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Taylor Swift is the debut studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Under Big Machine Records, it was released in the U.S. and Canada on October 24, 2006, and elsewhere on March 18, 2008. Swift signed with Sony/ATV Tree Publishing at 14 in 2004 to become a professional songwriter, and her recording contract with Big Machine in 2005 enabled her to work on the album during her first high-school year. The standard edition consists of 11 tracks; Swift wrote three by herself and co-wrote the remaining with Robert Ellis Orrall, Brian Maher, Angelo Petraglia, and Liz Rose. She employed autobiographical songwriting to portray her outlook on life as a teenager, and the songs are about romantic relationships, friendships, and insecurity.

Produced by Orrall and Nathan Chapman, Taylor Swift is a country record with pop and pop rock elements. Its melodies are driven by acoustic instruments such as guitars, banjos, and fiddles. The album was supported by five singles; "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" reached number one on Hot Country Songs, and "Teardrops on My Guitar" reached the top 10 on Pop Songs. To promote the album, Swift connected with her audience on the social network Myspace, embarked on a six-month radio tour in 2006, and opened tours for other country artists throughout 2006 and 2007. Music critics praised the album's crossover sensibility and Swift's songwriting for earnestly depicting adolescent sentiments. Taylor Swift was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards.

The album spent 24 weeks atop Top Country Albums and peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200, where it became the longest-charting album of the 2000s decade. Certified seven-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it made Swift the first solo female country artist to write or co-write every song on a platinum debut album. Journalists commented that Swift's promotion strategy via Myspace ushered in a younger demographic to country music which had mainly attracted middle-aged listeners. The album's incorporation of country music with crossover styles laid the groundwork to the country pop sound of Swift's next two albums, and its autobiographical songwriting inspired a subsequent generation of singer-songwriters.

Background and development
Pennsylvania-born Taylor Swift developed an early interest in the performing arts. She was determined to become a country musician after watching a documentary about the singer Faith Hill. At 11, she travelled with her mother to Nashville, Tennessee—widely regarded as the epicenter of country music —to pitch demo tapes of karaoke covers to record labels for a contract. All the labels rejected her because they believed the middle-aged demographic would not listen to music by a teenage girl. Swift thought she had to distinguish herself from other aspiring singers and, at 12, started writing songs and learned to play the guitar with the help of a computer repairman who had fixed her family's computer on one occasion. The 1990s female country musicians Faith Hill, Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, and the Chicks influenced her early artistic output. Swift recalled that her love for country music alienated her from her peers.

In 2003, the music manager Dan Dymtrow helped 13-year-old Swift get an artist development deal with RCA Records in Nashville, after he watched her perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2003 US Open. To assist Swift's endeavors, the following year, her father transferred his job to Nashville, and her family relocated to the Nashville suburb Hendersonville. At 14, she signed with the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house to become a professional songwriter, the youngest signee in its history. She then commuted from Hendersonville to Nashville after school everyday to practice with experienced Music Row songwriters, including Liz Rose, who formed a long-lasting working relationship with Swift. According to Swift, her songwriting sessions with Rose were productive because she respected her vision and did not impose the "Nashville cookie-cutter songwriting mold". Rose spoke highly of Swift and called herself "[Swift's] editor".

RCA held Swift off an official record deal and wanted to wait until she turned 18. She left the label and felt that they were not confident in her self-written material. She recalled in 2009 in The Daily Telegraph: "I genuinely felt that I was running out of time. I wanted to capture these years of my life on an album while they still represented what I was going through." At an industry showcase at Nashville's Bluebird Café in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a DreamWorks Records executive who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records. She had first met Borchetta in 2004. Swift terminated her management deal with Dymtrow and became one of Big Machine's first signings, and her father purchased a three-percent stake in the company.

Swift recorded songs for her first studio album with the producer Nathan Chapman within four months near the end of 2005. Chapman had produced several demos for Swift in a small facility behind the Sony/ATV office. Although Big Machine was reluctant to onboard Chapman because he had not produced an album before, Swift believed he was the right choice and had the "right chemistry" with her. Before approaching Chapman, Swift envisioned how the songs should sound and what instruments to use. The album's standard edition consists of 11 tracks. Swift wrote three by herself and co-wrote the remaining. Rose co-wrote seven tracks, 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)". Chapman produced all tracks but "The Outside", which was produced by Orrall. When production wrapped, Swift had finished her first high school year.

Lyrics and themes
Swift wrote Taylor Swift from her personal life experiences as a teenager. While she adhered to the confessional songwriting associated with country music, she did not write about stereotypical themes such as "tractors and hay bales because that's not really the way I grew up". She instead wrote about her observations and reflections on matters from romantic relationships to friendships, striving to convey her teenage perspectives as honestly and personally as possible. Because her inspirations came from immediate feelings and emotions, Swift wrote songs anytime and anywhere, from studio sessions to school breaks. This practice resulted in straightforward lyrics, which The Daily Telegraph noted were "brimming with an earnest naiveté".

The songs on Taylor Swift are from the perspectives of a girl in an American small town, within the bounds from high school hallways to rural backroads; Billboard noted that Swift's personal thoughts within a small confinement fostered a contemplative nature. Most songs on the album are about romantic relationships, some of which were based on Swift's observations rather than real experiences. The lead single and first track, "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, "Tim McGraw" was inspired by McGraw's 2004 song "Can't Tell Me Nothin'". Swift wrote "Our Song" for her high school talent show. She talked about the inspiration: "I wrote it about this guy I was dating, and how we didn't have a song. So I went ahead and wrote us one."

The songs "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 another aspect Swift explored—"Teardrops on My Guitar" was about her experience with a classmate whom she had feelings for, but this classmate was in love with someone else. On "Cold as You", Swift laments a fruitless relationship: "I've never been anywhere cold as you." 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. In a similar sentiment, "A Place in This World" expresses Swift's 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 lyrics describe a girl hiding her inner turbulence; Swift commented, "I always thought that one of the biggest overlooked problems American girls face is insecurity."

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.

James E. Perone, an academic in music, 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. Most critics praised Swift's songwriting for using familiar techniques in ways that sounded original and novel for a teenage artist, although some found the themes unsophisticated and lacking depth.

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 October 2020, the album had sold 5.75 million pure copies in the United States. It was certified seven times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (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 (34).

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.