EXCLUSIVE: Taylor Swift on Best Friends, Boyfriends and Blurring the Lines Between Pop and Country

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ETONLINE

If Taylor Swift's Facebook account is any indication, there are at least 70 million people in the world who would love to be her bestie.

So it's no wonder that Taylor already has a laundry list of people she calls her best friends, including Lena Dunham, Ed Sheeran, Selena Gomez, Karlie Kloss, Jaime King, Lorde, Jack Antonoffand Emma Stone -- among others. But any Swiftie worth her/his clout knows that it's Taylor’s trusted childhood gal-pal Abigail Anderson who has been by her side from the beginning.

Speaking with ET's special correspondent Gayle King of CBS This Morning, Taylor opened up about what it takes to be her BFF.

"A good girlfriend for me is someone who is an individual and has something that they are deeply passionate about," Swift said. "Abigail works with making sure that veterans from World War II get their compensation. Like, she's so passionate about it and it couldn't be more different from my career or Lena's career, but the fact that she is so passionate about what she does allows her to be able to relate to me on that level, that I'm so dedicated to what I do."

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When Taylor's new album 1989 drops Monday, it will mark her first ever official offering of a pop – not country – release, something she is confident that her fans saw coming.

"On my last album, when the song 'I Knew You Were Trouble’ came out and spent seven weeks number one on the pop charts, that's kind of like a warning flare," she said. "I don't think that people were surprised that I went in the direction of pop. I think people were surprised that I was honest about it."

The singer-songwriter faced criticism after her last album, 2012's Red, unapologetically straddled the line between pop and country, featuring the mandolin on one song and dubstep on the next.

"I heard those comments from some of my favorite journalists, who said, 'You know, this album's great, it's just not very sonically cohesive,'" she recalled. "On this new album, my main goal is to make sure I focused on one sound and made sure it was very much its own piece of music, and that nothing else belonged on it. I feel that I've achieved that."

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But Taylor, who also has an impressive grasp on the industry side of music, says that the blurring of lines between genres are simply a sign of the times.

"You're just now starting to see the generation of kids who grew up able to make their own playlist," she explains. "These are the artists that are now making music and making up the landscape of mainstream music. So you have genres blending into each other as the norm… You have folk music that sounds like country used to sound like, you have pop music that sounds like blends of blues, [and] you have country music that sounds like rock."

If it seems like Taylor Swift has things all figured out – well, she mostly does. But there's one arena where Swift admits she's lost: boyfriends.

Asked what makes a good BF, Swift quips, "Oh, I haven’t figured that out yet."

But maybe she doesn't need to.

"When I tell people how happy I am to be alone and to be living my life on my own terms and to be free and independent and empowered, the first thing they say to me is, 'Oh, don’t worry, you'll find someone -- and that is so not the point!" she said, clearly exasperated. "What if your life completes itself? I wish people didn’t look at me like that's something that’s sad [and could understand] that you living your life is exciting enough for you and you're not looking for anything else to complete you. I think that's actually the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life."

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For more from Swift's interview with King, tune in to Entertainment Tonight on Monday and CBS This Morning on Wednesday.

Follow Sophie on Twitter: @SophieSchillaci