Taylor Swift (album)

Taylor Swift is the debut studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Under the Big Machine Records imprint, it was released in the United States and Canada on October 24, 2006, and elsewhere on March 18, 2008.

Relocating from Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, Swift signed with Sony/ATV Tree Music Publishing at 14 to write songs for the album. Her contract with Big Machine in 2005 enabled her to work with the producer Nathan Chapman during her freshman year of high school. Of the 11 tracks that made the album, Swift wrote three by herself and the rest with Robert Ellis Orrall, Brian Maher, Angelo Petraglia, and Liz Rose. Inspired by her outlook on life as a teenager, the lyrics address romantic relationships, friendships, and security. A country album, Taylor Swift incorporates acoustic instruments such as guitars, banjos, and fiddles, and its songs feature pop and pop rock elements.

Five songs were released as singles; "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" peaked atop Hot Country Songs, and "Teardrops on My Guitar" charted on Pop Songs. Swift embarked on a six-month radio tour in 2006 and opened tours for other country artists throughout 2006–2007. By promoting her album via the social networking site Myspace, she reached a younger audience relative to country music's middle-age demographics. In mainstream reviews of Taylor Swift, critics praised its accessible sounds with crossover appeal and Swift's earnest depictions of adolescent feelings. The album was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards.

In the United States, Taylor Swift spent 24 weeks at number one on Top Country Albums, became the longest-charting album of the 2000s decade on the Billboard 200, and made Swift the first female country artist to write or co-write every song on a platinum-certified debut album. It also charted and received certifications in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The pop-oriented country production and autobiographical songwriting of Taylor Swift were a blueprint for Swift's next albums and an inspiration for other confessional singer-songwriters. Rolling Stone featured it in their 2022 list of the 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time.

Background
Taylor Swift had an interest in the performing arts as a child. While acting in a children's musical theatre company, she developed a fondness for singing and would sing country songs on the company's karaoke machine during the cast parties. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, she felt sure she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee—the center of country music —to become a country singer. At 11, Swift broadened her performing capabilities by opening for Charlie Daniels and singing the national anthem of the United States at local sports games. She traveled from her hometown in Pennsylvania to Nashville with her mother to pitch demo tapes of karaoke covers to record labels for a contract, but they rejected and told her that her music would not cater to country music's middle-aged demographic.

The rejections made Swift become determined to distinguish herself from other aspiring country singers. At 12, she started writing songs and learned to play the guitar with the help of a computer repairman who had fixed her family's computer. Her performance of "America the Beautiful" at the 2002 US Open caught the attention of Dan Dymtrow, a music manager who helped 13-year-old Swift get an artist development deal with RCA Records in Nashville. To assist Swift's artistic endeavors, her father transferred his job to Nashville, and her family relocated to the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, where she enrolled in the local public high school.

Development and conception
Under Dymtrow's management, Swift had early exposure to show business, including an advertising tie-in with Abercrombie & Fitch, a music compilation CD with Maybelline, and a 2004 appearance in Vanity Fair. Around that time, she signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV Publishing House; at 14, she was the youngest signee in the publishing company's history. Swift commuted from Hendersonville to Nashville every afternoon after class to practice writing with experienced Music Row songwriters. After one year on the development deal, Swift performed her self-written songs to the label executives, who decided to hold her off an official record deal and keep her in development until she was 18. In a 2009 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Swift recalled her leaving RCA: "I genuinely felt that I was running out of time. I'd written all these songs and I wanted to capture these years of my life on an album while they still represented what I was going through."

Swift invited record label executives to her showcase concert at Nashville's Bluebird Café on November 3, 2004; among the invitees were Scott Borchetta, a music executive who had working experiences at MCA Nashville and DreamWorks Records. At that time, Borchetta was planning to establish an independent record label that still needed financing. He offered to Swift and her parents that as soon as the label was set up, she would have a record deal with him. Two weeks later, Swift called Borchetta to accept the offer. The label was Big Machine Records, who partnered with Universal Music Group for music distribution. According to Swift, she signed with Big Machine because the deal allowed her to write all songs that would feature in her albums. Her father purchased a three-percent stake in the company.

Of over 40 songs that Swift wrote for the album, 11 made the standard edition. Seven songs were co-written by Liz Rose, who became an important collaborator and formed a lasting working relationship with Swift on later albums. According to Rose, they had productive sessions because she respected Swift's vision and did not want to put her in the "Nashville cookie-cutter songwriting mold". Robert Ellis Orrall and Angelo Petraglia co-wrote "A Place in This World", and Brian Maher co-wrote "Mary's Song (Oh My My My)" with Rose. Three tracks—"The Outside", "Should've Said No", and "Our Song"—were written solely by Swift. The deluxe edition features three additional songs, co-written by Orrall, Petraglia, Brett James, and Troy Verges.

After experimenting with different producers, Swift persuaded Big Machine to recruit Nathan Chapman, who had produced her demo album in a "little shed" behind the Sony/ATV offices. Big Machine was skeptical about hiring Chapman because he had never produced a commercially released studio album but conceded because Swift felt they had the "right chemistry". Before approaching Chapman, Swift conceptualized how her songs should sound: "I know exactly where I want the hook to be and ... what instruments I want to use." He has sole production credits on all songs but one, "The Outside", which credits Orrall as the producer and Chapman as an additional producer. Recording took place for four months near the end of 2005. When the recording and production wrapped, Swift had finished her freshman high-school year.

Themes and lyrics
While Swift followed country music's confessional songwriting, she did not write about stereotypical themes that she described as "tractors and hay bales because that's not really the way I grew up". She instead wrote about her observations and reflections on romantic relationships and friendships, striving to convey her teenage perspectives as honestly as possible. To capture the immediate feelings, Swift wrote songs anytime and anywhere, from studio sessions to school breaks. This practice resulted in straightforward lyrics, which The Daily Telegraph found to "[brim] with an earnest naiveté".

The songs on Taylor Swift are from the perspectives of an American small-town girl. Confined within settings like high-school hallways and rural backroads, the songs bring forth a contemplative and personal nature. Most tracks are about romantic relationships, some of which were based on observations. "Tim McGraw" was inspired by Swift's relationship with a senior boyfriend during her first year of high school. The song is about Swift's hope that the boyfriend, after ending the relationship and leaving for college, would reminisce about her every time he hears their mutual favorite Tim McGraw song; according to Swift, it was "Can't Tell Me Nothin". "Stay Beautiful", addressed to a character named Cory, describes Swift's admiration for him from afar without him knowing. "Mary's Song (Oh My My My)", written in third-person perspective from the perspective of a character named Mary, portrays a love that has survived its trials and tribulations. "Our Song", written for her high-school talent show, is about a young couple's daily experiences.

"Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No" depict a vengeful attitude toward those who do not reciprocate the protagonist's feelings; on "Picture to Burn", Swift sings about burning photographic evidence of an ex-boyfriend's existence. The original version included the lyrics, "Go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy / That's fine; I'll tell mine you're gay." On the radio edit and subsequent versions, Swift modified the lyric to "That's fine; You won't mind if I say." Heartbreak is the theme of tracks like "Teardrops on My Guitar", which was about her unreciprocated feelings for a classmate. On "Cold as You", she laments a fruitless relationship in which the lover does not appreciate her. She said it was her favorite song lyrically on the album: "I love a line in a song where afterward you're just like... burn."

In other songs, Swift sings about insecurity and self-consciousness. "The Outside", which Swift wrote at age 12, describes the loneliness she felt when her love of country music alienated her from her peers, and "A Place in This World" expresses her uncertainty about where she truly belongs. Swift wrote "Tied Together with a Smile" the day she learned one of her best friends had an eating disorder. The song describes a young girl who lacks self-esteem and disguises her inner turbulence with a smile, but Swift's character tells her that she will never overcome her struggles until she learns to love herself.

Music
Musically, Taylor Swift incorporates country music elements, including twang vocal delivery and acoustic instruments such as fiddles, guitars, and banjos. According to American Songwriter 's Michael Kosser, Chapman's production was a distinctive sound hard to categorize into a particular genre; Big Machine marketed the album to country radio regardless. Reviews from The Palm Beach Post and the Chicago Tribune categorized Taylor Swift as country music.

Elements of crossover pop are apparent on many songs. In retrospective articles, critics disagreed on to what extent the Taylor Swift songs are fully country. Jon Caramanica from The New York Times called it a "pop-minded country" album, while Rolling Stone critic Chuck Eddy observed that Taylor Swift blended "pop-rock and Dixie Chicks-style twang". Another album review on Rolling Stone, meanwhile, felt the songs were inflected with rock. Grady Smith from the same magazine listed the singles "Tim McGraw", "Teardrops on My Guitar", "Our Song", and "Picture to Burn" among Swift's "countriest songs", which evoke "classic country" in terms of instrumentation, themes, and song structure. J. Freedom du Lac from The Washington Post noted that the "rhythmic, rap-influenced phrasing" on "Our Song" was atypical to country music.

The musicologist James E. Perone cited "Tim McGraw" as an example of Swift's crossover appeal. "Tim McGraw" follows the I-vi-IV-V chord progression, which is typically found in late-1950s and early-1960s rock and roll. The refrain consists of repeated motifs built within a small pitch range, which gives the song a catchy tune. Additionally, the refrain—and to a lesser degree, the verses—makes heavy use of syncopation at the sixteenth-note level, which brings about a production reminiscent to non-country genres such as alternative rock and hip hop. Perone argued that these melodic qualities laid the groundwork to Swift's pop radio-friendly discography enjoyed by both pop and country audiences.

Release and promotion
Taylor Swift was released on October 24, 2006, through Big Machine Records. Swift was involved in the album packaging, designing doodle graphics herself. She included hidden messages with hints at the subjects of her songs in the lyrics printed in the liner notes, inspired by the Beatles' hiding secret messages in their records. She executed the same technique on her subsequent albums. Swift said the messages could be interpreted by tracking the capital letters in the order they appear in the lyrics printed in the liner notes. In addition to the eleven-track standard edition, a 15-track deluxe edition contains three new original songs—"I'm Only Me When I'm with You", "Invisible", and "A Perfectly Good Heart", and an alternate version of "Teardrops on My Guitar". An "enhanced version", which includes the music videos for "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Tim McGraw", was released on March 18, 2008.

The album was preceded by the lead single "Tim McGraw", which was released on June 19, 2006. The single peaked at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number six on the Hot Country Songs chart, marking Swift's debut appearance on both charts. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Swift promoted the album performing on televised programs including Good Morning America, The Megan Mullally Show, America's Got Talent, Total Request Live, the CMT Music Awards, and the Academy of Country Music Awards. To maintain her presence on country radio, Swift embarked on a radio tour during a six-month run in 2006. Swift also promoted the album by performing as an opening act for other country artists' concert tours. She opened for Rascal Flatts from October 19 to November 3, 2006. Throughout 2007, she opened for George Strait, Brad Paisley, and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's joint tour, Soul2Soul II Tour.

In addition to traditional radio promotion, Swift extensively used her Myspace profile to communicate with her audiences, sharing her daily blogs and song information. Her online marketing strategy boosted the album's popularity among teenagers and young adults. Swift and Big Machine decided to release "Our Song" as a single because of the positive feedback it received on Myspace. Throughout 2007 and 2008, four more singles supported Taylor Swift: "Teardrops on My Guitar", "Our Song", "Picture to Burn", and "Should've Said No", all of which peaked within the top forty of the Hot 100 and the top ten of the Hot Country Songs chart. "Teardrops on My Guitar" peaked at number two on the Hot Country Songs chart and had a crossover release to pop radio; it peaked at number seven on the Mainstream Top 40 (Pop Songs) chart, and number 13 on the Hot 100. "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" reached number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. With "Our Song", Swift became the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a Hot Country Songs number one. All singles were certified platinum or more by the RIAA, with "Teardrops on My Guitar" (3× Platinum) and "Our Song" (4× Platinum) selling over three million copies each.

From August 2019 to January 2020, Big Machine released 4,000 copies of each of the singles from Taylor Swift on vinyl for the 13th anniversary of the album. This was met with immediate backlash in light of the purchase of the masters of Taylor Swift's first six studio albums.

Critical reception
Taylor Swift received generally positive reviews. Perone wrote that although some critics deemed the lyrical themes unsophisticated, most praised Swift's songwriting for using familiar techniques in ways that sounded original and novel. Laura Snapes of The Guardian said that reviewers were impressed by her "pure yet prematurely wise depictions of teenage love". The review aggregate site Metacritic reported five published reviews and assigned the album an aggregated score of 67 out of 100.

In a review for Country Weekly, Chris Neal deemed Swift a success compared to previous aspiring teenage country singers because of her "honesty, intelligence and idealism". Reviewers were impressed by Swift's maturity while retaining a sense of youthful innocence in her lyrics, including Ken Rosenbaum of The Toledo Blade, Nick Cristiano of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeff Tamarkin of AllMusic, and Rolling Stone. In a review for The Palm Beach Post, James Fontaine felt Swift's honest depiction of her teenage experience made the album compelling, and lauded the "musical maturity" for effectively communicating the sentiments. The Morning Call Keith Groller said that the album was not groundbreaking but could appeal to a wide-ranging audience with its adolescent earnestness.

Critics commented on the album's pop sensibility—Neal and Rolling Stone found it appealing to a mainstream audience. Tamarkin commented that Swift's "considerably strong voice" straddled the precarious boundary between country and pop, and criticized producer Chapman for applying "a gloss that not all [songs] really require". In the Chicago Tribune, Chrissie Dickinson described Taylor Swift as "a slick package, pleasant enough but devoid of anything resembling gritty traction". In a mixed review for PopMatters, Roger Holland complimented the production quality of certain tracks, but deemed the album overall a misstep for Swift's true appeal: "It's to be hoped that when she finds both her place and her full grown voice, she's able to find an accommodation between the country tradition and her very obvious pop sensibilities." Robert Christgau rated the album a "cut" score, and selected "Tim McGraw" and "Picture to Burn" as highlights.

Taylor Swift helped Swift earn a nomination for New Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2007 Academy of Country Music Awards, a Horizon Award at the 2007 Country Music Association Awards, and a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards (2008). The album itself was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards.

Retrospective reviews have remained favorable toward Swift's early songwriting. Maura Johnston from Pitchfork described the album as an honest record about teenage perspectives, which set Swift apart from the manufactured albums that "weighed down former teen sensations". Jonathan Bradley from Billboard lauded how Swift captured immediate emotions and feelings with "details... so sharp at so small a scale". In July 2022, Rolling Stone ranked Taylor Swift at number 32 on its list of the "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time".

Commercial performance
Taylor Swift was a sleeper success in the United States. It debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 chart dated November 11, 2006, with first-week sales of 40,000 copies. Because albums often drop in sales after their initial release, Swift did not expect her album to remain long on the chart: "I would be incredibly lucky to see this album certified Gold." Contrary to her expectations, Taylor Swift kept selling at a fairly consistent pace. By November 2007, the album had sold over a million copies. It reached its highest sales week on the Billboard 200 chart dated January 5, 2008, when it sold 187,000 copies and charted at number eight.

The album reached its peak at number five on the chart dated January 19, 2008, in its 63rd week of charting. Spending 157 weeks on the Billboard 200 by October 2009, Taylor Swift marked the longest stay on the chart by any album released in the 2000s decade. It has spent a total of 280 weeks on the chart as of August 2023. On Top Country Albums, Taylor Swift peaked at number one for 24 non-consecutive weeks. By January 2024, the album had sold 5.871 million pure copies in the United States. It had been certified seven times Platinum by the RIAA for earning over seven million album-equivalent units in the nation.

In Canada, Taylor Swift peaked at number 14 on the Canadian Albums Chart and was certified Platinum by Music Canada (MC). The album peaked at number 33 on the Australian Albums Chart in March 2010, and was certified Platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). In the United Kingdom, it peaked at number 81 on the Albums Chart and was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales of more than 100,000 copies. The album had sold 198,000 units in the United Kingdom by October 2022. It appeared on albums charts in New Zealand (peaking at number 38), Japan (53), Ireland (59), and Scotland (17).

Impact and legacy
Taylor Swift was released in a time when female country artists were gaining momentum in popularity. Nashville industry experts nonetheless disapproved of Swift's debut as a teenager because they considered the album's adolescent themes inappropriate for country music's middle-aged key demographic. Jim Malec of American Songwriter observed that contrary to industry expectations,Taylor Swift's success on country radio, particularly with the track "Our Song", established Swift as one of the few teenage female artists to be equally successful with male counterparts in a format dominated by men.

Though critics questioned the album's country-music categorization, Rolling Stone remarked that following the Dixie Chicks' 2003 controversy, which left "a huge space opened up in the heart of the country audience", Swift "has completely filled it ... with a sound that's not just rock-informed but teen-poppy too". Jon Caramanica of The New York Times observed that, although the country-pop crossover sound was facilitated by previous successful singers, Swift was the first country artist to embrace the status of a pop star. Taylor Swift made her the first female solo artist in country music to write or co-write every song on a platinum-certified debut album. Its production laid the groundwork to Swift's subsequent country-pop discography, whose chart success straddled the perceived boundary between the two genres.

Music journalists attributed the album's success to Swift's songwriting and online marketing strategy. While online promotion was familiar to pop and hip hop artists, she was the first country artist to promote her songs on social media services like Myspace; she also relied on social media to promote her subsequent releases, which brought her a loyal fan base. Her social media presence ushered in a younger audience consisted of mostly teenage girls who listened to country music—a previously unheard demographic. The autobiographical narratives on Taylor Swift defined Swift's songwriting over the next decade, which Billboard noted to inspire a new generation of aspiring singer-songwriters. Consequence stated Taylor Swift was the blueprint for songs focused on unrequited love and suffering, paving the way for "future teenie boppers" such as Conan Gray's "Heather" (2020) and Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License" (2021). Rolling Stone opined, "if Taylor Swift retired right after dropping her debut album, she'd still be remembered as a legend today [...] Taylor debuted with complete mastery of a genre she was also completely transforming." According to Entertainment Weekly, the commercial success of her debut helped the infant Big Machine go on to sign Garth Brooks and Jewel.

Track listing
All tracks are produced by Nathan Chapman except where noted.

Personnel

 * Taylor Swift – lead vocals, background vocals, songwriting, acoustic guitar
 * Nathan Chapman – acoustic guitar, banjo, bass, drums, electric guitar, engineer, background vocals, mandolin, production
 * Scott Borchetta – executive producer
 * Chuck Ainlay – mixing
 * Jeff Balding – mixing
 * Bruce Bouton – dobro
 * Mike Brignardello – bass guitar
 * Nick Buda – drums
 * Gary Brunette – electric guitar
 * Jason Campbell – production coordination
 * Chason Carlson – engineer
 * Aaron Chmielewski – assistant engineer
 * Eric Darken – percussion
 * Allen Ditto – engineer
 * Dan Dugmore – pedal steel
 * Shannon Forrest – drums
 * Rob Hajacos – fiddle
 * Gordon Hammon – assistant engineer
 * Tony Harrell – keyboard
 * Jeffrey Hyde – banjo
 * Scott Kidd – mixing assistant
 * Greg Lawrence – mixing assistant
 * Andy Leftwich – fiddle, mandolin
 * Liana Manis – background vocals
 * Tim Marks – bass
 * Robert Ellis Orrall – background vocals, producer
 * Lex Price – mandolin
 * Lee Ann Ramey – graphic design
 * Joshua Whitmore – dobro, pedal steel
 * Clarke Schleicher – engineer
 * Steve Short – assistant engineer
 * Sandi Spika – engineer
 * Whitney Sutton – production coordination
 * Ilya Toshinsky – acoustic guitar, banjo
 * Wanda Vick – fiddle
 * Hank Williams – mastering
 * John Willis – banjo, mandolin, hi string acoustic guitar