60 Minutes - When Lesley Stahl Met Taylor Swift | 60 Minutes: A Second Look

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

When Taylor Swift was just 21 years old, she invited "60 Minutes" inside her home and on tour to see firsthand how she was revolutionizing the music business. Now, for the first time, hear previously unreleased audio from Lesley and her team's time with Swift on “60 Minutes: A Second Look”. As we take a "second look," these conversations help us better understand Swift's unbelievable career trajectory. Correspondent Lesley Stahl and producer Shari Finkelstein recollect spending time with the artist as she was still finding her voice and highlight moments that stood out in the original interview. Young Swift also delves into her songwriting process, common themes within her music, and the rationale behind her business decisions. Listen to new episodes of "60 Minutes: A Second Look" every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hi, 60 Minutes fans. I'm Seth Doan, CBS News correspondent and host of the new podcast from this franchise you love. It's called 60 Minutes, A Second Look. For the first time ever, we're

opening the vault and revisiting some of the most impactful moments and people profiled on 60 Minutes. You'll get a fresh perspective and rare archival treasures. Today, I'm sharing one of our episodes. It features never-before-heard tapes, gripping interviews, and the legendary 60 Minutes correspondent who brought this original episode to life. In this episode, we bring you the never-before-broadcast excerpts of Leslie Stahl's 2011 interview with the then-21-year-old Taylor Swift. Today, Swift is as ubiquitous as she is unstoppable. But when Stahl interviewed her more than a decade ago, she told the correspondent she was still developing her approach to music and to stardom. We chat with Stahl and her producer about what it was like to interview Swift,

hear how they nearly passed up the opportunity, and explore what these newly unearthed interviews from more than a decade ago tell us about the Taylor Swift of today. Okay, here's the clip. You meet a lot of people, a lot of famous people, important people, presidents, prime ministers, stars.

Is there something that stands out or stands apart from your time with Taylor Swift? Well, the first thing I remember when I think back is that she played the guitar for us. It just, like, this isn't a happy song. And you know from the first note. This is Taylor Swift at home in Nashville with Leslie Stahl. Swift had just reached for her guitar and started to play. And this conversation, like every other recording of Swift and her team

that you'll hear from here on out has never been broadcast before. Is it the actual notes or is it how you're playing it? I'm trying to think if that same sequence would, in an upbeat way, would sound joyous. It's just the way that it makes you feel when you hear it. I think it's partly the way you're playing it. I'm actually feeling your emotion. It's organic. It is. It's, you're playing it with sadness.

As opposed to the actual, you think? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. You could make that happy. If you really wanted to, like. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like, you know. It's all wrong.

It's all wrong. It's all wrong. And you push her on, can't you make it sound happy? And she does. And she doesn't like it. She doesn't like it. It's not the way I wrote it. And she is determined. Yeah, it's like, because it's not exactly about the intricate lyric or the chord combinations.

I could talk to you all day about that. But at the end of the day, all that we really remember about a person or a song is how it made us feel. In 2011, Swift gave Stahl and the 60 Minutes team an unusual amount of access, including several hours of interviews, only 12 minutes of which was broadcast on television. For me, the reason I chose country music in the first place is because it seemed like it was where you could tell stories. No matter what the music is? Well, I feel like people in pop music and people in rock music,

they get to take all these chances production-wise, and they get to really push the envelope musically. And to short country music of that, I think that's unfair to country artists. I mean, you know, I think that we should be able to take risks too. But do you consider it perilous to move away from country? The criticism that I'm not country enough is the least hurtful criticism of all of them. Swift did not explicitly say she was making a transition to pop, but nine months after the 60 Minutes interview aired, she started releasing pop singles. And a few years later, Swift left country music entirely. I think that what we see in Taylor

Swift is that with every album, she has kind of reinvented herself. This is Pooja Patel, who was editor-in-chief of two influential music publications, Pitchfork and Spin. Taylor Swift has now been famous for Patel's entire career as a music journalist. Longer, actually. So longtime music writer, critic, this is your world. When did Taylor Swift enter your thinking, your world? When did Taylor Swift enter your thinking, your world? So I'm a little bit older than Taylor Swift, which means that like a lot of women, I grew up with her. We have seen her do country and then shift a little into pop and then shift into like big time radio pop, and then shift into indie. She has shown herself growing and evolving as a person and displaying different types of being a woman

while maintaining extremely common themes of being vulnerable, of not fitting in, of being in love with someone who doesn't love you back, of being in love and being thrilled that you're no longer in love with someone who doesn't love you back, of being in love and being thrilled that you're no longer in love with that person, of being spiteful, of wanting revenge, and doing all of that with a kind of, I mean, wide-eyed and earnest expression for someone who is a billionaire

and one of the most famous people in the world. As Swift's star rose, so too did the lore around this singer-songwriter. Even more than they had in 2011, fans were picking apart her lyrics, her liner notes, even her outfits, all in search of clues about Swift's life. If you talk to any Swiftie, you know, the second that there is an album announced, there's a million conspiracy theories about what the font says about Taylor Swift, what the color scheme says. She leaves clues for her fans about, you know, different themes on the album. Yeah, but you write these notes in the album coverage

with all these clues. You want us to know. You just don't want it to come out of your mouth. Yeah, that's kind of how it goes. But it's telling as much as you can tell without telling at all, which I think is my comfort level of what to tell. Over the years, the clues or Easter eggs Swift leaves for her fans

have become more elaborate. The Swift obsessed have found codes in her jewelry, in the color of elevator buttons in a music video, and in shots of videos that seem to mirror previous ones. It all happens to be a powerful marketing strategy. I keep hearing that you're a really smart businesswoman. Wow. Are you?

I really do love the business end of it. I think that, you know, being involved in every single aspect of what you do helps you not feel powerless. It helps me feel like I'm not being controlled by like this empire of strangers. Much of Swift's marketing happens online. And early on, Swift understood that it could be a powerful tool to draw in new audiences. And she wanted to make sure country music record executives understood that too. I would go in and talk to them and I'd say, I have a bunch of MySpace friends, thousands of them. Remember MySpace? And, you know, they've all got my music on their pages and then they send my music to their friends and it's this viral thing. It's called social networking. Business is in their blood is how Taylor Swift's

mother Andrea described it to Stahl. She had worked as a mutual fund wholesaler and Taylor's dad was a stockbroker. She came from a family that was really invested in her success in the world of entertainment. Here's Pooja Patel again. And what comes with that is a lot of business savvy and a lot of very considered thought about how to create a story around her. What is like the American dream version of the music industry?

Like that is the way that Taylor has been presented. I think that she is an extremely smart businesswoman and the team around her is exceptionally good at marketing.