Taylor Swift

Speaker 1: barn dancing that they broadcast on the radio station on saturday nights become, I know people are like this is where you're going with this. It becomes so popular, they're like oh we gotta build a venue for this and let's make it a show and let's like really go all out on as if we're getting tons of customer acquisition through this. So they build what becomes the grand old Opry for this show. This insurance company and that then becomes like the venue for sort of early country style music and like johnny cash, dolly, Parton hank Williams, like they all come up in Nashville and so that's why music city, Nashville is the place to be,

Speaker 0: wow, I love how

Speaker 1: Woman named Liz rose who had written for Tim McGraw and others. They of course end up becoming super close collaborators. But some songs that Taylor and Liz end up collaborating on that you might know Tim McGraw, teardrops on my guitar picture to burn. Fearless whitehorse, you belong with me and then it's gonna come up later. But their final collaboration, do you know what it is? I have no idea. All too well. Really? Yeah Taylor brings her back

Speaker 0: Current # one for Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1: Oh my gosh longest number one song in history. This is one of the most boneheaded like

Speaker 0: Kidz bop stuff. It's not Kidz bop, but that that sort of thing. And so like I mean it's it's almost this taylor quote of the taylor lyric of when you are young, they assume, you know nothing,

Speaker 1: literally. I've got a quote on this from her. I didn't just want to be another girl singer. I wanted there to be something that set me apart and I knew that had to be my writing basically. There are two types of people, people who see me as an artist and judge me by my music. The other people judge me by a number my age, which means nothing. It's not really a popular thing to do in Nashville to walk away from a major record deal, but that's what I did and what she's referring to is when our CIA does this, she tells him, she tells him to go f off, she walks out on her deal.

Speaker 0: So they're just stringing her along.

Speaker 1: a car targeted at that demographic,

Speaker 0: right? That you could use to signal within your community.

Speaker 1: So T Swift decides in her own inimitable fashion that she's going to host her own audition this time. So rather than going back on the circuit out to all the labels now that she's a free agent, she books the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, which is like a legendary venue and was where Garth brooks was discovered. She invites all the label execs in town to come see her perform.

Speaker 0: She's the Michael Ovitz of the team, country Music industry in Nashville, right? She's like

Speaker 0: the Michael Ovitz of the team, country Music industry in Nashville, right? She's like holding an auction for her herself rather than trying out.

Speaker 1: So one of the execs who shows up and it was, I think apparently well attended is a man named scott porchetta ah Scott is an executive at, you know, one of Universal's sub labels in Nashville and he's planning to leave Universal and start his own label. So he finds Taylor after the show and he pitches her and says, hey, like I want to sign you and I want to sign you to a real record deal. I want to make an album with you. I'm about to leave Universal though and

Speaker 0: that for specific purposes. And a quick aside on publishers, even though they don't have a lot of relative power today to like the labels or big stars, they used to be insanely powerful in the era before recorded music when the publishing rights were the major writes,

Speaker 1: the sheet music was like

Speaker 0: it. Exactly. And since the singer's didn't used to be the same as the songwriters. And that meant that the artists and the recording labels were like totally at the mercy of these publishers who own the sheet music rights, which is like a fascinating little walk down history. And so these are the two big building blocks upon which everything else is built. Some uses of music require one of these approvals, uh, and some other use cases

Speaker 1: with her fans, social media innovating, pioneering in so many ways. She also is a master of the traditional way of doing things too. So what is the traditional thing that an artist would do after they drop their first album

Speaker 0: tour press,

Speaker 1: you're probably not on your first album, gonna go do a headliner tour yourself, you're going to go be the opening act for other tours. So, first she starts opening for Hootie and the blowfish is the first big act that she opens for, which is awesome. Then rascal flatts, rascal flatts is going to come back into big machine later, Perfect, then George Street brad paisley and then finally, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. So literally the first single, Tim McGraw,

Speaker 0: of my life for the next decade of her career and this is really where that kind of starts.

Speaker 1: That's such a good point because the original, the first album And you know, all those quotes about how amazing she was as a songwriter were, about her powers of observation and imagination and being able to write other people's stories from her perspective. But you're right, yeah, then there's this like, along along from our perspective here in January 2022, uh middle period of writing about her own experiences and then she comes back to

Speaker 0: storytelling. Yeah. And she's also starting to take a little bit of heat here for becoming less country and becoming a little bit more pop, which is like a funny foreshadow because what does she do with that? Like,

Speaker 1: from her perspective. But you're right, yeah, then there's this like, along along from our perspective here in January 2022, uh middle period of writing about her own experiences and then she comes back to

Speaker 0: storytelling. Yeah. And she's also starting to take a little bit of heat here for becoming less country and becoming a little bit more pop, which is like a funny foreshadow because what does she do with that? Like, she Does 1989 later and it's like, you know, what screw it full on pop.

Speaker 1: So back to Fearless, she wins the album of the year at the grammy for Album of the Year, making her the youngest artist ever to win album of the year. So then she goes back out on tour, not as the opening act this time, of course,