Taylor Swift uses songwriting as a "protective armour".

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift

The 29-year-old singer is known for her confessional tracks and though she admits channelling her life into music could leave her vulnerable, she thinks it helps her to "process" everything that's happened to her.

Speaking on stage at the TIME 100 Gala at New York's Lincoln Centre, she said: "For me, writing, I've always known it was the main pillar holding up my career.

"I use it as a way to justifying things that happen to me. I've always known it was the main pillar of kind of my sanity as well, like I always looked at writing as sort of like a protective armour. Which is weird, because you think of writing about your life, that's usually like a vulnerability, but I think that when you write about your life, it gives you the ability to process your life. I use it as a way of justifying things that have happened to me.

"Whether they're good or bad. I like to honour the good times and really process the bad times when I write."

The exclusive dinner was held to honour those who had been named on TIME's 100 most influential people list, including Taylor, Dwayne Johnson, Brie Larson, Rami Malek, and Gayle King, but the 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' hitmaker was particularly excited that Sandra Oh was among the guests after confessing to spending hours binge watching 'Grey's Anatomy' as a teenager.

She said: "I know Sandra Oh is in the room, which shakes me to my very core. That's my whole life there."

Taylor performed five songs at the event, including 'Style', 'Delicate', 'Love Story', 'New Year's Day' and 'Shake It Off'.

She recalled how she wrote 'Love Story' - which she performed 10 years ago at her first TIME 100 gala - when she was 17 and would sit alone in her room and "would think about what love would be like and obviously overdramatise and romanticise it when I would write about it."

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