Taylor Swift strums her way into celebrity, is crowned a country queen, and proves to be a songwriting superstar.
The hot sun, like a fried egg, sinks behind the black silhouetted trees that surround Post-Gazette Pavilion. The air smells like cigarettes and warm pretzels and is heavy with a swelling of screams, punctuated by the gravel kicks of cowboy boots. Quick paces over the grassy hill of the great lawn, where night has already fallen, and the cool blue of 10,000-something cell phones glows like fireflies over the crowd, whose shrieks sweeten into a serenade. They sing along with the curly-haired blonde, so small on the stage below, as she croons to the song that made her famous: “When you think Tim McGraw … I hope you think my favorite song … someday you’ll turn Pittsburgh radio on …” The crowd roars.
“The advice that I have for any young singer-songwriter is be original. Write your songs. Play an instrument. It adds legitimacy to what you do when you can walk into a room and play guitar by yourself, or play piano by yourself, and you don’t need an accompanist. You know, I think it’s what helped me a lot to prove to people that a 16-year-old could be relevant in country music.” – Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift comes a long way from the 10-acre Christmas tree farm in Sinking Spring, Pa., where she lived as a kid. “Growing up in Pennsylvania was awesome,” she says on a phone call from her tour bus. “I wouldn’t change one thing about my childhood. We had horses and a million cats, and my brother had a huge dirt pile that we played in. Those are the memories I have of growing up in Pennsylvania, having a lot of room to run, wideopen spaces.”
When Swift is in the fourth grade, her family moves to Wyomissing, where the 9-year-old gets a craving for the stage, instilled by an opera singing grandma. “I played Sandy in Grease,” she says. “I was an orphan in Annie and did Bye Bye Birdie and The Sound of Music. And, you know, I started to realize that what I looked forward to the most was the afterparties, where they had a karaoke machine set up, and I could sing country music.”
Swift develops her twang to tunes by country superstars The Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow, LeAnn Rimes, Shania Twain, and Faith Hill. Her dad, Scott, indulges her karaoke dreams by taking her to The Pat Garrett Roadhouse in Strausstown, where songsters compete for a shot at the opening act slot at the adjoining amphitheater. An 11-year old Swift wins with a passionate version of LeAnn Rimes’s “Big Deal” and gets her first gig, singing before the Charlie Daniels show.
Thinking she has hit the big time, Swift convinces her parents to take her to Nashville for spring break. “We stayed at the Holiday Inn, rented a car, and drove down Music Row,” Swift says. “I would walk into all these record labels and give them a demo CD of me singing karaoke songs and ask them for a record deal.That’s when I realized that I needed to be more. I needed to know how to do something more than just sing a song.”
Swift is on to something: the talent that would amount to her greatness in the industry as a songwriting phenom. A year later, Swift learns to play the guitar. Ronnie Kramer, a family friend, comes over to fix the household computer and teaches Swift her first three chords. That day, the young talent writes her first song, “Lucky You.” The next week, Kramer comes back to teach her three more chords, and then three more, until Swift is writing a song a day and churning out a new demo — this time, it’s original.“And it was not good,” Swift says bluntly. “There are people around Pennsylvania with little vintage CDs. Get ready to hear the chipmunk voice.” Today, that little vintage chipmunk CD goes for a hot $180 on eBay, but Pittsburgh’s own Frank Bell has had his copy for years. The vice president of programming for Froggy-FM meets Scott Swift in 1977 when the two work together at WHUM, a little AM country station in Reading, Pa. The guys keep in touch, and later, after Bell has moved to Pittsburgh and Swift is working for Merrill Lynch, the proud father sends indie recordings to his friend in the industry. “I said, ‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don’t think anyone will play these,’” Bell says of Swift’s original songs. He says the sugary bubblegum sound of her first takes wasn’t appreciated in a country market that was still looking for the weathered sounds of middle-aged artists. Still, Bell can’t ignore Swift’s natural ability for songwriting. “I hesitate to use the phrase ‘freak factor,’” he says, “but that’s really what it is. It’s hard to compare anyone to Taylor. And, it’s the writing. She’s so young to be writing all of her own material, and she’s truly an old soul.
She’s probably the most talented singer-songwriter in any genre to come along in recent memory.” He pops in a video of Swift, standing in front of her Christmas tree at 12 years old. She’s sockstepping on her faded jeans, strumming a guitar that’s too big for her, and singing a song that’s as high-pitched as it is simply lyric’ed. But she’s making absolute eye contact with the camera, squinting and smiling like a country music veteran. The video is actually a compilation, a gem that Bell pulls together from all of the tapes Swift’s father had sent over the years, a gift for the star’s 18th birthday. There’s a clip of her perched in her bedroom singing “Beautiful Day,” a song she wrote about her two best friends at the time, who were dating. She gets silly and sings a jingle she wrote for Subway, confessing to serious sandwich cravings as a kid. In another clip, Swift is sitting in her living room singing “Smokey Black Nights,” a song that ends up on her first demo. She sustains composure when a cat comes into the frame and licks her strumming fingers.
With the start of some songwriting chops, the Swifts start peddling Taylor’s demos again. This time RCA Records shows interest, offering the eighth grader a development deal. So, the whole family moves to Nashville. “If God blesses your family with a Tiger Woods, you’re going to move where you can golf all the time,” Bell says.
Swift’s new album, Fearless, drops November 11. She is nominated for the CMA Awards Female Vocalist of the Year, November 12.
In November of 2004, Swift performs a showcase at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe and catches the attention of seasoned vet Scott Borchetta, who has worked with Toby Keith and Randy Travis. He launches his own record company, Big Machine Records, hinging on the success of a 14-year-old girl and her guitar. “From our very first meeting, I’ve thought that Taylor was an extraordinary talent,” Borchetta says. That was four years ago, when she was just 14. I’ve never thought of her as a little girl. She’s always been just an incredible young artist to me. I’ve had very aggressive plans for Taylor since day one.”
Despite industry advice to release a more pop-rock country jam, Borchetta chooses “Tim McGraw” as Swift’s first single in August 2006. His decision is solidified as the single swings Swift into super stardom, and she sells 3 million copies of her first album and celebrates five Top 10 hits. She makes history at the 42nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas when she steps off the stage to sing her first single to the country idol who inspired it. When it’s over, the giddy girl shakes his hand and grins a true teenage smile over her shoulder. “That’s Tim McGraw! That’s Tim McGraw!” she squeals.
It’s Froggy and Swift’s old friend, Frank Bell, who brings the star back to Pittsburgh for the first time in September 2006 to open for Lonestar. The next day, she belts out the national anthem at a Pittsburgh Steelers game, solidifying her local celebrity. She returns in 2007 on three separate occasions to open for George Strait in February, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in July, and Brad Paisley in August. Later, when “Our Song” earns heavy radio rotation, Swift becomes the youngest country star in history to write her own No. 1 song. Months later, she makes history again, winning the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award, an industry salute given to an artist who has truly arrived on the scene. The accomplishment is so moving that Borchetta is seen crying. Swift, in tears too, grips her award and thanks her fans for changing her life. “This is definitely the highlight of my senior year,” she sniffles. “Winning the CMA Horizon was absolutely the surprise and the best night of my life,” she says later, on the phone. “All of the people at my record label that night were crying, and I got to see that record label go from a building with fresh paint on the walls and no furniture and 12 employees to having their artist win the CMA Horizon Award. I didn’t think of it so much as, ‘I won this.’ I thought about it like, ‘This team won this.’”
That night, Taylor writes the emotional and inspiring song, “Change,” an anthem that would end up on the soundtrack for the 2008 Olympic games and her upcoming album, Fearless, due out November 11. Local country artist, songwriter, and producer Bob Corbin says that Swift changed the scene of country music forever. “The fact that Taylor Swift broke on an independent label is unheard of,” Corbin says. “Most labels don’t know where the next phase is going to be. The industry has changed a lot from the way it used to be, even five years ago. There’s a little more room for everyone … and a lot of different styles.”
Corbin speaks to the vast appeal of Taylor Swift, referencing her crossover into the pop charts, luring fans into the country scene who wouldn’t have vested interested before. He also credits Western Pennsylvania for its rich and fertile country market. “Pittsburgh itself is a city of neighborhoods, a lot of small towns grouped together,” he says. “It’s a big step to cross the rivers here, but if you can go 40 miles outside of Pittsburgh in any direction — it’s country.” Bell agrees. “This is a shot-and-a beer area,” he says. “There’s a good work ethic. People say what they mean and mean what they say. And there’s so much hometown talent here that country music really thrives.”
Swift says that this region will always gravitate toward country music. “You know, it must be the people. Pittsburgh just seems like a very passionate town. It seems like when they love something, they’re gonna stand by it. And I love that.” Thousands of Pennsylvania’s passionate country people, in ripped jeans and cowboy hats, sway and sing along with their own Swift. When she plucks the last pretty notes of her McGraw mantra, the drum tempo quickens, and the young star starts shuffling her black boots to the new beat. She dances, her sparkly dress bouncing light that matches her cobalt blue eyes. “Ya’ll it’s so good to be with you tonight, but I gotta tell ya, if you break my heart — or mess with my friends from my home state of Pennsylvania! —” The crowd screams, and Swift pauses to giggle and then huffs: “I’m gonna write a song about you.” Swift breaks into a bold and beautiful “Picture to Burn,” strutting across the stage to the sassy plucking of a banjo. Country’s young queen is home. She performs for a sold-out crowd but dances with the youthful rebellion of a little girl dancing around her living room — in faded jeans and socks.
For more information, visit taylorswift.com and froggyland.com
