By now, she had also improved at guitar playing. She had been given her first guitar, an electric, when she was eight years of age. However, she had initially abandoned her attempts to learn the instrument, as she felt baffled and discouraged by it. Much later, a man came to fix the family’s computer one day. Seeing the guitar, he offered to show Taylor a few chords. She quickly grew in confidence with the instrument, and the man returned to teach her some more chords. Soon, Andrea noted, Taylor was practising so much that the strings would crack her fingers. ‘She was driven beyond anything I had ever witnessed,’ her mother observed. The determination of her ancestors, particularly on her mother’s side, was really burning brightly in Taylor.
She began to like the idea of playing on a different type of guitar: an acoustic 12-string. When a teacher told her that she would never be able to master such an instrument, there was only one thing Taylor wanted to do – prove him wrong. ‘I actually learned on a 12-string, purely because some guy told me that I’d never be able to play it, that my fingers were too small. Anytime someone tells me that I can’t do something, I want to do it more.’ This stubborn ‘I’ll-show-them’ determination has served Taylor well ever since.
When she returned home to Pennsylvania, she would feel so refreshed and inspired that she became even more determined to make her dream come true. She wanted to become a country music singer. But for that to happen, she realised she would need to convince her family to move hundreds of miles away from home. Easier said than done for a child of 11, but Taylor can be a pushy customer.
It was actually a singer, not a signpost, who pointed Taylor in the direction of Nashville, Tennessee. As we have seen, one of her earliest country music heroes was the singer Faith Hill. It was only when Hill, who was born in Mississippi in 1967, moved to Nashville that her musical career took off. The heart of country music, Nashville has almost become a byword for that genre.
Known as ‘Music City, USA’, Nashville’s proud musical heritage has been strong since the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet it was during the following century that things really took off in the city. A weekly country music concert, the Grand Ole Opry, was launched in 1925. Over the following decades, so many music labels opened offices in the city that a particular area, just southwest of Downtown Nashville, became known as ‘Music Row’. You could scarcely walk a few yards in the area without bumping into an important figure from the music industry, energetically going about their endeavour.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the city had spawned its own musical genre. Known as ‘the Nashville sound’, this was a combination of country and folk with a hint of pop fun, and it produced some memorably catchy tunes. Decca Records, RCA Records and Columbia Records were the key promoters of this style, which would go on to influence so many, including Taylor. Brenda Lee, Jim Reeves and Dottie West were among the trailblazers. Elvis Presley was also a key figure. Although launched from Nashville and influenced by country, Presley made rock ’n’ roll the flavour of the times.
More recently, the likes of Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks have put country, and Nashville, back on the musical map. By the time Taylor, at 11, was falling ever deeper in love with country music, the city was once more the thriving heart of the movement. Taylor decided that if Faith Hill’s career had taken off when she moved to Nashville, then that was where she needed to go, too. She recalled later how ‘a little bell’ went off in her head, making her decide that she simply had to move there herself. She had felt for a while that Wyomissing was ‘about the most random place in the world for a country singer to come from’. Something had to change.
So she embarked on a relentless, pushy campaign, regularly asking her parents: ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, can we move to Nashville?’ Naturally, Andrea and Scott were surprised and nonplussed at first. They had built such a strong and comfortable family home in Pennsylvania, together with their gorgeous holiday home on the coast, that they were understandably a little shaken at the thought of upping sticks to the heart of Tennessee.
Taylor, though, was fierce and focused. Indeed, if there are two themes that run throughout her life, it is determination and a willingness to be persistent and take risks. Those qualities are particularly pronounced in this chapter. In the face of initial opposition to her Nashville plan, Taylor was determined. She continued to plead with them to make the move that she believed would make her dream come true. She particularly put pressure on Andrea, perhaps hoping that her mother – a determined woman herself – would at least relate to her drive. Andrea eventually gave in – partially. She would sanction a one-off trip as an initial step. Taylor’s mother said that she was particularly impressed by the fact that her daughter never mentioned fame as the thing she hoped to find in Nashville. Unlike the hopefuls who pop up on our screens during reality television contests to state pleadingly that being famous is all they have ever wanted, Taylor took a different angle. Instead, she only said that she wanted to be there to work alongside the artists whom she loved and respected, and that one day, hopefully, she would be able to move people herself in the way they had moved her. As Andrea explained: ‘It was about moving to a place where she could write with people she could learn from.’
Taylor had a double reason to be delighted with Andrea’s movement on the Nashville question. She had been experiencing unpleasant bullying from classmates at school. Unfortunately for her, a number of factors in her life were enough to make classmates jealous of her – her comfortable home life and wealthy parents, to name two. To add to their thinly veiled envy, she was beginning to be written about in the media. This press attention was a mixed blessing for Taylor. While it was flattering and helpful for her career, it tended to prompt spikes in the teasing and shunning she was suffering. When one of her national-anthem renditions was reported in a local newspaper, she knew that the following day would be ‘a bad day at school for me’.
In addition, her love of country music was also causing her to be picked on. Like many children who take an interest in music beyond the most mainstream of genres, she found that she would be teased for daring to be different. Her classmates were, said Taylor, ‘going to sleepovers and breaking into their parents’ liquor cabinets on the weekend’, whereas she was focusing solely on music. It made her stand out. They even teased her over her sore fingers, which had been worn down by hours of guitar practice. Andrea had taped Taylor’s fingers up for her. To the bullies, this was another reason to mark Taylor down as a ‘weirdo’. One day, a group of girls whom she had been friendly with for some time decided to shun her. As she sat down to join their table at lunch, they suddenly all got up and moved to a different table. On other occasions, schoolmates would shout unpleasant remarks at her. Andrea became accustomed to helping Taylor get over these ‘awful’ incidents. ‘I’d have to pick her up off the floor,’ she said. For her mother, the knowledge that her daughter was in such pain was torturous.
Taylor was, she realised, ‘uncool’ thanks to her individuality. Under the pressure of the teasing and ostracism, Taylor went against her individualist nature and took steps to try to blend in with her classmates. Here, though, she learned a valuable lesson. She discovered that the harder she tried to fit in with the in-crowd at school, the more their respect for her declined. ‘So I found that trying to be like everyone else doesn’t work,’ she said.
On one especially hurtful day, she suggested to some girls she knew that they all meet up together for a visit to the local shopping mall. To Taylor, this seemed like a fun thing to do, so she was disappointed when they all said they had other plans. She chose to go with Andrea instead. When she and her mother walked into the mall, she saw that the group of friends was indeed there. ‘I remember what happened … like it was yesterday,’ Andrea told Elle Girl. ‘Taylor and I walked into a store and these six little girls who had all claimed to be “really busy” were there together.’
Taylor felt enormously shocked and hurt. Andrea gathered her up and they drove to a different
mall far away and did their shopping there. Remembering that horrible day, Taylor said the memory of it is ‘one of those painful ones you’ll never fully get over’. She was grateful for Andrea’s lead that day. By travelling to a different shopping mall and having a fun time there, they had given as good a response as they could to those who had spurned her. The King of Prussia mall was a 90-minute drive away, but the trip felt well worth it.
Taylor was not entirely socially isolated, though. She had made friends with a girl called Brittany Maack when they were both mere toddlers, and that friendship continued to blossom during and beyond her childhood. ‘We were more sisters than friends,’ Maack told the Reading Eagle. ‘Taylor’s family was my family.’ Yet this bond was not enough to paper over the cracks of hurt that Taylor felt when kids bullied her. Lots of kids found her ‘annoying’ and ‘uncool’. Among her offences to coolness was the fact that she was not interested in getting drunk. She knew they thought her weird, but she in turn found 12-year-olds getting drunk at parties weird. Once, during a mass sleepover at a friend’s house, it was suggested they decamp to the house of a guy they knew who had access to some beer. Where her friends were excited, Taylor was appalled. She felt like phoning Andrea and asking her to take her home.
With the benefit of hindsight, she can see how all the kids at middle school, popular or not, bullies and bullied, were battling with their own personal insecurities. But back then it hurt. She would arrive at school and not know whom, if anyone, she would hang out with and chat to that day. ‘And that’s a really terrifying thing for somebody who’s 12,’ she said. She described her existence in those difficult times as that of an outsider who was forever ‘looking in’, but hindsight again delivers a healthy perspective on the matter. These painful moments provided vivid creative sparks for her music. The theme of the outsider, which has featured in so many songs across so many genres, was to be rich and fertile ground for her. It was first touched upon in a song she wrote when she was 12 and has, as we shall see, surfaced in several songs since.
Her isolation during her middle-school years also gave her plenty of time to focus on music. Had she still been running with the in-crowd she would have spent more time on normal schoolgirl pursuits, rather than solitary sessions with her guitar and imagination – those two dear friends who have served her so loyally ever since. The fact that she had her guitar to turn to when she was feeling low also prevented her from needing to use alcohol or drugs as a form of escape. ‘Music has always been that escape for me,’ she said.
So now Taylor looks back with gratitude at those who rejected her, recognising the gift their bullying gave her. Sadness has proved to be the most fertile creative ground for so many artists, but that inspiration comes, by definition, at a price, and being tormented and excluded was the price Taylor paid.
So imagine her huge relief when she learned that Andrea had begun to buckle in the face of her determination to move to the city of her dreams. As we have seen, however, Andrea only agreed to take Taylor to Nashville for a temporary visit to begin with. During a school holiday, Andrea took Taylor and her brother on the 650-mile trip to Nashville. Taylor would distribute her demo tape to the record labels and hope that one of them would snap her up once they heard her music.
Although Andrea sanctioned and organised the trip, she also drew a clear line in the sand over her own role within it. It was one that was supportive but strictly defined. ‘I made it really clear,’ she told TV show Teen Superstar. ‘Okay, if this is something you want, you’ve got to do it,’ she told Taylor. She added that she had never signed up to be Taylor’s manager and she certainly did not see herself as a ‘stage mom’. So she would walk only as far as the front door of the label companies with Taylor. From then on, the youngster would have to walk on alone. Remembering her pride over her own career achievements, Andrea was keen for her daughter to feel the same.
Taylor had given the demo CD a simple design. The front cover had a photograph of her face on it and the words ‘Call me’. On the back cover were her telephone number and her email address. As they drove down the road, Taylor would suddenly shriek as she saw a label. ‘That’s Mercury Records!’ she would cry. ‘Pull over! I need to give them my demo tape!’ When she arrived at the reception desk she would hand over her homemade CD and tell them, ‘Hey, I’m 11, and I want a record deal.’ Then, echoing the slogan printed on the front cover, she would add with a smile: ‘Call me!’ It was a sweet pitch, but not a finely honed one. Later, looking back at this with the advantage of time and experience, she was able to smile. She would say: ‘How did that work out for me? It didn’t!’
In the immediate wake of her trip, she was enormously disappointed when all but one of the labels she had visited failed to contact her. She waited for the phone to ring or the email to ping, but nothing happened. These were crushing days – they felt more like weeks, so slowly and emptily did they drag along. Until, one day, a man from one of the record companies rang her back to tell her that the way she was going about her pitch was unlikely to work. ‘He was so sweet,’ she recalled later.
She had thought she was special, but in time she realised that there were ‘hundreds of people’ also trying to make it in Nashville and that they all had ‘the same dream’. She realised that she was not inherently as special as she had hoped, and that she would have to make a real effort to show how much she could stand out. While this was news to her, she did not take it as bad news. Instead, she stepped up again. Taylor is usually good when there is a challenge on. ‘I thought,’ she told Teen Superstar, ‘you don’t just make it in Nashville. I’ve got to really work on something that would make me different.’
The short trip to Nashville had not reaped the immediate results that Taylor had hoped for. In fact, she would get her first attention from a major label as a result of her being spotted at one of her sporting performances by a man called Dan Dymtrow. He was then managing the career of the pop princess Britney Spears. He approached Taylor and asked if she could provide some more evidence of her talent and personality. Scott decided that the best way to do this would be for them to film a quirky home video, showing Taylor in an interesting light. ‘My dad put together this typical “dad video” type of thing, with the cat chewing the [guitar] neck and stuff like that,’ Taylor told Wood & Steel. This was enough for Dymtrow to invite her to his office, so she showed up with her trusty 12-string guitar and played some music for him.
He was impressed. But the first project he got her involved in was closer to modelling than music. She posed in Abercrombie & Fitch clothes in a shoot for Vanity Fair magazine called ‘Rising Stars’. This promotional gimmick saw the retailer link up with potential stars of the future and drape them in its autumnal range. After Dymtrow had sent them a press kit about Taylor, they invited her to take part in the shoot. In Taylor’s photos, she wore a white top with denim jeans. She portrayed a heartbroken girl, even wiping away a tear from her eye with a handkerchief. She was holding a guitar in the photos, but this was still far away from what she really wanted to do. She also worried that she was not ‘cool’ enough to be in such a position – a legacy of her school experiences, perhaps.
The irony was that she certainly was cool enough to take part, and by doing so she was showing her bullies that she could be very much the insider after all. To be part of the well-known label’s ‘Rising Stars’ campaign was a significant honour. Among those selected by Abercrombie & Fitch before they became household names were Channing Tatum, Jennifer Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher and Penn Badgley. More recently, the label has chosen Glee star Jacob Artist, American Horror Story’s Lily Rabe, Texas Chainsaw 3D’s Scott Eastwood and a slew of other young talent. Now, Taylor stands tall among this list, but at the time she felt out of her depth.
She worried about all sorts of scenarios, including her photograph being dropped from the publication. So imagine her excitement when, in July 2004, her photo appeared on the news stands in Vanity Fair magazine. There she was, featured i
n a full-page photograph, alongside a passage of text in which she explained to readers who she was. ‘After I sang the national anthem at the US Open last year,’ she began, ‘a top music manager signed me as his client.’ She went on to describe her love of country music: ‘I love the sound of fiddles and mandolins ringing in my ears and I love the stories that you hear in country ballads. I sometimes write about teenage love, but I am presently a 14-year-old girl without a boyfriend. Sometimes I worry that I must be wearing some kind of guy repellent, but then I realise that I’m just discovering who I am as a person.’ She concluded: ‘Right now, music is the most important thing in my life, and I want to touch people with my songs.’
She was aiming for the top but was not shy of taking on more apprentice-style roles within the country music scene. For instance, she grabbed an intern slot at the four-day CMA Music Festival, held each year by the Country Music Association in Nashville. She was handed a clipboard and set to work in an administrative role. She was entranced as she watched autograph hunters approach the stars she was serving. ‘I remember just feeling like, if there was ever a chance that one day people would line up to have me sign something of theirs, then that would be a really, really good day for me,’ she said.
Another promotional activity at this stage saw her signed-up to a compilation album assembled by the cosmetics firm Maybelline. One of her songs appeared on the album Chicks With Attitudes. Her manager then took her on a breathless tour of meetings with record labels. The tour would pay off – in a way. Meetings such as these come with a wide scale of outcomes. Sometimes, executives cannot contain their excitement for the young act in front of them. Other times, they are summarily dismissive of them. It is also far from unheard of for an act to be turned away before they even get past the receptionist.
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