On Powerful Track “The Man”:

“If a man hears that song and feels uncomfortable, that means he’s probably not the greatest feminist. What's great is like when you hear that song — we do these things called 'Secret Sessions' and we have fans come and listen to the album beforehand and its guys and girls — and I see the guys out there nodding along to the song, because what we need in any fight for equality, in any group of people, is we need people from the other side to say, 'Yeah, you’re right. You’re right to want that.' So any time men are like, 'I love your song 'The Man.' I’m like, 'You know what? I want to give you a hug and a high five.'”

“It’s a song I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time because I've noticed the inequality starts at a basic perception level where it's like nothing we do is perceived exactly the same, so how are we ever supposed to ask for equal pay? [Or] equal standing entrance into the boys’ club or whatever when nothing we do is viewed the same? So that's what I kind of wanted to go into with the song.”

On How She Spent the First 13 Minutes of Album Release Night:

“Geographically I was in New York. I was in a hotel, in a room, that I had a few friends there. Jack Antonoff was there, who produced a lot of the songs on the record with me and wrote several things with me, and then I had my parents. I had a lot of people in the management team who have been absolutely killing themselves for six months preparing for this release so basically had like 20, 25 people in the room and … I was on Tumblr and one of my fans was like, ‘Guys! It’s on iTunes!’ And that happened like maybe 10 minutes early and I was like, 'Guys! Check your phone!' …. And so we all started freaking out and then playing the songs on our phones because these are songs that I've only been able to hear just me, like, in headphones, never being able to play out loud on the phone for the past year or so. It was amazing. It was this incredible experience and then all of a sudden what happens at midnight is the reviews start posting because these journalists have heard the album beforehand … so the reviews started hitting and all of a sudden, I’m like, 'These are the best reviews I've ever gotten my entire career.' Like, my hands were on my face. I was fully in shambles … I was like on the floor.”

On If the Positive Lover Reviews Impacted Re-Recording Her Earlier Songs:

“I think it definitely did and especially the fact that this is the first album that I own. It’s my own work, you know? It's crazy when you create things for 13, 14 years and then all of it is sold out from under you and you have this new fresh beginning and the first chance to actually own your art that you’ve been making all along and the fact that everyone is like, ‘Oh, no, this is the best thing that you’ve made.‘ Like, I cannot explain to you. Like, it gets me emotional even talking about [it]. Like, I can’t explain to you how good that feels because it's the first thing that no one can take from me. No one can sell it. It's mine.”

On How She’ll Re-Record Earlier Songs and Embrace Her Newfound Freedom:

“I have almost a year to plan and get all my ducks in a row and I’m really going to be listening to the fans because there are some amazing ideas that they’ve had. I’m always looking on Instagram and Tumblr and Twitter and seeing what they would want. Like, some of the things that they’ve said that are really interesting to me are like I wrote the song ‘Better Man’ for Little Big Town, and … they took that song all the way [CMA Song of the Year etc.], but that I wrote during the Red — it was originally going to be on the Red album — so the fans are like, 'Maybe she'll put 'Better Man,' her version, on the Red album?' And I was like, 'That's an amazing idea!' So I’m going to be listening to what they are saying. I think they want me to kind of stick to the original production a bit like make them pretty close. I don’t think they’d want to hear like 'Tear Drops on My Guitar' as a pop version. … The best part is, contractually, I can make them nearly identical to what they were originally which is great."

“I’m actually really excited, like this whole phase of my life is very much about freedom and the Lover album to me completely represents freedom. … You know creative freedom; artistic freedom; being able to actually freely own the work that I make and put everything I have into and so going back now I can do that with all the rest of my albums that I’ve made; that I’ve made every decision on; that I came up with every idea for and they will all be mine eventually which is the most amazing thing. It's really important to me as an artist to be able to have that moving forward.”