Imogen Heap Opens Up About Working With Taylor Swift

Imogen Heap has nothing but kind words for Taylor Swift. The women teamed up for “Clean,” which appeared on Swift’s 2014 album, 1989, and its rerecording nine years later.

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“I don’t know her very well. I just literally met her that one time here in this house,” Heap told People. “She turned up looking immaculate, and we didn’t really know what we were going to do. She had an idea on her phone, she played it to me, and I was like, ‘That’s good. Should we go and record it?’ She was like, ‘Well….’ I was like, ‘Yeah, down in the studio, let’s just go there now.’ So we’re like, ‘OK.’”

“We went downstairs, we had our cup of tea by the fire, and she wrote the next verse. I started to make music around us,” she continued. “And then by the time she left, which was like just after dinner, we had managed to write the song, produce the song, record the song, chat, meet, have tea, sit by the fire, eat lunch, eat dinner, do an entire record all by ourselves.”

What Imogen Heap and Taylor Swift Previously Said About “Clean”

In a 2015 interview with Elle, Swift opened up about the inspiration for the track, which she began writing in London.

“Someone I used to date—it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it,” Swift explained at the time. “When it did hit me, it was like, ‘Oh, I hope he’s doing well.’ And nothing else.”

“A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours. It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it,” she added. “… And then all of a sudden one day you’re in London and you realize you’ve been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you’re fine. And you hope he’s fine.”

That realization prompted Swift to think, “I’m finally clean,” and thus the song was born.

Then, while speaking to the Recording Academy in 2015, Heap and Swift discussed working together.

“I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does,” Heap said. “I put some noises to [‘Clean’], played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day.”

“The coolest thing about Imogen for me was that there was no one else in the studio,” Swift added. “There was no assistant; there was no engineer. It was her doing everything.”

Swift recorded two takes of the track and it was done, leaving Heap to question if it could “possibly be that easy.” Indeed it was.

“We felt it was great,” Heap said. “… Everyone felt it had something special. It came together really magically.”

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