Every Single Album - 'Taylor Swift' | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard are on a journey to break down every single Taylor Swift album ahead of the re-release of 'Fearless' on April 9. So they're starting at the beginning with Taylor Swift's debut album, 'Taylor Swift.' They talk about Taylor's roots in Nashville and country music (4:02), the early signs that she was going to be a superstar (19:51), and all of their favorite and least favorite songs off of this album (41:26). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rejoice Bachelor Nation, Bachelor Party is the podcast for you. Juliet Litman is here to break down every detail and piece of drama from the latest episode of a Bachelor franchise. Join by fellow superfans, members of Bachelor Nation, and Ringer colleagues, this is the one-stop shop for all your bachelor needs. Check out Bachelor Party on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora Pinciotti. I'm a staff writer at The Ringer, and I am a huge Taylor Swift fan. I've grown up with Taylor. Her first album came out when I was in middle school, and she's been the soundtrack to boys and friends and breakups and parties and pretty much everything about growing up ever since. I'm Nathan Hubbard, and I'm a contributor to The Ringer, and I am also a huge Taylor Swift fan. But I come at it from a little different place than Nora. I started as a songwriter making albums in Nashville and then spent a lot of time managing bands in the music industry. I was CEO of ticket master.

for a while, right as she started moving into arenas and stadiums and then spent a bunch of time running stuff at Twitter as she was taking over the interweb. So I've had this awesome opportunity to watch her be the songwriter that I wanted to be and be the business person that I wanted to be. The first time that I ever heard Nathan talk about Taylor Swift was in the summer of 2019. I worked at the Boston Globe. I was driving to cover a New England Patriots practice. And I was listening to the Bill Simmons podcast and there was this guy who was talking about Taylor Swift and really just seemed like he got it. And you fast forward to now. And the craziest thing about my relationship with Nathan is that we've never actually met each other. But for the past year, we've been pen pals in Taylor Swift. And as we've both been in quarantine on opposite sides of the country, we've chatted with each other pretty much nonstop about every. everything she's done and everything that we love to think about when it comes to Taylor. And the next time that we were on a text thread with Bill Simmons who put us together,

it was him talking to us about launching this project. And essentially, I think the way that we both think about this project is we're publishing the threat. We're bringing everybody else into the conversation that we've been having with each other about Taylor, about what she's been doing as she's spent the last year, re-recording a lot of her old music, kind of taking stock of everything that she's done and thinking about where she's going to go next. We're going to have some big picture conversations about each of her nine albums, but we're also going to break each of them down into 12 categories. Some of them are fun. Some of them are serious. We'll give each album a grade. I'm going to wish I could give each one

an A plus, but we're going to try to take it seriously. You cannot do that, Nora. I know. You keep telling me, you keep telling me, I swear I'm not going to do it. I promise. Grading on a curve. Begrudgingly, we will give each one an honest grade and hopefully just have a lot of fun and talk about Taylor, which as we both know, we both really like to do. Okay, Nora, then let's start at the very beginning with her debut album, Taylor Swift. So this album comes out on October 24th, 2006, two years after Taylor and her family relocated from Pennsylvania, where she grew up to Hendersonville, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. And that was so she could pursue her music career.

And this is all kind of Taylor legend at this point. And she had a guitar. She had curly hair. She had cowboy boots. She loved the Dixie Chicks. She loved Shania Twain and Tim McGrath. But Nathan, we now know that Taylor's destiny was a lot. purely as a country artist. So should we be taking for granted that this is where she planted

her flag to begin with? No. Where else was she going to go, Nora? I mean, she, you know, let's contextualize what was happening in music at the time. She's, we're coming out of like the end of the grunge era. We're coming through the sexualized pop movement of in sync. and Brittany. Eminem is out, Creed is out, Lincoln Park, Coldplay, outcasts. These are the peers at the time. And there's not a lot of places

at that moment in time for somebody with an acoustic guitar who is a songwriter to go. At the same time, software in that moment is becoming an instrument. If you recorded an album in 1997, you were doing it on digital tape. But once you got to 2000 and beyond,

you were starting to use a Mac and Pro Tools. And the technology itself was becoming an instrument and new sounds were being invented. And all of that would feel hopelessly overwhelming, in my view, for a 13-year-old kid who was writing songs on the acoustic guitar. And country music itself was starting to be this catch-all for those kinds of songwriters.

It was moving from the Kenny Chesney and the Tim McGraths to a next generation of Jason Aldeen and Brad Paisley and Luke Bryan and Carrie Underwood is leading the charts at the moment. But it was a shelter and a home

for the pure songwriter. And I think at 13 years old, when Taylor Swift first threw herself into the Nashville scene, that's what she was. And that's what she was. that's where you went. First of all, the over-under on when the first Lincoln Park reference was going to be on this podcast,

it was a lot more than two minutes into the first episode. Yeah, we killed it. Sorry, Vegas. Sorry, Vegas. It's all done. So it's interesting that you mentioned Carrie Underwood, because in 2006, the year this comes out, Jesus Take the Wheel, that's the only song by a female solo artist that's in the top 10 in country. So in some ways, this is a natural fit.

but it's also a really effective foil thing for her to vanquish for her to have to conquer, right, is the Nashville scene in country music because there are elements of that that are not friendly to a young woman who has sensibilities where she just wants to talk about boys and happiness and love and all of that stuff. And to me that's really important because she becomes compelling, not just in this moment, but for the rest of her career, when she has that thing to be in opposition to and to frame herself as the protagonist versus the antagonist. And it doesn't always work, right? But this one, I think, was especially compelling, even if it didn't end up, and when I say

it, I mean her placement within country music, didn't end up being. the be-all end-all of her career because I think at this point, it's already, if you look closely, pretty apparent that this is not all she is. She loved a deaf leopard. She loved Bruce Springsteen. Like she wasn't purely just interested in country, even though it was this obvious and I think authentically interesting and effective place for her to be. So do you see this first album while helping her get on the road to being wildly successful, do you see it putting her in a box where she kind of had to break out of that eventually?

It was something she had to break out eventually of, but she, I think, willingly and intentionally put herself into that box because it was the vehicle for her at the time and the kinds of songs that she was writing. And we should say that in that moment in time, she had Shanaya Twain. She had Faith Hill. She had Dixie Chicks.

By the time she got her publishing writing deal at 14 years old for Sony, she had some examples of women who had started in country and who had found a way to break out. What she didn't have was any example of someone who was speaking with the voice of a teen, breaking out using that voice. We had Leanne Rhymes who, had been presented as a woman. We had Britney Spears who had been presented as a woman and Christina Aguilera, a woman.

But no one who had really, up until that point, been able to be an authentic voice of youth. You talked about some of the best-selling albums at the time. I think when we think about debut, which came out at the end of 26th. By the way, do we call it debut? Is it the debut? Is it Taylor's?

What do we call it her debut or the debut? I need an article there. This is, if you go through TikTok right now, everyone just calls it debut. And I need that, this is a different podcast is what happened to everyone starting to drop the article on this. And it's actually like a real pet peeve for me, but you can call it debut if you want to. You're just pissed because all the kids are calling a debut is what you're saying. The debut or her debut is really what it should be. All right.

Well, the debut debuts at the end of 2006. But when we look at what the best-selling albums of that year were, it shows us this gaping hole that she ran into. The number one selling album of 2006 was High School Musical. Which was Disney giving voice to teens in ways it had not for quite a long time. The number two best-selling album was Rascal Flats, a country. band. The number three best-selling album was Carrie Underwood, a female country artist. The number eighth best-selling album was Hannah Montana soundtrack, which again was a sort of Disney

brought up youth teen girl voice. Number nine is Dixie Chicks. Chesney's in the top 10 by the end of the year. So you can see that country is moving into mainstream acceptance and sales, but there are also these little glimmers of music about and sung by teens rising to the top of the charts. And that's what Taylor Swift is. And so there's a part of her that hit the music scene at a moment in which everyone was working around the edges of the kind of music and themes and emotion that she ultimately began writing about. But no one had owned it and stepped up as the embodiment of it. And that's really what the debut was all about. Now, let's not pretend it happened all at once,

because part of the story of this album is how hard she worked, not just to get there and get it out, but how hard once it was out, she worked to bring this into the minds of every DJ in the country music world to get it on the playlist. And that was really the slow burn build that helped her become the story. star that she is today. Right. And while she's pounding the pavement and she's talking to every country

radio DJ known to man and woman and vegetable and mineral and all that jazz, she's kind of straddling two challenges because she's establishing her country bona fides, which is not a small deal when the audience is older. And there's plenty of people who would really like to laugh a teenage girl out of the room, especially one who, like even if she's the same age, Leanne Rhymes was, she sounds a lot younger. But at the same time, the teenage essence was what made her great and what eventually made her bigger than any genre. So having to serve both of those purposes at the same time is really hard.

And there are moments on this album where some songs don't feel like true Taylor Swift songs in the way that pretty much everything that comes after does. Now, our song, that is unmistakably a Taylor Swift song. No one else could have written that and done it that way. And it's not because it's a country song. It's because it's a Taylor Swift song. There are others, though, where it sounds to me on this album a little bit like she is playing dress-up. So in the moment, it's her challenge to serve both of those interests.

Moving forward, it sets her up to outgrow the place where she started out, even if it was a great fit for her in the first place. Is it fair for us to ascribe that much premeditation to her with this? Because, again, she's 14 when she signs her songwriting deal. She's 15 when she signs this record deal. And there is no doubt that she made a bunch of shrewd business decisions even at this age. But almost every artist who's ever made, an album, myself included. I made an album with a small label in Nashville five years, 10 years before she did. And guess what happens in your first record in Nashville? All of the

handlers who know all of the gatekeepers and the rainmakers through the country music business think they know how to frame you. And as you said, the box to put you into and how to frame it and how to ascribe a brand to the artist and how to shape these songs into something. And when I listen to this album, I can hear Scott Boshetta who found Taylor Swift at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, but who was looking for his next thing. DreamWorks Nashville had shut down and he was well connected and well respected enough to be able to start his own independent label and his artist was Taylor Swift. But he was deeply invested in the success of this new artist that he had found and it feels to your point like there are moments where she is being told or asked

to, as you put it, play dress up in a way that will slide this album in comfortably to the river of country music without upsetting the apple cart that is sort of the status quo that this industry is so well known for, even though what he was pushing was not Faith Hill. This was not Shania Twain. This was a 15-year-old girl who had not had success. No one at 15 years old had success in Nashville previously. You have to be lucky and you have to be good and you have to be smart and all those things to create a career like this have to happen at the same time, right? And we've got a bunch of categories to break down this album with and we'll get into it. But I think one of the things that made us really want to do this show, right, is being able to look at that idea of how much of

this was an accident or circumstance or other people's ideas and how much of this was one person who's an incredibly shrewd manager of her own career. And the answer is never going to be fully one or the other, right? Because, yeah, at 15, you're not plotting the next 20 years of your life. You're just not. But we will see, as we get into some of these categories, she already had some pretty pointed and sharp ideas that I think set her on a particular path. So here's what we're going to do for this and every album. We've got a bunch of categories. We've got the best song on the album. We've got all the Easter eggs, the track fives, Taylor's most important collaborators, but we're going to start with the biggest song on the album. I have our song.

And he says, our song is the slamming stream door because it's late and your mama don't know. Which was her first number one country hit, also got to number 16 on the Hot 100. What do you have? Well, we're going to argue a little bit about this. I think it's our song. But Teardrop on my guitar technically charted higher. But it is our song. Our song seems to be the one that lasted the most. What I don't understand that you have to explain to me, how was this the last song on the album? She has a weird habit of sequencing, right? This is the first moment where it's very hard to explain some of her sequencing choices. And often the first bullet point in that conversation has to do with some of the lead singles from the later albums.

But this is a really good example of that, right? This song is incredible. I think as we go through this journey album by album, we're going to talk a lot about sequencing. We're going to talk a lot about singles. And this to me is Exhibit A, that maybe for all the amazing things that she does so incredibly well,

that one thing maybe she doesn't do so well is sequence her albums. Because there's just no other. explanation for why this song would be last. It is cute that it is play it again. There is a lot of that and I understand why maybe you put it at the end to sort of reload and replay the album. But I am never going to understand how she saved what was a sort of generation-defining song for the last song on the record. Let me pause at a theory. So the first single and the first song on this album is Tim McGrath. And one thing that our song and Tim McGrath have in common is that while she

She's telling a story about relationships with boys. She's also telling a story about her relationship with music in general, right? You need a song to define a relationship to make you feel all those things. She thinks of her high school boyfriend who's about to go off to college and she knows they're going to break up when she hears this Tim McGrath song. So not only is she presenting something about her personal relationships, she's also telegraphing to everyone who's listening. I feel really, really, really deeply about this stuff that I'm doing. And so having those as bookends is the argument that I would make for why our song comes last. But fundamentally, it's a weird choice.

And there's no getting around that because that song is just so good. It has everything you need in a country song. It says shotgun, now talking about a car, of course. It talks about cars. It talks about God. It uses the word mama. It's a song that she definitely could have written in 20 minutes. and she did, you know, but she stood by this one

because I don't think everybody else believed in this one. This is the start of Taylor trusting her instinct. She had played this, I think, for her school talent show, freshman year, and seen how it had been received by her classmates and knew that there was something there. And it's the first window we have into her always having this right intuition about her fan base and listening. in ways that most everybody else in the industry doesn't,

to what that fan base is craving and knowing the kind of music that's going to resonate with them. We're going to get to the next category, and that's a really good segue, because the next category is the track five breakdown. And track five's, very important to Taylor, an avenue for her to pinpoint one of those songs that she thinks is going to resonate with the fans especially.

And for this one, track five as cold as you, she told Rolling Stone that it's her favorite song lyrically on the album. That kind of sets in motion the track five thing where she's identified it as important. In that piece where she says it's her favorite song, it really cracks me up because the way that she describes it is she says, the hook is, I've never been anywhere cold as you. I love a line in a song where afterward you're just like, burn. Which is so funny because it's that classic thing where like sometimes she can't help but talk. a 16-year-old. And then sometimes, like, that song, the lyrics in that song are really mature.

And there are smart lyrics that are super young on this album. Like, our song is a really good example of that. I think it's so clever, but it's really youthful. Some of the parts of Cold as You are pretty sophisticated for a teenager. What do you think of this song? The Track 5 Conversation, listen, this song doesn't move me in the way. some of her other track fives do in the way that some of the other songs on this album does. But when you sort of pull it out musically and just focus on the lyrics,

it's to your point, a very mature song. And she follows it with the outside, which she wrote at 12 years old. It's almost like she doesn't want to allow herself to get too deep into the waters of mature songwriting. But this one, you know, first of all,

it's the first introduction of rain as a concept. And this becomes an unbelievably important theme throughout Taylor Swift songs throughout her entire discography. But there's something about this song. Listen, this isn't one that most people go to shows today desperately wanting to hear. It has not endured in the same way that a number of other songs on this album did,

but it clearly meant something to her. And I think this whole notion of a track five, for Taylor is that this is the song that she feels like has the richest depth of emotion. There's so much on this album that is sort of the duck's feet of the teenage existence. All of those feelings of insecurity and heartbreak and loneliness and body image

and all of those things that, you know, lack of confidence that exists that she captures so well. This one, I think, to your point, she had stepped out of some of that teeniness and put it into a song, and therefore it created the idea of what track fives are. I'm just not sure that this one lasts or holds up

in the way that some of her others do. What does this song mean to you? In hindsight, I think that makes a lot of sense that this was a song that really resonated with her because she was teaching us that she can wallow and that we could wallow, which not a lot of other songs on this album do, because wallowing is really different

from setting your ex-boyfriends photos on fire. And it really mattered for her to tell us that those emotions were important too. Well, she gave us a massive insight

into her psyche with one line that is maybe it's not quite my favorite line on the album, but it's a really important one. And this is a theme for Taylor

that we're going to see through the course of a lot of her songwriting. And I think it starts in Cold as You. All right. Moving on to the next category, which is the most important collaborator.

I'm going to have you go first on this one, Nathan. Well, it's Nathan Chapman. And that's her producer, who she's going to be with for the next couple of albums. And she was given a host of choices as she was getting ready to make this album. Scott Borchette and team put a bunch

of people in front of Taylor had her work with them. But there was something about Nathan Chapman, who was working out of a shack behind a house in Nashville, that made her feel comfortable, where she would turn the skeletons of these songs over to him, and he could quickly turn around what sounded like album ready, instrumentation, and produced songs. He is, at least he started as a session mandolin banjo player. He had not worked as a producer with anybody else, really, who mattered in Nashville. But Taylor had a connection with him that she fought for with the label. And this is the relationship that is going to carry her from that 13-year-old girl looking for someone to listen to her songs as she drives down Music Row in Nashville to the superstar that she is to

today. And this working relationship goes on to bear a bunch of fruit. He is the one who figured out a way to get her comfortable enough to turn the shells of songs into the fully produced songs. So I think he is by far her most important collaborator on this record. What do you think? I have Nathan Chapman too. We got to give Liz Rose her due at some point, but I do have one question based on what you were just talking about. How do you think? he approaches using her voice because part of that youthfulness is not just subject matter. It is how she sounds. She has a young, young woman's voice at this point. And there's not a ton of depth to it. It's breathy. She doesn't have a huge range. And that's what he was tasked with getting the most

out of. And how do you think he did? Well, he does two things. And you're right about the state of her voice at that point in time. I mean, I'd shudder to think what my voice sounded like at that age. And there's a whole lot of conversation about her voice over the next couple of albums before it really becomes a powerful instrument. But what he does is, first of all, he sings underneath her for a lot of the album. And so while she has a higher end register, a little bit more of a nasally voice, there are notes that get caught in her throat sometimes. He's underneath her adding some bass on a lot of the harmonies. As we get into later albums, you'll hear his voice start to fade,

and a lot of the male background vocals actually start to disappear on songs as she gets older and her voice takes on more sort of gait and gain. But the second thing that he does is he creates a pretty large wall of sound, and this album is mixed in a way that her voice gets sort of put into the middle of that wall. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of instruments playing at once. You've got fiddles and banjos and mandolins and guitars and the drums and the snares and the symbols and they all sort of are awash. And as we get into some of the later albums, the mixing starts to isolate a lot of the instrumentation but also bring her voice forward. And so they found a way, burying it is not the right

way to say it, but to surround it with instruments and frequencies that made up for the parts of her voice that at this point in time just haven't developed. They're coming, but she's still just a kid. What's a really good example of that? What song do you feel like he does that effectively? Well, I think it's across the entire album, but in particular some of the country rockers. So should have said no, which we know is written two days before mastering. A lot of that happens. I think picture to burn is a great example of that. where there's just a lot of instrumentation trying to bring the rock out

in a voice that doesn't have some of the gravitas to really rock. You know, Carrie Underwood just was gifted with that. She's a lot older when she's making these records. She can growl. Taylor doesn't really have the ability to growl yet. And so... No, you just mentioned two songs where she is that peak twang.

Yes, yes. And so he finds ways to use instruments to flesh out the canvas and fill in those registers that she just isn't really capable of grabbing in that moment. This is an impossible to answer question, but who do you think turned the twang up to 11? Because it's at 11. Well, that's where we come back to who's really coaching her through this.

How much of this is Taylor loves country music. She loves the songwriting. She's thrown herself into the genre versus, you know, did she get notes back on the first takes from Scott Borchetta that said, can you say amen instead of amen? You know, can you can you twang it? Our song. Yes.

And it feels forced, right? Especially retroactively. In the moment, maybe you could buy into it. But it is, there are times where it's campy. And we see it really all the way up through red. there's a few songs on red where they feel almost like parodies of country songs

and she sort of leans into some of that twang what's going to be fascinating in the re-recording project is how she's going to handle that and whether she just goes and plays the character because I think that will be illuminating that she probably was playing

a bit of a character here. I just think it's unfair to call her calculating or something in that way. She was too young to be. be calculating. She was smart to know she had to fit within a genre, but she had a lot of people in the country world who were telling her what she had to do to get the song on the radio. And so this is the most egregious example of leaning into the twang.

The entire idea that calculating is sort of part and parcel to the Taylor experience, we're going to try to pull the curtain back on that a little bit. I hope so. To me, to me it's just, I just sort of reject the premise of it, right? Because it's hard to become a really famous musician and it's hard to have this kind of career. And guess what? Most people who do it, yeah, there's some happenstance involved. But you got to try really hard. And the idea that she tried things and did things on purpose, ascribing something negative to that is really ridiculous to me. So, but I know it is one of the things that has turned a lot of people against her or frustrated people with her at different times. So it's a fascinating canvas

with her, but it's one that really baffles me because the idea that wanting things and trying to get them is somehow no-go territory is just absurd. But Nora, let's be clear about why that is. It's because she's a woman. And I say that not to sort of bail out to the easy answer, but Justin Timberlake is on the rise at this moment in time. Nobody gives him shit. for being in a saccharin pop boy band with bleached, you know, frosted tips, and then moving into, you know, the sound that he went into. Was he trying something?

No, that was a vehicle to start and present his talent and help him as a 16, 17-year-old kid find his way. Taylor is younger, and this is the only genre that would remotely be open to a 13, 14, 15, 15, 16-year-old, old girl with an acoustic guitar. So that's why she gets pushed. All of the great artists are, in part, amazing brand managers. Jay-Z, Sean Carter is behind the scenes managing that brand. Bono, behind the scenes, he is managed. Madonna, an incredible brand manager. You have to do that as an artist

to endure. And so I am with you that we can pull the curtain back on the California. calculating, the extent to which we say calculating for me, I hope it has positive connectivity, because this is an unbelievably driven human being. I mean, at the time that she started touring for this album, she was opening for the Brad Paisley's of the world. She opened for George Strait. She, you know, she ended up doing some opening for Tim McGrathor, but she was playing a lot of amphitheaters where, you know, journey, the reconstituted journey goes and plays. And Jimmy Buffett brings his Margarita Ville tour. And she was opening for country artists at the time. And I was an executive at Live Nation. And we ran a lot of those amphitheaters at the time.

And there was this guy who kept calling me about his daughter who was opening in these amphitheaters. And his name was Scott Swift. And I talked to him three or four times where he kept telling me about all the things that were wrong in the amphitheater with the fan experience. the lines for the bathroom were too long. There aren't enough food options. People who are on the lawn, you know, get crammed in together, and they don't get enough space. You oversell the lawn. And this was a guy who sure as Sunday knew that his daughter was going to be a star.

And they were already thinking about how do we create a better experience in the long run. They were so observant as a team, but all this stuff was coming from her. And so, like, even in this moment in time, she can see the long game. She knows where she's going. She's trying to plant the seeds to get there. I don't look at that as calculating. I look at that as driven. And every artist who's ever made it has had to fight like hell to get what they want,

much less being a 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old girl with an acoustic guitar in a world in a world in which Britney Spears is at the top of the charts. How did you react to getting those phone calls? thinking, okay, I should internalize this information and maybe act on it, or did it just make you interested in the person who was behind the phone calls? Both. I mean, the most important thing to do if you're involved in a concert, and this is why the artists know it best, is you go and you turn your back to the stage and you watch people experiencing the event. And you start to notice what it's like when people return from going to the bathroom in the middle of a song and they have to walk 20 seats in because there aren't enough aisles.

And so a lot of what Scott Swift was saying resonated with me because he was so focused on how do we make the fan experience better. But it showed that they could see beyond opening for Brad Paisley, and they were thinking about how do we merchandise better? How do we create an environment for commerce that is not painful or forced but is authentic for the fans who are there to connect? and how do we build that better experience? And as she graduates from these amphitheaters

and moves into arenas and then stadiums, you can see she starts to take more control over that entire experience. But it took these days of just grueling it out on the road through the normal channels for her to really learn about how she was going to shape her business and her brand.

And again, that's drive. There's no artist who's ever made it to the top who just sort of ignored those things. everybody from Springsteen on down has been focused on that end fan user experience just like Amazon was successful because they focus on the end user. I mean, in some ways, the commercial part of this

requires you to think about the end customer and there was nobody, even at this age, better at that than Taylor Swift. Very cool and very smart, and I'll put my soapbox away, but I just think that's very interesting and very cool. We started this conversation about Nathan Chapman, who, like you, he is my most important collaborator for this album.

We do have to give Liz Rose sort of Taylor's songwriting editor at this point. Her do, she's not my choice for this category because instead of being involved in every song on the album, she does seven of 11 of them. She didn't do should have said no or our song, which are huge. So I think the nod goes to Chapman, but Liz Rose continues to be an important character in the Taylorverse and obviously very important to her. I think especially just anyone who is that young, the trust with any partner is essential. And from things that she said at the time, from interviews Liz Rose is given, it sounded like they had a real comfort with each other where Taylor could kind of just go unload her feelings.

And then all of a sudden they would be a song. Agree. She's now 64 years old. So she's 30 years Taylor Sr. And what Liz Rose did on this album in particular and fearless is she teaches Taylor how to be a co-writer and how to work with other people. That is a scary, scary thing to do when you create something that is all your own. And somehow she found a way to teach Taylor how to open herself and be confident enough and yet stay vulnerable enough to put her entire emotional, you know, portfolio. and spectrum out for somebody else and work on it. That's an incredibly difficult thing for an artist to do.

And so Liz Rose is super important. And her importance only grows as we get into Fearless. And beyond. All right. Our next category is the most purposeful Easter egg. And I'll go first on this one. My choice is all of them. It's every secret in the liner notes because, again, we didn't have the context. We didn't know that this was a thing. So all of a sudden, there's that brand savvy again. Yes, she's putting out an album, but you can read the promotional material. You read the liner notes. And in every single one,

there is a hidden message. And if you have to pick one that encapsulates the whole thing, it's he will never know, which was the one for teardrops on my guitar, which is just hysterical because the first word of the song is the guy's name.

Like, he's going to know. He's going to figure it out. He's probably going to figure it out, I think. Why does she not use pseudonyms for any of these people. She just goes right at them. It's one of the things I love about it. She hadn't discovered her love of a pseudonym yet at this point.

You know she gets there, at least with herself. Yeah. But my most purposeful one is, I mean, she just in the liar note says, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam. Sam, I think there's like five Sam. There's a lot of Sam's. And she's saying, you know, Sam on shoulda said, no, this is about being cheated on.

And look, it's the first, that song is the first of several last minute songs that go on to make her albums. She writes them right at the end. The verse is, there's not a whole lot to speak of in the verse. It's sort of the same chord progression as no woman, no cry. You can see that I've been crying. Baby you know all the right things to say. But it's interesting to contrast this song.

with Carrie Underwoods before he cheats, which gets a song of the year nomination out of this crop of songs. For some reason, this song is on the Jonas Brothers 3D movie soundtrack. I don't understand how that happened or how it got there. But this is really the shot across the bow

of people who betray her. There's irony in that, by the way. A ton of irony. When we get to fearless, we'll figure out where it is, but continue. Yeah. This is really the first shot across the bow where she's naming name.

Picture to Burn is maybe the first crazy ex revenge song, but this is the one where she's not afraid to name names. I loved it. All right, we can't be all positive and happy all the time, I suppose. So our next section is songs you'd cut. I have a few. Talk to me. My biggest one is a place in this world, mainly because I just call bullshit on any Taylor Swift song

that starts with the words, I don't know what I want. ask me, because I'm still trying to figure it up. No way. Just get out of here with this. And this is a good example of one of the songs that I was referring to earlier where I just don't, it doesn't feel like her. And there are so few Taylor Swift songs that are not immediately identifiable as Taylor Swift songs.

And some of the songs that fit that description to a T are on her debut album. So it's not like she couldn't do it at this point in her career. I mean, picture to burn is a Taylor Swift song through and through. Our song is a Taylor Swift song through and through. I think there are some with the kind of pandering to the country tropes moments on Tim McGraw where it gets a little borderline, but there are still narrative devices, like the way that she brings you in with, you said the way my blue eyes shine, put those Georgia stars to shame. I said that's lie. Like that storytelling is so identifiably her immediately that I would, there's, there's, There's no argument that she couldn't do it at this point, but there are a few songs. I think this is number one. I can make the argument for the outside as well, a little bit on Stay Beautiful,

and then I'm only me when I'm with you, which is a bonus track. Oh, gosh. Yeah, the bonus tracks were troublesome on this one. Yeah, and so that's a little bit of, that's grading on a curve, but those are the ones where I don't, hear Taylor as much. And it just makes them less essential. What about you? Those are exactly the ones that I listed. I mean, at the end of the liner note, it says, P.S. To all the boys who thought

they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 11 songs written about you. Ha. Well, I don't know that a place in this world is that song. Stay beautiful. Same thing. And the outside for me, it's just a young song. But a place in this world is the one for me that I circled because she put it fourth. And it really, it feels like the soundtrack to a Jesse spin-off or something, like some kind of Disney channel, like they could have used it for the full house reboot or something. And it just doesn't fit. This is one where she worked with the team of writers. You know, our song is purely Taylor Swift. She is the only credited writer. And boy, does that sound like a Taylor Swift song, as you said. This one just sounds like they were trying to pull together

thoughtful, teeny, country-themed thing, and there were real genuine emotions. Again, she's got all the duck's feet of emotions happening on this album. You know, starry-eyed love, an uncertainty of youth, and hiding behind parents' backs, but this one just doesn't feel like a song that resonates in any meaningful way for me. And she even contradicts it, right? Because part of the message of that song is the idea that she's this ingenue just searching for her place in this world. The liner note, hidden message for this song is, I found it. So already, by the time you're putting the thing out into the world, it's like, yeah, this no longer applies to me, whatever. I'm kind of on the path here.

We can't let it go without just talking about the terrible pop version of teardrops on my guitar that was part of those extra songs that got, you know, looped in later on. We'll save this because it's going to come up later for me. So save your point in here. Okay. We'll move on for now. Do you wish the album title had been different? I do not. I don't either.

I think it's part of the marketing behind this album was introducing this teen talent. And the only way to do that was with the name Taylor Swift. I also think, therefore, it's purposeful that the first song single was Tim McGraw. And maybe that's why the last song is our song. song, but I wouldn't have titled it anything else. The paralleling of the names between hers and Tim McGrath, one of the biggest stars in

country at that point, is really smart. The other element of it that works for me is that naming it Taylor Swift, naming it, it's autobiographical, and so is she. So you learn fundamental things about her, even though it's not exactly an original story to have a debut album, just be eponymous, but it's really effective to me for those two reasons. I don't, this will be a category that we'll return to as we go through the albums. Usually I don't have a problem with her album choices. I would say that relative to the track fives or some other things that she does on a recurring basis, I don't know that the album titles tend to be like chalk full of significance,

but this one, it really works. And her name is also interesting because one of my favorite Taylor facts is that her parents named her Taylor sort of as an homage to James Taylor, but also because they wanted to give her an androgynous name in case she, like, climbed the ranks in corporate America. And doesn't just that make perfect sense with this person who ends up having this savviness and this ambition and the thoughtfulness and the drive to say, okay, here's my name, here's Tim McGrath's name, here you go, and send it out into the world? Yeah. Trying to be as much as much. much to as many people as possible in this moment.

Next category is something we're calling Taylor tidbits from the depths of the internet, which is basically just me Googling a lot of stuff. And here's what I found. What did we find? We already mentioned that we found a lot. We already mentioned that this album has the first recorded reference to pouring rain. Very important to Taylor. It also has the first 2 a.m. reference on Mary's song,

which is about our neighbors in Tennessee. Taylor also, so she said that she wrote Tim McGrath in math class. Tim McGrath has said that when he first heard it, it made him feel really old and it made him wonder if he was past his prime, but then somebody clarified to him that it was written by a high school student and he felt a little bit better, which is great. Congratulations to Tim McGrath for not having to feel old. Speaking of the line. I can't let you go yet though, because it's so important to understanding that song, just highlight

how threatening it was for, you know, the next big thing to be singing about Tim McGrath. And his initial reaction isn't awesome, but it's, whoa, what does this mean? Am I done? Am I past my prime? And by the way, the answer is, of course, yes. And there's this wonderful full circle where we got the whole weird moment at the ACM Awards, where she's playing to him. I hope you think that little black dress,

think of my head on your chest, and my old faded blue jeans when you think Tim McGrath. I hope you think of me. She meets him for the first time, which was everything that we loved and were worried about with Taylor, right? She plays in front of him. He's sitting there just awkwardly with Faith Hill.

They don't know what to do. her voice, to be honest, is pretty weak. She's struggling a little bit with some of the notes. The whole thing feels weird. But then at the end, she puts her hand out and super confidently, more confident than you ever could, looks the biggest star in country in the face and goes, Hi, I'm Taylor. And you're like, whoa, who is this?

Right. And it comes full circle when she ends up bringing him and Faith up, you know, on tour in Nashville in like 2018 on reputation. He ends up coming up and singing that with her. But the fact that this started with, does this mean I'm over? You know, there's a young girl singing about me instead of embracing it and saying, wow, this is amazing. But that it was a threat to the institution of country music is an important signal of what she actually had to fight through to become who she is.

By the time she was in her early 20s, she was having the same types of, oh my gosh, is there somebody younger and cooler than me fears? So I guess it's a little universal. The hey, I'm Taylor thing is so funny because to this day, that is how she starts most of her concerts. She's introducing it and somewhere along the line and she'll go, and I'm Taylor, and it's like, yeah, I know it said that on the ticket.

Right. But at that point, it's just funny that that's carried through the entire way to me because it's so... Yeah, it was just one of those moments though, right? Where we... So much of her music is her publishing her insecurities. And in that moment, it felt like she, the shock of it was just how confidently, I mean, she introduced herself like every parent tries to teach their kid to introduce themselves.

Her arm is straight as a board. There's no way that handshake isn't just firm as firm can be. Like, totally. And so while maybe there was, you know, the performance felt a little meek, like all of a sudden there's just this power and this force where Faith and Tim could barely get out of their seats. She's just this presence. It overwhelmed them in the moment. It was the coolest thing. There's also a she once, he was doing a country radio interview and they surprised him by having her call in.

And the two of them, the conversation is so awkward. Why don't we find out? Taylor, is it a compliment or is it, because he's old. Oh, it's definitely a compliment. Tim McGraw, meet Taylor Swift. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. you, Taylor, how you doing?

I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Congratulations on your record. It's doing great. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. And thank you for having good music and everything. I swear I'm not a stalker. Because he's like, yeah, well, I heard it. And then the guy who's hosting the show is like, Taylor, you didn't want to run it by him or anything. And she's like, well, I didn't say anything bad. And it's so funny because, like, like you said, it's so awkward, but she has this confidence that's like,

she never says she should have done anything different and you can tell she doesn't think that she should have, which is just in that package of like, oh, I don't know, I'm just trying to figure everything out. But she's so great at bringing out other people's insecurities. I mean, at that moment in time, Tim McGraw is, you know, worried about Luke Bryan and Jason Aldeen and Brad Paisley.

They're starting to take the mantra from him. He's always going to be a draw, but as a relevant, current, creative artist, he was fading and he knew it. And this song made him uncomfortable and there was something about that dynamic that she just held her grace and class in a way that she won that battle,

even if she didn't sing her heart out that night. Yeah, she very much won that moment. She had way more star power and barely anybody knew who she was. Next tidbit, like we said, Drew from teardrops, eventually showed. up on her doorstep and she was like, uh,

she gave him the Heisman. Yeah, full Heisman. You're a little late. That's a good segue. Uh, well, so first Tyler Hilton, who played Chris Keller on One Tree Hill,

was Drew in the Teardrops video. Okay. But speaking of football, guy named Justin Sandy was the X in picture to burn. Okay. In the video. He was one of two. I'm putting on my football reporter helmet for a little bit.

Yes, Please do. He was one of two undrafted free agents who made the Titans roster in 2004. Nice. The other one was Jared Payton, son of Hall of Famer Walter Payton. Amazing. How great. What two great claims to fame for being the horrible X in The Picture to Burn Video.

She's a talent scout in both football and music videos. Totally. And then this is my favorite one. There's a change.org petition asking Taylor to explain the lyric when we're on the phone and you talk real slow from our song. Since why isn't it low? Like, that doesn't make sense. Why does talking slowly make you more quiet?

Because it's late and your mama don't know? Yeah, but why does slow have anything to do with it? It should be when we're on the phone, you talk real low because it's late and your mom don't know. But I think it's because it gave her an opportunity to sort of just lean into the twang a little bit, right? Because you go talk real slow. Well, why couldn't she have said talk real low?

Well, because that would have been different than she would have been all quiet. And I don't know. There's a petition for this? There's a petition. It's an unanswered question. Everyone who is listening, please go sign it and get Taylor to fess up because this is way down the line in completely other contexts. Max Martin is going to come up. But this is like, hit me baby one more time, kind of like what did these words mean stuff?

I don't know. Look, there are references. I did I word clouded the lyrics on this album. There are five songs that reference trucks or cars. There are six songs that reference tears. There are at least three that talk about rain. So I think it's unfair to ascribe too much to each individual word that she picked. There's a lot of repeats here where she's just, you know,

trying to get through the damn song and write a country song so she can get to the, get to the meat of the album and our song and everything else. The question isn't about significance. It's that it makes no sense. Like, imagine being, you're in high school. You're on the phone with your girlfriend, and you're trying not to get caught by your parents. You're going to just draw out all your words.

It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. Taylor, answer the petition. All right. We're going to move on. I'm not letting you have a rebuttal because you're wrong about this. I agree. Next category, we're calling the Tom Hiddleston Award for showing the work, which is maybe where, I don't know,

paparazzi suddenly pop up in a quiet enclave of Rhode Island and people have questions. In this case, we talked a little bit about Tim McGrath and the naming of Tim McGrath and doing that, and we don't need to repeat ourselves. But that's my choice here is just the purposefulness of doing that. I think shows the seams of trying to break out onto the scene in a really nice way, but in a way that is still pretty obvious. Taylor said, she wrote it in a math class, but when she played it for Porchetta,

apparently he said immediately like, oh, that's the first single we're doing this. So I think you can kind of see the work there. But did she name it Tim McGraw because she thought that this would resonate with country radio and fans of country music. Do you think it was that pre-meditated? I kind of do. What do you think of the song?

I love the song. I love the song. Did you love it the first time you heard it? Yes. Yeah. I didn't love it. It was not the first, so I really liked it as a single.

I remember somebody that I went to school with did it in a talent show. And it just seemed like to be able to pull that off was the coolest thing ever. When the full album was out, I really gravitated to should have said no and picture to burn, which was funny because I had like, I was really, I really wanted like an 80 relationship at that point. And I did not have one. But it was that and take a bow by Rihanna. I just remember listening to and being like, will someone cheat on me so that I can know what this is like?

Being a young woman is hysterical. But no, I really like the song. I think it's a little overwrought occasionally, but I really love it. I missed it the first time, of course, I'm sure. There are vibes of Deanna Carter's strawberry wine all over this song in the best way. But I didn't get it until I heard the Maggie Rogers version. You love that. I love that.

It made me absolutely fall in love with this song. But I think that that version matters as we look at this album retroactively. The Maggie Rogers version of Tim McGrath matters. It starts to make this early catalog look akin to the Beatles' early stuff, not that it was that revolutionary, but that the quality and the impact of the songs were huge on the next generation of artists that were coming up. I mean, people are going to cover these songs in ways that get at the essence of what they are,

that pull them out of the time period and that make them maternal. It feels a little bit to me like Joe Cocker covering I get by with a little help from my friends or CSN doing Blackbird where they cheat a little bit because they use some minor chords

that weren't there which Maggie Rogers does in her version. But you hear the version, the covered version, you go, whoa, that is a song. And for me, in retrospect, we'll talk about it, but like Jake Gyllenhaal can stick this,

you know where, because she had already written an indie version, record if you were enough of an artist to hear it that way and Maggie Rogers did. So it's such a great bookend to the actual indie records that she put out in 2020. But this song in particular, I think, without this interpretation, you would just have pigeonholed as a country music song, maybe a premeditated one, as you say, with the title. But taken out of context and reworked, it really opens up what an amazing songwriter she even was at 15. To me, it's just it's the dialogue.

that's the narrative. It's the immediate storytelling chops that make it. And to your point, other people have maybe added in some ways more musicality to it. And it'll be fascinating to see how she re-recorded it. But from a pure songwriting perspective, I think it was, at least to me, immediately very impressive. Okay. Next, we've got Peak Taylor. What you got? Oh, I mean... Sigh. It's... The Peak Taylor is singing a... Amen for me. It again.

The twang for me was the peak Taylor. There was something about it that she's leaning into the part. She's given everything she can. It's some combination of she's getting notes to do this, and she knows that it's a requirement to get this song out on the radio. She's going to go, she already knows that she's going to go work harder than anybody else has to back up her record at country radio. She's going to go work for six months, where most people work for six.

weeks and go meet every DJ that she possibly can and try to get them to play her record. And just the singing Amen for me is that Pete Taylor moment. What do you have? I also have Twang just circled and written down like six times and my notes about my choice for this, but it's a different one. Mine is the picture to burn music video because we've got the truck. We've got the pyro. We've got Abigail. And... We're just burning stuff. What? He's got a girl with him.

No. Who? She's driving the truck. Give me that. He let her drive the truck. He never let me drive the truck. That is so messed up. And you can tell, like, here's an example of where calculating and accidental or organic or authentic or whatever word you want to use converge when you're talking about.

a teenager whose career is taking off. Wouldn't you just want to do that? If you had the option to make a music video however you wanted to, wouldn't you get your best friend and light a bunch of stuff on fire and like say screw you to a boy? And it's calculating, right? Because you're choosing to do that

because you want a certain experience and you want a certain effect. But it's fun as heck. And so I think that's peak dealer. They're doing like a real world reunion now on MTV. We need to do a reunion of all of Taylor Swift's freshman and sophomore year high school

classmates who've just probably been completely destroyed by the but because picture to burn, I mean, I don't know how that guy leaves his house at this point. Just completely crushed. Sam of should have said no

fame and Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, liner note, private Twitter profile. Doesn't seem like he wants a lot of people getting after him. Yeah. I mean, it just, it's, it's got to be a tough, tough to be in the wake of Taylor Swift in high school, I'm pretty sure. But it sounds like a couple

of these guys had it coming. Yeah, they know what they did. All right. Next category. Belatedly best song. I'll spoil mine because I actually think that this one, we got right at the time. I think it's the same. I think our song is the best song from this album. Yeah, I think that's right. I, I, I, it took me a while to fall in love with Tim McGrath. And again, the Maggie Rogers version did it for me. But I just don't think you can get away from our song. It is the best song on the album, and it's held up the longest, and it will always be there. I do want to give just a little shout out here to should have said no, which just will always have a place in my heart.

And she closed the first tour that she did. All of her set, she would close with that song. So it definitely was like the rocker and she felt the one that resonated with a lot of people. It's interesting that we don't talk a lot about teardrops on my guitar here. Well, that's my pick for the next category, which is the next album appetizer.

And I'm cheating a little bit because I'm not actually using the original teardrops, but I'm using that pop version, which they mix the slide guitar. They pump it up with a beat and her voice is like just chock full of echo. and suddenly the teardrops are coming from inside the country radio stations. True looks at me.

I fake a smile so he won't see. Whether you think it's effective or not, I mean, I listen to the pop version zero times out of ten when I listen to that song. But it telegraphs quite a bit. I mean, this song sounds like a cop at a high school party trying to be cool. It's like, hello, classmates, I am here. I'm not a country song at all. I am a pop song. Please continue with your illegal drinking and drug use. Like, it's so not authentic or real in any way. I know she didn't have anything to do with this song. It's just, it's awful. It's the narkeyest song of all time

that was intended to create crossover. It didn't need to do that. Look, I would buy your argument. Narkey. Yeah. I would buy your argument if you told me that there's a through line between teardrops and you belong with me, which is the sort of, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm the friend or I'm the nerd. I'm on the outside.

I'm jealous of the perfect girl with the guy who doesn't even really know my feelings for him. But I, for me... Well, that's a good answer. I'll take it. Okay. So I think I just made your case even stronger. But for me, it was, for me, it should have said no, only because it was written right before the album went to mastering.

And we learn a lot about where she is, you know, emotionally, but also where she and her team were sonically from the way that these songs come out. And certainly, and should have said, no, her voice gets bolstered. But there's some real rock in that song. And we're going to see more of that and the driving electric guitars as we go forward into Fearless. When it hits, when she says, you said yes, then there's that pregnant pause. You should have said, no. It lands in a way that I just, that is absolutely the point in that song where I just really lose my shit.

So I take your argument. I'm sticking with mine. Nora, you made it so strong and effective. Nora, what's the single best lyric on this album? And should we sing it together? Do you want to do it on three? What if we get it wrong?

All right. I've got it right. What if you get it wrong? What if I get it wrong? What's the single best lyric on this album? He's the reason for the teardrops of my guitar. Really? Whoa!

I thought we were going to be right on with that. What's yours? said the way my blue eyes shine put those Georgia stars to shame that night, I said that's a lie. It's a great lyric. Why is it tear drops on my guitar?

Why is that the best lyric? Because this is going to come up for me a lot because it's just the type of thing that and maybe it's because I write but like it is a whole story in one line. Now, you're choosing something that's really effective at building narrative. Right?

You have a scene. You have dialogue. You have action. but the entire song is in, he's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar. Like, you just get it. You know exactly what she's talking about. You know the whole thing.

You can see her in a room, crying about this guy, wishing he paid more attention, and he knew she was, and writing a song about it. And that's the whole point. And you get it in one line. There's just such a shock to me of the,

I said, that's a lie, where she immediately, sung by a teenager, it's just such a precocious, like, I am in control, I have the power response, right? She's singing a country song where, ostensibly a line like that would sweep somebody off their feet in traditional country music. And she calls bullshit right away.

And in a certain, you know, in a certain way, she's not just calling bullshit on every high school guy who has ever tried to some sappy-ass one-liner, but she's also calling bullshit on country music in general, which is what she goes on to reshape with the next two albums and then some. There's courage in that line. Final album grade. Where are you, Nora?

You can't give every album an A. You just can't. I know. And I'm not going to. I would really like to, but I'm not going to. I give this a B. I do think that we should. acknowledge just how impressive a first offering this is.

Yes. I give it a B relative to her other work just because there are songs that are clearly filler to me and that don't feel like her, but holy smokes. What a, what a debut. Yeah. I think that's the right grade. I mean, with both this album and when we talk about Fearless,

I mean, the reviews were okay, right? they weren't incredible, they were okay. Certainly there was a lot of buzz about some of the songs, but not about the entire collection as a standalone thing. So I think that's the right grade. What is, you know, an A plus is the effort that she puts in to embedding this album into the world of country music. you know, she goes out and pounds the pavement for the next two years and inserts herself into the narrative in a way that really sets up the next album that is coming.

I mean, there's a launch party. This album did great. She stayed in the Billboard 200 for 275 weeks in total, more than any other album of the decade. but its highest peak was fifth. So this was a step by step, little by little process of converting fans. Like, she is, you know, Twitter has just been created, it's just being created.

Google's just bought YouTube. Facebook is just opening up to the broader population. Like, we're just at the beginning of the beginning of the social era. And while she definitely was using taylorSwift.com and her MySpace page to build an audience in so many ways, and that's a big part of her success here, but especially going forward. But she has to work for it.

It's still country radio. It's this insular community that can break or shun an artist. And so she goes out and hustles from town to town, DJ to DJ, and builds this thing up. And what we're going to see over the next couple years is suddenly she's featured in 17 magazine. Suddenly she's on the cover of people.

Suddenly she becomes the next best thing. and the image and brand of Taylor Swift has almost gone out over the skis of the quality of this album for as much as it's enjoyable because of a couple of songs. And what they don't know is what's coming next. And we'll get to that when we talk about Fearless,

which is coming up. Nathan, what a joy to talk about Taylor with you. I'm excited to do it again. Thanks, Nora. For Nathan Hubbard, I'm Nora Pryanti. This has been the first episode of every single album, Taylor Swift. Join us again on Thursday when we'll be breaking down Taylor's second album, Fearless.