Taylor Swift has landed on the cover of Vanity Fair for a second time, as she's September's cover subject. The country-gone-pop star sports long hair and a sophisticated look in the photo shot by Mario Testino, as she sits in front of a piano looking every inch the songwriter she is. The photo spread inside the magazine is even more luxe, and more flirtatious — she's biting a tiara in one picture, and wearing black thigh-highs in another — and it's worlds away from the girlish, pointedly wholesome style in her Red-era VF cover story back in April 2013.

Taylor discusses her game-changing open letter to Apple, and compares their decision to revise their artist compensation policy with Spotify's failure to do the same: "I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.”

The singer also explains why she and her friends are exceedingly cool with dating each other's exes. Quoth Taylor, "It’s almost like the sisterhood has such a higher place on the list of priorities for us. It’s so much more important than some guy that it didn’t work out with.” How very...well adjusted. She continues, "now more than ever we need to be good and kind to each other and not judge each other—and just because you have the same taste in men, we don’t hold that against each other." Any thoughts on this, Katy Perry?

She also provides insight into the resolution of her rift with Kanye West. "I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me, and he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me—so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time."

And apparently, Jay Z is partly responsible for their buried hatchet. “I became friends with Jay Z, and I think it was important, for Jay Z, for Kanye and I to get along. . . . And then Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished, and I could ask him how his kid’s doing.” We've all come so far since the 2009 VMAs, you guys.

Taylor talks dating, her new rep as a #style icon and more in the September issue of Vanity Fair, which hits newsstands on August 11.

 

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