Taylor Swift Can ‘Speak to People’ in the Same Way as Bob Dylan, Says Elvis Costello

Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan’s music has more in common than meets the ear — at least according to Elvis Costello.

While appearing on the Nov. 17 episode of music podcast Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt, the “Alison” singer, 70, drew some comparisons between the pop star and folk icon’s legendary pens.

He name-dropped the musicians while discussing his 1986 album King of America, which he recently rereleased in a deluxe CD set with previously unreleased demos. Reflecting on his mindset while working on the songs, Costello said that “at some point,” he began to recognize that he “wasn’t doing enough work” on them.

“All I was doing was reciting things that were happening to me,” the singer-songwriter recalled to the podcast hosts. “And though that can be interesting to hear, it doesn’t necessarily engage the listener, ‘cause they don’t know what you’re talking about.”

To elevate their songwriting, an artist also has to employ the “element of craft that comes after the desire to express these rawer emotions,” he said, citing a Joni Mitchell record, Blue, as well as Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks.

The latter record is a stellar example of “the sense of revelation and invention” that Costello finds compelling in songwriting, he explained — a strategy he said Swift, 34, has also mastered.

“One minute, they seem to be very raw emotion, the next minute they’re clearly invention,” he said of Dylan’s tracks. “And that keeps you guessing and that keeps things interesting.”

Costello learned that “lesson” from writers like Mitchell, 81, and Dylan, 83, he said. “And I’m not just trying to say this to be down with the kids, but it’s also what makes Taylor Swift speak to people.”

“She understands the necessity of taking personal experience,” but also ensuring her songs are relatable to her listeners, Costello said of the “All Too Well” songstress. “There’s lots of other examples of that, she’s just the most successful one you can cite.”

“But that’s why she’s able to sustain communication with her audience in quite that way,” the “She” singer continued, adding that personally, he’s “always known I was not comfortable with just simply saying, like: ‘Here’s my diary. Let’s set that to music.’ ”

The heartbreak — or other event that inspires a song — can happen in “an instant,” Costello added. “But the repercussions can be very torturous and kind of boring, so if you just recite them in real time, they’re not necessarily fascinating to other people.”