Happy 20th Birthday, ‘Debut’! A Revealing Look Back at Taylor Swift’s Self-Titled First Album, Via a Previously Unpublished Q&A

There are probably people who are still suspicious because of your age, that you are really writing the songs… but looking at which ones you wrote by yourself, no one can look at “Our Song” and doubt that you’re a songwriter.

Thank you. I’m actually really thrilled that that’s the song that was my first No. 1, because it kind of says something. I’ve always wanted that respect from the songwriting community in Nashville, and this year I was lucky enough to get the NSAI songwriter artist of the year award, which is voted on strictly by songwriters. And to get my first No. 1 with a song I wrote by myself, it really means a lot to me.

Being older, a lot of times I don’t connect with specificially quote-unquote teenage music…

No offense taken, it’s OK!

But all that’s to say, though I don’t always have a lot of nostalgia about being that age, there’s something about the sweet specificity of “Our Song” that I can listen and, for three minutes, at least, go, all right, maybe I do wish I was a teenager again.

Oh, that’s really sweet. Thank you. That was one of those songs that I wrote in 20 minutes, literally just sat down and wrote out the whole thing. You know, I never expect to win if I’m nominated for an award. I never expect to have a song go No. 1 if I put it out. I would never expect a song that I wrote by myself in 9^th grade would make the album and then be a single and then be a No. 1.

You also wrote “The Outside” by yourself.

I was 12, yeah.

And there’s a song on your recent Christmas EP you wrote by yourself.

I wrote “Christmas Must Be Something More” when I was 13. I like to go back and look at the stuff I wrote when I was younger and include it, because there’s a place for that, and there’s a place for the vulnerability and the innocence in the songwriting. I wrote “The Outside” about not fitting in at school—about the scariest feeling I’ve ever felt, which is going to school and walking down the hall and looking at all those faces and not knowing who you’re gonna talk to that day. It’s scary when you’re 12. I mean, it’s scary at any age to go through that. And a lot of people ask me, how did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and kind of jump right into the music industry? It’s because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in like middle school. I could never feel that in the music industry, because they’re polite. If they’re gonna say no to you, at least they’re gonna be polite about it, at least. … First of all, I didn’t know any better. And second of all, I hadn’t had the most perfect social life in middle school, so I guess it got me ready for the real world, in a sense.

You mentioned that when I first interviewed you last spring, and at the time I wondered, why did she feel that way? Somebody would look at you and think you were one of the popular kids. But you were clearly precocious — did that separate you from your classmates?

I think what separated me was that on the weekends, all of the friends that I had were starting to party already — were going to parties, were starting to steal alcohol from their parents. And I just was never into that. I never was even tempted by it. What I was doing on weekends was going to singer/songwriter nights, and playing guitar for people, and sneaking into karaoke bars, and going to festivals and plugging in my guitar into little crackling amplifiers — that’s what I was doing. So I think that naturally separates you, if you’re not doing the same things other people are doing. You know, I wasn’t at soccer practice talking to them, and I wasn’t at the parties hanging out with them. So I think that that obviously was the split between me and them.

As you did a lot of singing, did you do it in your community, and find that it helped you forge relationships with people, or were you always off on your own doing it more privately?

I feel like I was a little bit more on my own doing it, because I was from a small town, and nobody really expects you to leave, especially before you graduate. That doesn’t really happen. So it was a very rare case, the fact that I left. And I actually went back a couple months ago and played a sold-out show in my hometown, and it was absolutely amazing. Ever since all this stuff has started happening, the people in Pennsylvaia been the most supportive people I’ve ever known. But I wouldn’t change a thing about growing up and not exactly fitting in. If I had been popular, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave, probably. It would have been harder, at least.

When did you actually move to Hendersonville from Pennsylvania?

I got to Hendersonville when I was in 8^th grade, and it was the best place that I’d ever been. People all of a sudden didn’t look at me like I was weird because I played music, because that’s what all their dads did. But it’s far enough away from Music Row to where you’re not right on top of all the songwriters; you’re not right on top of all the publishing companies. It’s a 20-minute drive away, but you’re not right there. My family moved to Nashville because I was so obnoxious about wanting to go. When I was 10, and when I was younger than that, even, I would watch these biographies on Faith Hill or the Dixie Chicks or Shania Twain or LeAnn Rimes, and the thing I kept hearing was that they had to go to Nashville, and that’s when they made it big. And so I kept saying to my mom, “Please, I want to go to Nashville — that’s where I need to go, I need to be there.” And eventually she said “OK, we’ll take a trip there, we’ll see what happens. You can take your demo CD” that I recorded of karaoke songs, and I sound like a chipmunk — it’s pretty awesome. She’s like, “You can go and take a trip and knock on doors and see what happens.” So my mom and me and my little brother got on a plane and we went to Nashville when I was 11, and I knocked on doors up and down Music Row. My mom would wait in the car, and I would say, “Hi, I’m Taylor, I’m 11, I want a record deal. Call me.” That sort of thing. And nothing happened, of course. But I went back home with this feeling that I needed to be different, and it just motivated me even more, the fact that it wasn’t easy. That somehow was even more of a motivator to me, and more of a challenge, and I loved it. So that’s when I started playing guitar and writing my own music, and I said, that’s gonna be my thing. That’s what’s gonna make me different. So I spent the next couple years working on my craft and honing in on my skills and practicing guitar until my fingers bled, and writing songs every chance I got. And went back to Nashville, and moved there with my family. I was like, “You guys, I’m so serious about this.” And my parents have always encouraged me to do what I feel is my dream. I’m so blessed that my parents were willing to move across the country for that.

Were there any success indicators prior to the move? Did anyone encourage you so it didn’t seem like quite such a huge leap of faith?

I had been going to Nashville every couple of months, and I got a development deal with RCA on one of my trips, which… I mean, labels have so many artists under development.

[A boy steps up to the table: “Miss, can I take a picture with you?” She responds: “Of course. Does your mom have a camera? What’s your name, sweetheart?… He’s really cute…. Where was I?” She resumes.]

A development deal is kind of like a “we’ll see how it goes” kind of deal — “we’ll develop you for a year” — and then after a year they renegotiate and see if they want to sign you to a regular, real, full-on record deal. So I moved to town because of this development deal. Even though nothing was set in stone, I wanted to go. And because of that, I went in and I met with publishing companies, and I became the youngest person ever signed to Sony/ATV Publishing for my songwriting. I was 14. So my mom would pick me up from school and I would go downtown and write with songwriters all day after school, and then I would go back home and do my homework and do the same thing all over again the next day. I really was trying to get respect as a songwriter, too, and get myself known that way. The year came up with RCA, and they wanted to develop me for another year instead of sign me. I decided to walk and see my other options. And that doesn’t happen, because that’s a huge, awesome record label; they have all the stars on that record label. I just wanted to explore other options, and that’s when I met Scott Borchetta, who was then working at Universal. I thought, oh, awesome, I’m gonna get to deal with Universal! I get this call a couple of weeks later, after I do this showcase and Scott’s on board and rocking. I get this call and he goes, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is I want to sign you, and the bad news is I’m not gonna be with Universal Records any more.” Because he was leaving to start up this whole new record label.

If I recall correctly from our previous interview, you getting out of the development deal was partly because they wanted you to record outside material.

I think that probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was 14. And there had been no teenager that had worked out in country music since LeAnn Rimes, and that was 1996 when she came on. So it had been 10 years since any teenager had worked out in this industry, so a lot of people were afraid of that. So it didn’t work out. I’ll always be grateful to them for giving me that first leg up in the music industry. I will never say a bad thing about them. RCA Records and Joe Galante and Renee Bell were unbelievable, that they gave me that chance and signed me when I was 13. It just didn’t end up being the way that my career ended up going. What ended up happening was, I ended up signing with a record deal with a record label that didn’t even have a name or furniture. It had 10 employees, and it was a total leap of faith, but somehow it worked out. We had 10 employees at the record label, so my mom and I all came in, when they were releasing my first single, to stuff the CD singles into envelopes to send to radio. Because there were other people that were just having to do their jobs, and there weren’t enough people. We sat out on the floor and did it because there wasn’t furniture at the label yet.

So, to make a list of the odds that were stacked against you: (a) Being a woman, for starters, seems to count as a strike with the country radio audience. (b) The teen thing, as you said. (c) You are one of the first artists for a fresh label startup. (d) Using your own material was a bad thing to do, supposedly. It’s a pretty long list! It’s a tough time for new artists in any field of music, but in country, especially, Ashley Monroe and some other promising young female artists have been getting dropped from major labels…

Love Ashley.

Do you wonder whether anyone is learning anything from your success, or do they just still need, like, another Taylor Swift to come along to further prove something?

I hope people look at what’s happened with me, growing a fan base on MySpace, writing their own material. I hope that there are other artists like that, honestly. I want country music to be a first-rate music. In a perfect world. I would think no one’s saying “I hate country music.” I want country music to be as good as it can possibly be, and I want there to be a base of artists that bring people from everywhere to this format. And I think that it’s moving in that direction.

Something people aren’t even talking about that much with the success at radio is your album making the Soundscan top 10 for the year. I like to pride myself on seeing things coming, but I didn’t foresee that.

Trust me, I’m more shocked than all of us. The album is back to No. 1 again for the fifth week in a row. It just blows my mind, it really does. The album has been out for so long — over a year — and it’s just now having a top-selling week. [The No. 1 status she was referring to was on the country albums chart; on the overall Billboard 200 chart, it peaked at No. 5, and was her only album to fall short of No. 1.]

I don’t mean this to sound like a putdown at all, but you’ve achieved all this success and there are still a vast majority of people who haven’t heard of you.

That’s what is so exciting, and what keeps me going on a daily basis is the fact that I know nothing compared to what I’m gonna know a year from now. I know nothing. We haven’t tapped into half the people we’re gonna tap into, and I haven’t even been exposed to one-tenth of the people I want to be exposed to. The things that we have yet to do really just fuel me and make me so happy.

[The boy who asked for the autograph earlier returns. She says, “It was good to meet you, Tyler; give me a handshake. Good luck with your movie. You’re welcome.”]

You have success starting to happen at CHR [top 40 radio]. What does that mean to you? Carrie’s song (“Jesus, Take the Wheel”) broke the logjam (of crossover between country and pop), but it’s been a long time since that really happened.

Yeah, with the crossover stuff, it’s like, I didn’t see that coming either. I write country music and I didn’t see it crossing over. But when the idea was brought up by Universal Republic, I was like, yeah, I’m on board. I don’t look at it as crossover as much as I look at it as spillover. Not as much transferring myself from one place to another, but just there being the offshoot, and it just kind of spilled over into a different category. I’m so lucky that that has happened. I love it when I turn on a pop radio station and hear my song. It makes me so happy. Like we were talking about, those people are just now hearing my name for the first time.

You just got nominated for best new artist at the Grammys. You were at the announcement ceremony, and you had a big reaction when your name came up. Were you confident that was coming?

I was being optimistic, but you don’t know. I went in there not knowing. And they read off all the country nominations first, and I didn’t hear my name. And so I just thought, you know, it was cool to come out here — I always like being in L.A.; thank you for inviting me, that sort of thing. So I’m standing back there and not really even listening intently, as they were announcing the nominees for best new artist. And I remember just screaming and hugging everyone on the stage. It was so amazing.

I wonder how many people in Nashville were seeing you on TV for the Grammy nomination and how long it takes them to remember: “Holy crap, that’s that little girl who knocked on my door a few years ago.”

I’ve heard stories about how everyone’s been passed on in Nashville by somebody, and there’s always somebody who is like, “Oh gosh, I passed on that.” But I think they also know that nothing works without it being the exact circumstances. If one of the circumstances had been different — if I had been at a different label, and they wouldn’t have let me write my own music, and they wouldn’t have let me put music I wanted to put on the album, and they wouldn’t have put out singles that made this album — maybe I wouldn’t be here talking at this In-N-Out Burger fine dining location. It’s all circumstantial. It’s all what happens to add up and make certain things happen in that right order at the exact right time. And a lot of it’s timing. So I think that while people can say, “Wow, she was in my building, wow, she played that song for me that’s now No. 1,” I think everybody kind of knows that without the exact circumstances to produce this, it would have been different.

Everybody talks about who passed on the Beatles. It would be hard to be in that position, of being one of the A&R people who passed, because every day they meet so many singers who might be just kind of deluded but have the same confident attitude you had.

Mm-hm. A&R people have the hardest job, because sometimes they’ll believe in something that other people don’t believe in, and they go with their gut and it doesn’t work. And sometimes something that they don’t believe in ends up working. It’s hard to predict that. So I’m never gonna look back on people who didn’t sign me when I was 13 or 14 or 15. I’m not gonna look back on those people and go “Ha — check it out.” Because I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t passed on me. We wouldn’t be where we are. I think you can be grateful for every single thing that happens. Whether it be a hard experience or rejection or whatever, you have to be grateful for it.

You are famous for your four-hour autograph sessions after shows. Are you ever at the end of one of those where you think, “Maybe we’re getting to the point where 10 minutes will be just fine”?

We just did one of those in Nashville the other night. We were literally there four and a half hours. And I feel like in those situations, if those people are willing to stand that long, I am too. And I don’t sit down. If people are willing to wait that long just to meet me, that’s a basic thing, in and of itself. But there are some times when we can’t do it, whether security won’t stay that long or whatever. My manager was talking to me the other day and he’s like, “It’s gonna have to come to a point where you say, I haven’t gotten too big, the crowds have.” But I’m gonna continue to do it as long as I can.

It’s probably safe to say you were always mature for your age, if not already the consummate pro. You were 16 when this process seriously started, but it’s been described as 16 going on 35 in terms of your professional know-how. You’ve been so grown up for so long — but do you ever have moments where you just think, “Oh my God, I can’t handle this, I’m still a kid”?

I think that no matter what, you’re gonna have those moments, in whatever career path you choose, where you feel like you’re not in control or you feel like it’s all too much, whether you’re getting ready to go to college, which is what I would be doing right now, or you’re picking what you want to do for the rest of your life, or you’re just starting out a new job. You’re gonna feel like you’re not in control. And yes, I have moments like that too. I’m a normal human being. Sometimes I feel like I need to just stop and take a second and not think about it. But then I take my five minutes and then I jump right back into it. Because at the end of the day, I want to be here for the next 20 years, and I can’t do that if I just escape it all and turn it off and pretend like I don’t have to worry about it and hire somebody to take care of it. If I want to be in charge of my own future, I have to be in charge of my career, and I have to be in charge of making decisions I don’t necessarily want to have to make.

A few years ago I was doing a story on a rising teenage star and, for better or worse, the headline called her “the anti-Britney.” People might think of you that way now, as someone who is appealing to a similar age group as some of the top pop stars but represents something totally opposite in some way, whether that’s music or attitude or lifestyle.

You know, being compared to Britney… I haven’t been hounded for the last couple years of my life. I haven’t been completely mobbed everywhere I go. I don’t know what that’s like. I imagine I would go crazy if every single thing I did, there were 30 photographers taking pictures of it. So I don’t know what that’s like, so I can’t ever speculate. But I don’t drink, no. I don’t do drugs, I don’t party, I don’t go out, really, at all — I’m kind of boring. I don’t know if that makes me the anti-Britney or just a different kind of person.

Some of your songs are specifically teenage in their concerns, and some are more universal about love. I think you said you were a freshman when you started to write “Tim McGraw” and you had a boyfriend who was a senior. You said last year you were too career-focused to have a relationship. If you stay single, are you gonna run out of material?

No, no. You want to hear my new career philosophy and my relationship philosophy? When I find someone who fascinates me as much as my career, I’m gonna go for it. I’m not opposed to dating. I just haven’t found the right person that I’m gonna date. But as far as running out of material: If you’ve been cheated on once, you never forget that feeling. And you never forget what it’s like to have someone break up with you. You never forget what it’s like to have somebody completely act in a way that you don’t understand, and you’re like, “What is going on with you?” If that happens to you once, it doesn’t need to happen again. You know what it’s like. So for me, if I have to go back to when I was 15 and felt something like that, I will. Or, you can write a song about a friendship or a business relationship that sounds so much like a breakup, you can’t even tell the difference. I’ve done stuff like that for my next album. I mean, there’s a song that I wrote with Colbie Caillat that is going on my next album (“Breathe”), and she’s gonna sing harmony on it. The song is not about a relationship or a breakup, but it really, really sounds like it is. And anyone who hears it will think that I wrote it about the most painful breakup of my life, when really I wrote it about losing a friend.

You don’t mean through death…

No no no, not through death, thank God.

When you sing songs like “Should Have Said No,” you do it with a lot of, well, vigor.

I wrote that right after I got cheated on, by the way. Bad cheater guy. Yeah, every lyric in that song is exactly how it happened. I got cheated on by this guy I was kind of dating — you know, when you’re like starting to date someone, and you’re not officially boyfriend-girlfriend yet, but you’re kind of going in that direction…

Every song feels unusually personal.

I think the unique thing about me is that I write everything and I don’t edit out names or details or personal details. I’m not afraid to let people in. I don’t have the highest or strongest voice in the music industry. But I write what I feel, and that’s pretty much all I can do.

A word that describes the approach of a lot of my favorite songwriters is “conversational.”

Thank you. You know what? That’s what I was trying to put my finger on, and that is how I would explain my singing style. It is very conversational. My singing style is catered to the songs that I write, and a lot of times the songs that I write are very conversational. So you totally hit the nail right on the head there. Say that instead of what I said — that it’s conversational! And pretend that I came up with it. Yeah, conversational. Especially with “Our Song” — totally conversational, probably the most conversational song I’ve ever put out, and it’s done the best of all of them.

As far as putting people’s names in songs, has anybody objected?

I kind of feel bad for guys a little bit, after I’ve written songs about them with their names in them and stuff, because they move on to different relationships, and their new girlfriends are always like smacking them in the car when the song comes on. But I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens to you in your life productive. If you get your heart broken, or if you get out of a bad relationship that was just a complete waste of your time and a waste of your emotions and waste of everything, you can write a song about it and it can become a benefit to your career. How sweet is that?

But you must’ve had some happy experiences with boys, to get “Tim McGraw” and “Our Song.”

Of course, of course. I had one cute little relationship.

All the happy songs came out of one relationship?

Yeah, “Tim McGraw” and “Our Song” are written about the same guy. And all the rest are written about various people. I think it’s funny, because it kind of sounds like I’ve dated a lot of people, if I could have written that many songs about guys. But you don’t have to date somebody to write a song about him. You don’t even have to know their name to write a song about somebody.

We were talking about “Teardrops on My Guitar” earlier when my tape recorder shut off. You were talking about Drew coming up the driveway.

As far as Drew coming up my driveway, I was on my way to go to a hockey game, and my dad came up to me out in the driveway and he said “Hey, there’s someone here to see you.” And it was Drew from “Teardrops on My Guitar.” And I was like, “Wow! Hi! You’re late.” I hadn’t talked to him in like three years, so it was kind of interesting seeing him again.

But you had seen his MySpace page in the meantime, right?

Yeah, his MySpace about me is “Hi, I’m Drew, and my one claim to fame is that I have a country song written about me.”

You said some of your songs are so personal, you didn’t have a lot that were cover-able, because you wrote so specifically. But you have written a song with Kellie Pickler that wasn’t for yourself. You enjoying the idea of moonlighting?

Oh yeah, it’s cool to jump into somebody else’s life. Just from stuff that Kellie had told me from being her friend about this ex-boyfriend relationship, I was able to look back to one of my old relationships, where he’s got a new girlfriend and the new girlfriend hates you, and that sort of thing. It’s a hilarious, amazing song that’s going on her next record (“The Best Days of Your Life”), and it feels so good to have one of your babies, one of your songs, going a different place. Possibly, I could have two songs on the chart, if Kellie releases hers and I release one of mine. That would be so cool. It is so hard, though, to give up something, because you never know where it’s gonna go. But being friends with Kellie, I hope that’s a No. 1 song for her.

You’ve had three songs become country hits off this album, which is a nice streak. I will say I was surprised you passed over “Picture to Burn,” which seems like a really obvious hit.

That’s coming next.

So you knew to save the feistier ones for later.

[She laughs.]