'Taylor Swift' | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Ross Katz on the official podcast for.

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 Ticketmaster 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.

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.

Cannot do that, Nora.

Grading on a curve.

Okay, Nora, then let's start at the very beginning with her debut album, Taylor Swift.

No. Where else was she gonna 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 NSYNC in Britney, Eminem is out, Creed is out, Linkin Park, Coldplay, outkast. Like, 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 McGraws to a next generation of Jason Aldean 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 where you went first of.

Yeah, we killed it. Congratulations.

Sorry, Vegas.

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 Shania 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 LeAnn Rimes, who had been presented as a woman. We had Britney Spears, who had been presented as a woman, and Christina Aguilera woman. And. But. 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 bestselling albums at the time. I think when we think about Debut, which came out at the end of 26, by the way, do we call it Debut? Is it the debut? Is it Taylor's.

You're just pissed cause all the kids are calling it debut.

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, Gotta get you, get your head in the game, which was Disney giving voice to teens in ways it had not for quite a long time. The number two bestselling album was Rascal Flats, a country band. The number three bestselling album was Carrie Underwood, a female country artist. The number 8th 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 ten 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 star that she is today.

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 Borchetta, 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 had success in Nashville previously.

Well, we are going to argue a little bit about this. I think it's our song. But Teardrops 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?

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.

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 instincts. 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. 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.

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. 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?

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 here in Cold as yous.

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 Borchetta 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 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?

Well, he does two things. And you're right about the state of her voice at that point in time. I mean, I 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 guit and the drums and the snares and the cymbals, 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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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. Of leaning into the twang.

I hope so.

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 saccharine 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, to a 13, 14, 15, 16 year 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, Shawn Carter is behind the scenes managing that brand. Bono, behind the scenes, he is managing 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 calculating, the eccentric. 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 Paisleys of the world. She opened for George Strait. She, you know, she ended up doing some opening for Tim McGraw, but she was playing a lot of amphitheaters where, you know, Journey, the reconstituted journey, goes and plays and Jimmy Buffett brings his Margaritaville 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 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 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 which Britney Spears is at the top of the charts.

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, better. But it showed that they could see beyond opening for Brad Paisley. And they were thinking about how do we, how do we merchandise better, how do we create, you know, 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, it took these days of, of just grueling it out on the road through the normal, you know, 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 custom. And there was nobody, even at this age, better at that than Taylor Swift.

Agree. She's now 64 years old, so she's 30 years Taylor Sr. And what Liz Rose did on this album in particular on 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 Beyond. Right now, get up to 20% off select online storage solutions put heavy duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you.

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Sierra's got it.

He's gonna figure it out.

Why does she not use pseudonyms for any of these people? She just goes right at them. It's. It's one of the things I love about it.

Yeah, but not quite yet. Yeah, my most purposeful one is. I mean, she just in the liner note says.

There's a lot of Sams. And she's saying, you know, Sam on should have said. No, this is about being cheated on. And look, it's. It's the first. That song is the first of several last minute songs that go on to make her albums there. She. She writes them right at the end. And the verse is. There's not a whole lot to speak of in the verse. It's. It's sort of the same chord progression as no woman, no Cry said. I remember when we used to sit.

But it's interesting to contrast this song with Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats, which gets a song of the year nomination out of this crop of 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. The shot across the bow of people.

A ton of irony.

Yeah, this is really the first shot across the bow where she's naming names. Picture To Burn is maybe the first Crazy X revenge song, but this is the one where she's not afraid to name names. I loved it.

Talk to me.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. The bonus tracks were troublesome on. On this one.

Those are exactly the ones that I listed. I Mean, at the end of the liner note she's got, 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 forth and it really, it feels like the soundtrack to a Jesse spinoff 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 a thoughtful, teeny country themed thing and there were real genuine emotions. Again, she's got all the, the ducks feet of emotions happening on this album. You know, starry eyed love and 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.

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 because it's.

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. But I wouldn't have titled it anything else.

Yep. Trying to be as much to as many people as possible in this moment.

Go yet, though, because it's so important to understanding that song just highlight how threatening it was for, you know, the. The next big thing to be singing about Tim McGraw. And his initial reaction isn't awesome, but it's whoa, what does this mean?

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.

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 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, what 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.

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.

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. And she's just this presence. It. It overwhelmed them in the moment. It was the coolest thing.

Why don't we find out?

It because he's old?

Tim McGraw, meet Taylor Swift.

Congratulations on your record.

But she's so. 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 Aldean 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. That battle, even if she didn't sing her heart out that night.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes, please.

Amazing.

She's a talent scout in both football and music videos.

Because it's late and your mama 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 she. Go talk real slow.

Well, because that would have been different than she would have been all quiet. And we. I don't know. There's a petition for this.

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. 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.

I don't want one. I don't deserve one. I agree.

But did she name it Tim McGraw? Because she thought that this would resonate with country radio and. And fans of country music. Do you think it was that pre meditated?

What do you think of the song?

Did you love it the first time you heard it?

I. 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.

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 McGraw 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. Cause she had already written an indie 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.

Oh, I mean, sigh. It's the Peak Taylors. Sing an amen for me and when.

The twang for me was. 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. Is that Pete Taylor moment. What do you have?

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. I don't know how that guy leaves his house at this point. Just completely crushed.

Yeah, I mean, it just, it's. It's gotta 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, I think that's right.

It took me a while to fall in love with Tim McGraw and again, the Maggie Rogers version did it for me. But I just don't think he 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.

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.

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 narciest song of all time. That was intended to create crossover. It didn't need to do that. Look, I would buy your argument, Narcy. 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.

Okay, so that. So I think I just made your case even stronger. But for me, it was. For me, it was. 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. That these songs come out. And certainly in should have Said no, her voice gets bolstered. But there's. There's some real rock in that song, and we're going to see more of that and the. The. The driving electric guitars as we go forward into Fearless.

Nora, what's the single best lyric on this album? And should we sing it together?

What if we get it wrong?

What if I get it wrong? What's the single best lyric on this album?

Really?

Said the way my blue eyes shine Put those Georgia stars to shame that night I said that's a lie.

Why is it teardrops on my guitar? Why is that the best lyric?

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 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.

Where are you, Nora? You can't give every album an A. You just can't.

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 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, she is. You know, Twitter is 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, of the beginning of the social era. And while she definitely was using Taylor Swift.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 Seventeen magazine, suddenly she's on the COVID 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.

Thanks, Nora.