Fearless: The Rise of Taylor Swift (Part 1)
Probably the only Bonafide Pop Star of the past decade- Taylor Swift got embroiled in Twitter drama last week; and we couldn't resist going down her career's rabbit-hole
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Happy Friday everyone!
Earlier last week, all hell broke loose on Twitter when Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn claimed that Taylor Swift “doesn’t write her own songs” in an L.A Times Interview 📰
"A really interesting songwriter is Billie Eilish and her brother. I’m more attracted to that than to Taylor Swift. It’s just darker — less endlessly upbeat" & went on discrediting her life's work.
Not one to take jabs lying down, Taylor’s response was one for the ages 👇🏻
Look, at this point everyone who is not a ‘Swiftie’, has some idea about how famous and on the top of her game Taylor is, from building enough leverage to get the CEO of Spotify- Daniel Ek to personally visit her & change company policies, to re-recording her entire albums to take back ownership of her masters.
I couldn’t get enough of what her actual story to the top of the Music industry was, and luckily enough, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal- the co-hosts of ‘AcquiredFM’, a leading podcast on all things Business and Technology, released an episode doing just that 🎙
Even if you don’t care about music or business, this tale is much less about any of those, and more about the sheer relentless nature of Taylor’s attitude.
So how did it all begin?
If you’re looking for some much needed weekend motivation to get your shit together and be more focused towards doing your own thing, grab a cup of whatever makes you tick, and let’s go down this rabbit hole 👇🏻
Born to Scott and Andrea Swift, a stock broker at Merrill Lynch and a marketing executive in Pennsylvania, USA, Taylor developed an early interest in music, buying her first record when she was just 6-years old, and immediately falling in love with country music- with 14-year old prodigy LeAnn Rimes being her idol.
At 10, she started doing open mics and live nights, and while watching a VH1 show uncovering behind the scenes of country singer: Faith Hill, realised that Nashville is the place to be if she wanted to hack a career in country music 🎸
In March 2001, Taylor’s mom took her down to Nashville, & despite pitching to all the major country music labels down there, returned empty handed to Pennsylvania 🤷🏻♀️
Not one to be bogged down, Taylor continued signing locally in Pennsylvania, and hit the jackpot in 2002, after being selected to sing the national anthem at the US Open.
Suddenly, Swift got that break out she was looking for, and was discovered soon enough by Dan Dymtrow- an executive, part of Britney Spears’ management team. Walking from office to office with Dan, Taylor ended up getting a development deal with RCA Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music.
Selling the family farm, Taylor’s parents even agreed to moved to Tennessee which would be closer to Nashville to help her break into the country music scene.
Only a freshman in 2004, Swift was then signed on as youngest artist ever- to SONY ATV as a songwriter 📝
With a recording and songwriting deal under her belt, any other artist would've probably been over the moon, but not Taylor.
Why exactly?
Unhappy with the career trajectory set by RCA Records, who wanted to keep her in development for another year, Swift ended up backing out of the deal with RCA Records
Can you imagine being just a teenager and backing out of a record label deal that 1000’s of kids would have killed for, just because she didn’t agree with the career path that RCA laid out for her? 🤯
Always being one to bet on herself, Swift took the bold call, and now more determined than ever, booked the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville to host an audition for herself inviting record label executives 🎙
She first caught the eye of Scott Borchetta, the former executive of UMG’s DreamWorks Records who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records.
Making Taylor his first client, Scott convinced Taylor’s dad to pick up a 3% stake in the company for an estimated $120,000. Suddenly, the little girl with country music dreams from Pennselvania had bagged herself a record deal on her own terms, & was ready to take on the music industry 🚀
Little would Taylor or her father know that Big Machine and this entire deal would end up haunting her for the rest of her career 🥶
More on that in the next edition of this series, where I cue in the second phase of her explosive career growth 💥
Taylor breaks every norm of a traditional Pop Star in the coming years- from building a direct relationship with fans on social media site ‘My-Space’ to her infamous feud with Kanye West which would forever change the music industry ⚡️
Hang in there, and have a good weekend folks 🍻