Taylor Swift dove deep into her songwriting process in a new video interview with The New York Times —which just named her one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters — and got candid about the persistent online speculation surrounding who her songs are about.

It’s no secret that Swift has often mined her own personal life for some of her most loved songs — including “All Too Well,” “Cruel Summer” and “Love Story,” which she reveals in the interview was about an older man her parents wouldn’t let her date — but her confessional style has also had some downsides. Though Swift told the Times it’s “great” that she has “so many” fans now, she admitted that “there’s corners of my fanbase that are going to take things to a really extreme place.”

“There’s nothing that I can do about that,” Swift continued. “There’s people who are going to try to like, do detective work, figure out the details — who is that about? What is this? When it gets a little bit weird for me is when people act like it’s sort of like a paternity test. Like, ‘This song’s about this person.’ Because I’m like, ‘That dude didn’t write the song. I did.’”

Though Swift conceded “that’s part of” being a pop star, she added: “You have to hold tight to your perception of your art and your relationship with it, and then you just have to kind of like, ‘There it goes, hope you like it! If you don’t now, hope you do in five years! And if you never do, then I was doing it for me anyway.’”

Besides, according to Swift, criticism can actually be good material. She told the Times that negative feedback has “been a huge fuel” and “a jumping-off point” for her songwriting.

“There are so many songs in my career that would not exist — like ‘Blank Space’ would not exist if I hadn’t had people being like, ‘Here’s a slideshow of all her boyfriends,’” she said. “And then ‘Anti-Hero’ is a song that I’m so proud of still, like that song doesn’t exist if I don’t get criticized for every aspect of my personality that people have a problem with or whatever.”

However, in the internet age, Swift said there is such thing as too much criticism. “My favorite thing when I sit down with new artists or songwriters is I’m like, ‘Why are you reading your comments?’” Swift said. “That’s too much of it. Like, you’re inundating yourself with too much criticism that doesn’t really have a focus.”

But she encouraged young artists to not let online hate “make you stop writing or make you edit yourself.”

“If it’s an interesting point for you to respond to, then that’s a gift for you to be able to write something — maybe you wouldn’t have written something that day,” she continued. “But don’t like… God, don’t go to the Notes app and post it. Like, write about it. Make art about this. Don’t respond to like, trolls in your comments. That’s not what we want from you. We want your art.”