift is featured alongside legends like Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton, and Bob Dylan, as well as contemporary stars like Mariah Carey, Kendrick Lamar, and Bad Bunny.

In a filmed interview, Swift reflected on her two-decade career — and how the whiplash of fame has informed her songwriting process.

“Somebody was like, ‘Oh, you’re 22 years old, and you’re saying, ‘Are you tired of me? If you’re not yet, are you going to get tired of me?’ Because it’s usually something that you would sing about later in life,” Swift said. “But the entertainment industry, I’ll tell you, there’s 10 years for every year you’re in it. But it’s fun.”

Swift, now 36, has released several songs about the pressures, perils, and double standards that come with a life in the public eye, especially as a female entertainer. On Swift’s newest album, 2025’s “The Life of a Showgirl,” she invokes the memory of Elizabeth Taylor to illustrate this tension — and to honor the woman who persevered through exploitation and scrutiny.

On 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” the predecessor to “Showgirl,” Swift included a song named after Clara Bow, who was known as the original “It Girl.”

In the first verse, the narrator — a powerful, presumably male Hollywood executive — tells an aspiring starlet, “You look like Clara Bow in this light, remarkable,” promising to give her a bright future in the industry. In the second verse, the pattern repeats with another young woman hoping for her big break.

“That was me that sat down opposite that desk, right? I sit down at a record label, and they’re like, ‘You look like Stevie Nicks. We’ll make you the next Stevie Nicks,'” Swift told the Times. “And basically, you learn that like, you’re in this machine and they’re trying to make you into a woman that they just idealized and then discarded. The entertainment industry love-bombs women.”

In the final verse of “Clara Bow,” the cycle continues: “You look like Taylor Swift in this light, we’re loving it / You’ve got edge she never did.”

Swift previously discussed her fears about aging out of show business in her 2019 documentary “Miss Americana,” which premiered when she was 29.

“It’s a lot to process because we do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,” Swift said at the time. “Everyone’s a shiny new toy for like, two years. The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to. Or else you’re out of a job.”

• Sam Altman showed up in court as jury selection began in a civil trial between him and Elon Musk.
• Some potential jurors offered unfavorable views about AI — and Musk.
• Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman two years ago.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an unexpected appearance in a California courtroom Monday as jury selection in his high-stakes legal feud with Elon Musk kicked off.

Altman, who wore a dark-colored suit and white shirt, was spotted inside the Oakland courtroom, where some potential jurors shared unfavorable views about artificial intelligence — and Musk, the world’s richest man.

Musk was not in attendance during day one proceedings of the federal civil trial between two of the tech industry’s most powerful billionaires. Since it is a civil trial, the parties are not required to appear unless they are testifying. Up until now, Musk and Altman have largely left the matter to their lawyers, aside from the occasional online jab.

The Tesla CEO sued OpenAI, Altman, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman two years ago, alleging that they intentionally “deceived” him into cofounding the company with them in 2015.

The lawsuit seeks more than $100 billion in damages, along with sweeping changes to the structure of the $850 billion company behind ChatGPT. The case comes as OpenAI is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering.

Earlier Monday, Musk and OpenAI traded barbs on Musk’s X platform about the case, with Musk referring to Altman as “Scam Altman” and OpenAI ripping Musk’s lawsuit as a “baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.”

Musk is expected to testify in the weeks-long trial, along with Altman and other tech execs like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Musk alleges in his lawsuit that he poured tens of millions into OpenAI to support its founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the public’s benefit, only for that mission to later be abandoned, in part, through the company’s partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft is also named as a defendant in Musk’s lawsuit.

• Donald Trump owns his own social media company.
• But Truth Social isn’t where to go if you want a lot of people to see you attack Jimmy Kimmel.
• So Melania Trump made sure her demand that ABC do something about Kimmel appeared on Elon Musk’s X, too.

Melania Trump says ABC should “take a stand” over Jimmy Kimmel, because she doesn’t like a joke the talk show host made last week.

First things first: The first lady calling on a media company to do something about its employee because she doesn’t like what that employee said is a bad thing. It’s an attempt to use the power of the White House to silence speech that the White House doesn’t like.

And it’s just as worrisome as it was last September, when Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to head the Federal Communications Commission, told ABC owner Disney to “take action, frankly, on Kimmel” because Kimmel had made a joke about Trump supporters and Charlie Kirk. Disney suspended Kimmel for a few days and then reinstated him after public outcry.

There is a difference between Carr’s demand and Melania Trump’s demand on Monday, since Carr is a regulator with direct oversight over parts of Disney’s business, and Melania Trump doesn’t have any formal power over … anything. But she’s still using the power of the White House to try to control speech, and that should alarm anyone with any common sense. (I’ve asked her office for comment.)

Let’s see how new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro responds to this one.

Much less important, but still interesting to me: The first lady’s choice of platform to make her demand/threat. Melania Trump used Elon Musk’s X, the site formally known as Twitter, to post her thoughts on Monday, using both her official First Lady of the United States account and her own personal account.

Trump also posted the same statement on Truth Social, the social media site owned by her husband. But that one seemed obligatory. Not in the way it’s literally obligatory for Donald Trump to post at least some of his thoughts on his own social platform before he puts them anywhere else. But in the way you’re supposed to tell your significant other you think they make the best pasta, when what you really crave is Olive Garden.

The numbers make it clear why Melania Trump chose to use X to make a splash: Her post on that platform has 230,000 likes, and that number is skyrocketing. Her Truth Social post has 6,500 likes and is traveling at a much more leisurely pace.

All of which is a reminder that while Truth Social is the Trump-owned Twitter alternative Donald Trump uses, it remains a minor-at-best platform. One that won’t tell you how many users it has, and one that managed to lose more than $700 million on revenue of $3.7 million in 2025.

None of that is news, nor does it seem to matter to Trump, who still owns a company worth nearly $3 billion, even after a stock plunge and the departure of its CEO — perhaps because the company’s current plan is to merge with a nuclear fusion company.

It also doesn’t matter where Donald Trump truths or posts or spouts off — he’s the president of the United States, so just about anything he says that’s noteworthy gets instantly transmitted through the global media ecosystem. Like what happened on Monday afternoon, where he piggybacked on his wife’s post and explicitly called on Disney and ABC to fire Kimmel.

But for the rest of us — including the first lady of the United States — where you post a message matters. Which is why she’s using the one that helped her husband get into the White House in the first place.

• President Donald Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel to be “immediately fired.”
• Trump and first lady Melania Trump took issue with a sketch Kimmel aired on Thursday night.
• Kimmel joked at the time that Melania Trump had “the glow of an expectant widow.”

President Donald Trump is reigniting his long-simmering feud with Jimmy Kimmel — and his pressure campaign on ABC and parent company Disney to part ways with the late night host.

“Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social Post on Monday afternoon.

Trump’s call puts a potentially fraught issue on Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro’s plate after the executive took over for Bob Iger just months ago.

Hours before Trump’s post, first lady Melania Trump similarly expressed outrage over Kimmel’s Thursday night monologue, in which the comedian gave a faux-White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech to lament the decision to not have a comedian deliver a routine during the dinner, as is usually tradition. The correspondents association, an organization for reporters who cover the White House, elected to have a mentalist provide the evening’s entertainment instead.

During the sketch, Kimmel said, “And, of course, our first lady Melania is here. Look at Mel — so beautiful, you have the glow of an expectant widow.”

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” Melania Trump wrote on X on Monday morning in a rare public statement. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”

Trump, for his part, wrote that he appreciated that “so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale.”

In his post, the president said that Kimmel, “who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking.”

“He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be,” Trump wrote.

As part of Kimmel’s sketch, the comedian showed clips of Trump and other well-known figures reacting to his jokes. The footage appeared to be from previously recorded events, including Trump’s State of the Union. Among the celebrities depicted was wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, who died in July.

On Saturday evening, just as the annual dinner was about to begin, a gunman tried to rush through security. Authorities have said the suspect, Cole Allen, shot a Secret Service officer in their protective gear before being arrested. Allen is expected to appear in federal court on Monday.

Trump, the first lady, Vice President JD Vance, and other members of the Cabinet were rushed out of the ballroom where the dinner was occurring. Trump later told reporters at the White House that he wanted the dinner to resume but was told that for security reasons that it needed to be canceled.

ABC suspended Kimmel last fall for comments he made following the assassination of conservative podcaster and organizer Charlie Kirk. Democratic and even some Republican lawmakers criticized FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for jawboning local ABC affiliates to stop broadcasting Kimmel as criticism spread over the comedian’s remarks.

Ultimately, Kimmel was reinstated days later and experienced a brief surge in ratings as fellow late night hosts railed around him.

In December, Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension with ABC to continue “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” through May 2027.

• Business bankruptcies have been on the rise in recent years, and the retail sector hasn’t been immune.
• Storied brands like Saks and Eddie Bauer are using the protections to look for a new path forward.
• Here are some notable cases so far in 2026.

Some legendary retail brands have filed for bankruptcy in the early months of 2026.

US business bankruptcies have been on the rise in recent years, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis. First-quarter filings in 2026 marked the second-highest level since 2010, trailing only the same period last year. Among the 180 bankruptcies tracked in the first three months of the year, about two dozen were consumer discretionary and staples companies.

Uncertainty around consumer spending, inflation, and US tariff policy is likely to lead to higher restructuring levels throughout the year, S&P Global Market Intelligence said in April.

Bankruptcy isn’t necessarily the end of the line for a company. Several companies, such as Saks Global and Eddie Bauer, are using the protections to reshape their businesses and focus on areas of potential growth this year.

Here are some notable retail bankruptcy cases that are unfolding in 2026, listed in order of initial filing.

Saks Global — filed in January, financing deal reached in April

Saks Global has been one of the higher-profile retail bankruptcy cases this year. After weeks of public speculation, the luxury store voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January.

The owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus has since said it would close some US stores, focusing more on luxury and less on off-price retail, such as its Saks Off Fifth and Neiman Marcus Last Call locations.

In April, Saks Global said it resolved a dispute with key landlord Simon Property Group and also received court approval to raise up to $500 million from a group of investors.

Saks Global aims to exit bankruptcy this summer.

Pat McGrath Labs — filed in January, exited in April

Cosmetics brand Pat McGrath Labs — sold in stores like Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and Nordstrom — said in April that it had completed a Chapter 11 process that it began in January. Founder Pat McGrath, known for styling top models, is staying on as chief creative officer.

The company said it received $65 million of financing and support that would allow it to pursue a new chapter of growth.

Fat Brands — filed in January, case proceeding

Fat Brands, the parent company of burger joints like Fatburger and Johnny Rockets, filed for Chapter 11 in January to restructure about $1 billion in debt.

The company cited a “challenging operating environment over the last few years” and said its 18 brands and 2,200 restaurants would remain operating as usual during the bankruptcy process.

A sale of the business could come as early as May.

Francesca’s — filed in February, liquidation in March

Women’s fashion retailer Francesca’s once again filed for Chapter 11 in February, a few years after it was acquired out of an earlier bankruptcy.

With about $30 million in secured debt, as much as $100 million in liabilities, and no buyer, the company said in March that it would liquidate all inventory and close all 457 stores.

Eddie Bauer — filed in February, case proceeding

Outdoor retailer Eddie Bauer filed for Chapter 11 in February. Catalyst Brands, which owned Eddie Bauer’s US and Canadian retail operations, said it needed to wind down the brand’s nearly 200 stores after failing to find a buyer.

The bankruptcy does not affect Eddie Bauer’s manufacturing, wholesale, or e-commerce operations, nor its retail business outside the US and Canada. Japan is home to several Eddie Bauer stores.

QVC — filed in April, expected exit in July

Home-shopping company QVC Group said in April that it was entering Chapter 11 to restructure its finances for QVC, HSN, and Cornerstone Brands.

The company said it plans to continue operating as usual with no planned layoffs or furloughs. The move is expected to last about 90 days and leave the company with $1.3 billion in debt, down from $6.6 billion.

QVC and HSN popularized TV-based shopping, but the company has faced stiff competition as audiences shift toward social-shopping platforms like TikTok Shop.

• Anthropic has posted an “events lead, brand” role on its careers page.
• The role offers up to $400,000 a year — more than similar events roles at the company.
• Silicon Valley figures, including Marc Andreessen, posted about the role on X.

As artificial intelligence floods the internet, Anthropic will pay up to $400,000 for something decidedly human: in-person events.

The AI company behind Claude and Claude Code has an open listing for a brand events lead role based in San Francisco or New York, with a salary range of $320,000 to $400,000.

It’s a notably human layer in an industry that’s defined by automation.

The role caught the attention of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

The hire would be responsible for producing anything from small, invite-only gatherings to large-scale conferences. The posting emphasizes live demos, technical deep dives, and face-to-face conversations with policymakers and academic audiences.

Anthropic also says the hired human must be “comfortable with significant travel,” and says that 30% to 40% of the job will be on the road.

Applicants still need to provide a cover letter. They also need to write a 200- to 400-word essay explaining why they want to work at Anthropic.

The position pays more than similar events roles at the company, including an enterprise-focused position that pays up to $320,000 and a Europe, Middle East, and Africa events role that tops out at £200,000.

The hiring push comes as AI companies race to reshape their own narratives.

OpenAI acquired TBPN in April, in part to work on its product communications. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s xAI has leaned heavily on its ownership of X (formerly Twitter) to control distribution and narrative.

Those efforts come as tech leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have acknowledged that public sentiment around AI has cratered amid warnings that their technologies could gradually reshape the job market and drive up energy demand.

Anthropic has built its identity around a far more cautious approach to deploying powerful AI systems. Now, instead of just broadcasting that message, it’s looking to hire a well-paid human to take that message on the road.

“We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science,” the company wrote in the posting. “We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science.”

This is part of a new series on jobs in emerging fields. Are you hiring for a cool job? Did you see an unusual job listing? Email bshimkus@businessinsider.com, or reach out via the secure messaging app Signal at bshimkus.41