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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Taylor’s Version of Country, Part 2
00:49:52
Chris Molanphy's analysis of Taylor Swift's masterful country-to-pop crossover, continued.
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- [00:00]
Taylor Swift
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:07]
Chris Melanfi
Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we talked about Taylor Swift's country years, which are now being revisited in her 2021 re record of her 2008 album Fearless. Long before Swift made a deliberate move toward pop music, she was bringing young fans to her country music and appearing in youthful mainstream spaces like the MTV Video Music Awards. In 2009, Swift arrived at the VMAs with the song and video youo Belong With Me that was about to be the most played US Radio hit and the winner of a Moon man trophy. But that win was where the trouble started. If the song youg Belong With Me was spunky, its video was more so a fully realized depiction of its high school story, with Taylor playing both the mousy nerd pining for her handsome male friend and the bitchy brunette queen bee whom he's currently dating. It was nominated for best Female video at the 2009 VMAs, and Swift's competition was heavy clips by Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Pink, and of course, famously Beyonce. And Taylor won. And that's when the incident, the one that immortalized the phrase imma let you finish happened. Now, most articles and video recaps that recount the Kanye West Taylor Swift run in at the 2009 VMAs zoom in on the moment that west takes the stage and takes the microphone away from Swift. I want to play Taylor's whole speech well what there was of it before Kanye showed up because it captures what the stakes were for Swift and for country music that night.
- [02:28]
Taylor Swift
Video goes to.
- [02:32]
Chris Melanfi
Taylor Swift.
- [02:35]
Taylor Swift
Thank you so much. I always dreamed about what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never actually thought that would happen. I sing country music, so thank you so much for giving me a chance to win a VMA award.
- [02:56]
Chris Melanfi
I'm really happy for you.
- [02:57]
Taylor Swift
I'm let you finish.
- [02:59]
Chris Melanfi
But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time. Before I go further, I should say that I am on record at a prior live Hit Parade event agreeing with Kanye west on one thing. Beyonce, whose video for Single Ladies was the one Kanye was coming to the defense of, was one of the best videos of all time. I'd even agree with ye that Single Ladies is a better, more iconic Video than you belong with me. Over the past dozen years years, this incident has spawned reams of online debate with smart commentators making arguments that favor both Kanye and Taylor, even as most everybody agrees West's gesture was unbelievably discourteous, including Beyonce, who gasped from the audience and later let Taylor finish her speech. And days later, in a hot mic moment, President Barack Obama, who famously called west, quote, a jackass. I'll just add a few specific points to this very chewed over intersectional debate over an incident that not only started a decade of Swift versus West hostilities, but even indirectly led to Taylor re recording her catalog this year.
- [04:45]
Taylor Swift
I'm in my room. It's a typical Tuesday night. I'm listening to the kind of music.
- [04:51]
Chris Melanfi
She doesn't like off this was the only category Swift's video was competing in. She had defeated Beyonce for Best Female Video, not Video of the year, which by the way was won that year by Single Ladies. Less than an hour later, Beyonce was not going home empty handed. Single Ladies had already won Best Choreography and Best Editing. For another thing, Swift's look of shock when she won, a slack jawed look that she exhibited at multiple award shows in her early years, for which she was often teased and pilloried, might have been actual shock. The win was an upset as yous Belong With Me was the first country video in MTV's history to take any VMAs prize. Prior to this, only one other country clip had been so much as nominated, Shania Twain's you're Still the One a full decade earlier. Even if the you Belong With Me video is more high school than hayride, this was a moment for country and for genre breath on mtv, a channel that, by the way, had once ignored most black music but by 2009 had played even less country music. So at worst, you could call Taylor's win yet another example of a white person taking a prize that could have gone to a black artist. Certainly many later did call it that. At best, MTV was sharing the night's wealth among fans of multiple genres. The narrative coming out of The Kanye Taylor VMAs incident was that Swift was an aw shucks bystander from country music, mystified by the new pop world she was stepping into. But the nuanced truth was that Swift had been savvily putting her music at the center of the pop conversation for for months. As critic Jody Rosen later said in his profile of Swift for New York Magazine, quote, swift's relationship to country is not merely a matter of careerist calculation. Nashville is a song town, and Swift is first and foremost a songwriter. If you ask Swift to reconcile her musical impulses, she gives an answer that has the virtue of being both true and politically savvy. I love country and I love pop, she told me. I love them both, unquote. Swift rebounded quickly from the VMAs and took several more victory laps in the months to come. In late October, she issued a so called platinum edition of the Fearless CD that came packed with a half dozen new songs. Thanks to heavy track downloads, all six new songs debuted within the top 40 in a single week. The biggest track jump, then fall, even cracked the top 10. Two months later. In late January 2010, Swift took the biggest prize of all at the Grammy Awards, not just in the country categories, but in the top category of the night. And the Grammy goes to. Taylor Swift, Nathan Chapman and Taylor Swift.
- [08:52]
Taylor Swift
Oh, wow. Thank you so much. I just. I just hope that you know how much this means to me and to, to Nathan, my producer, and to all these musicians you see on this stage that we get to take this back to Nashville, all of us, when we're 80 years old. This is the story we're going to be telling over and over again in 2010. How we got to win album of the year. The Grammys.
- [09:12]
Chris Melanfi
Thank you. The same week that Swift won the big Grammy, a new song of hers made a massive Hot 100 debut. Today was a Fairy Tale, which felt to many fans like a sequel to Love Story, entered the chart all the way up at number two, fueled by opening sales of 325,000 digital downloads.
- [09:37]
Taylor Swift
Today was a fairy tale you were the prince I used to be a damsel in distress you took me by the hand.
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Chris Melanfi
Fairy Tale was notable for a couple of reasons. For starters, it was more embraced by Swift's young pop fan base than by country radio listeners. On the country chart, it peaked at number 41, the first single Swift released that charted better on the Hot 100 than on Hot country songs. For another, Today Was a Fairy Tale was a soundtrack song from a frothy new Gary Marshall romantic comedy called Valentine's Day, in which Swift played a small comedic part. It was her first time acting outside of a music video.
- [10:33]
Taylor Swift
So how did you guys meet? It's really funny, actually. Like, I was not into him at first. He used to shoot spit wads at me in Spanish class, which is like so junior high. But then one night I was brushing out my hair when I got home and I found this spit wag. But it was really A note, and it said, what's up? And I was like, that is so cute. And then I liked it.
- [10:55]
Chris Melanfi
Swift's co star in the film was heartthrob Taylor Lautner, of Twilight fame. Taylor and Taylor wound up dating for a couple of months around the filming of the movie, which provided fodder for a ditty Swift composed for her first stint hosting NBC's Saturday Night Live.
- [11:17]
Taylor Swift
Ha ha ha ha ha ha la la la. And if you're wondering if I might be dating the werewolf from Twilight, I'm not gonna comment on.
- [11:36]
Chris Melanfi
By the time Swift hosted snl, the general public had cottoned onto the in joke that many of Swift's songs, including some of her hits, were thinly veiled Romans, a clef to both current and former love interests. Taylor Lautner was a current boyfriend, so he came off well in her monologue song after they amicably broke up, Swift would later write about Lautner again a year later in the hit Back to December. Taylor Lautner got off lucky. What fans noticed more prominently was that Swift's true life romantic tales were mostly kiss offs, sometimes vicious ones. Country music has a long tradition of the wounded kiss off song, from George Jones. To Travis Tritt. Well, here's a corner call. Someone who cares. Swift blended this country tradition with the guided missile specificity of a rap era beef record. Her kiss offs were targeted and they dated all the way back to her 2006 debut album. Her number three country hit, Pictured Byrne, contained a now regrettable lyric about outing a faithless ex boyfriend. That high school beau was someone unfamous. From Taylor's pre fame days. Swift was much more openly rough toward her father, first post fame paramour.
- [13:48]
Taylor Swift
You might think I'd bring up Joe, that guy who broke up with me on the phone, but I'm not gonna mention him in my monologue. Hey Joe, I'm doing real well tonight. I'm hosting SNL in my monologue.
- [14:05]
Chris Melanfi
That Joe was Joe Jonas, lead singer of boy band the Jonas Brothers.
- [14:12]
Taylor Swift
Baby can push it higher Cause I'm bab.
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Chris Melanfi
And Swift dispatched with him on her fearless platinum edition track Forever and Always.
- [14:29]
Taylor Swift
Was I out of mind? Did I say something way too honest? Made you run and hide like a scared little boy?
- [14:36]
Chris Melanfi
Swift's kiss off songs were a twofer. They were a classic songwriter's trope. As they say, write what you know as well as a clever, snarky way to spur fan involvement in the social media era. Taylor kept the tradition going in 2010 as she began writing her next album, which included A heart rending tale of an age inappropriate romance whose unsubtle title was Dear John.
- [15:09]
Taylor Swift
Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home.
- [15:34]
Chris Melanfi
No one mistook who that song was about, least of all its target, guitarist and songwriter John Mayer, who dated Swift when he was 31 and she was 19. He felt wounded enough by the song that a couple of years later, he wrote his own response to Taylor. Paper doll, you like 22 girls in one. And none of them know what they're running from. Swift was also capable of firing back more generally at bullies and her own critics, as she did on a single from her next album, Speak Now. Not mincing words, the song was simply called Mean.
- [16:25]
Taylor Swift
Someday I'll be living in a big old city and all you're ever gonna be is mean.
- [16:35]
Chris Melanfi
Feminists and cultural critics lambasted Swift for perennially centering men in her narrative and for portraying herself as a damsel in distress. But even when she wasn't singing about a crush or a love gone wrong, giving voice to those who felt belittled by others was a powerful theme. Swift's youngest fans especially loved it. That theme didn't always work. At the 2010 MTV VMAs, both Swift and Kanye west performed one year after the incident. Swift's new song, Innocent, was a gentle ballad clearly aimed at Kanye. She opened the performance by playing back his interruption of her acceptance speech from the year before. And even Taylor's most supportive critics found the song wan and patronized.
- [17:47]
Taylor Swift
It's all right just wait and see ya String of lights are still bright to me oh, who you are is not where you been? You're still an innocent.
- [18:02]
Chris Melanfi
For his part, west took the stage with his own brash response to the incident, a song called Runaway, whose unapologetic chorus went quote, let's have a toast for the douchebag. Let's have a toast for the assholes. Unrepentantly rude or defiantly resilient, critics said it was both. But yet again on the charts tail Taylor was the ultimate victor. While Kanye's next album, the critically hailed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, opened at number one on the Billboard 200 with nearly half a million in first week sales. Taylor's new disc, Speak now, more than doubled. That. Now opened to over a million copies in its first week, the first country album to do so since Garth Brooks's double live in 1998. The music industry was stunned by this feat, Billboard reported, quote, who said it couldn't be done. Don't feel bad if you were one of the many naysayers who had assumed the days of of million selling weeks were over. Considering how album sales have dropped off a cliff since the early 2000s, huge sales frames are rare. But as we've seen with Taylor Swift, if you have crossover appeal to pop and country audiences, the wide age range of her fans, teens, tweens and moms among them, it can happen, unquote.
- [20:02]
Taylor Swift
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter. You are the best thing that ever.
- [20:09]
Chris Melanfi
Found My Swift was now bigger than any one genre. But remarkably unlike Shania Twain or the Chicks, she wasn't being spurned by the country audience. Even after her massive crossover, both Mine, the lead single and Mean, the follow up, reached number two on Hot Country Songs back to December, her Taylor Lautner memento reached number three. As late as the fall of 2011 and the winter of 2012, Speak now was still generating country hits. Sparks Fly reached number one.
- [20:49]
Taylor Swift
Chop everything Now, Meet me in the glory, Kiss me on the sidewalk, Take away the Pain.
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Chris Melanfi
A track from the album's deluxe edition also topped the country chart. Even amid these victories, Team Taylor could tell country radio was going to become an ever greater challenge. Country had left long been a male driven format, but by the early 2000 and tens women artists were becoming positively scarce. In 2011, women or woman fronted bands topped the country chart less than one quarter of the year in 2012, just over 10% of the year. Worse, not only were more of countries hitmakers male, the hits themselves were male centric, with cookie cutter lyrics about trucks, boozy lake parties and pretty women in cutoff shorts. Welcome to the Bro country era. Whether the chart toppers were by Jason Aldean or Jake Owen, girls smile when.
- [22:21]
Taylor Swift
We roll by, they hop in the back and we cruise to the riverside.
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Chris Melanfi
Never gonna grow up or by the so called king of the bros Luke Bryan, you're looking so good and what's left of those blue jeans Drip a.
- [22:38]
Taylor Swift
Honey on the money, make a gotta be.
- [22:41]
Chris Melanfi
These testosterone fueled hits were becoming interchangeable. Even if Bro country hadn't taken over, Taylor Swift's own songwriting was evolving in an ever more pop driven direction. Increasingly, Taylor's new material demanded top 40 savvy production, but in the early tens, pop was mostly electronic, not acoustic. Whether it sounded like this Tayo Cruz hit. Or this Britney Spears hit, Or this Maroon 5 chart topper, Or all of the string of blockbuster singles by Pop queen Katy Perry. What do all of these hits I just played have in common? All of them were either produced or co written by a man from Stockholm, Sweden. We've discussed plenty here on Hit Parade, the guy who was going to take Taylor the last mile in her genre evolution. For her part, Swift was going to give as good as she got, delivering songs that fit the sound of modern electro pop. But were all Taylor Once upon a.
- [24:33]
Taylor Swift
Time, a few mistakes ago I was in your sights you got me alone you found me, you found me, you found me.
- [24:46]
Chris Melanfi
After all her success with her clout at a new peak coming out of Speak Now, Taylor Swift's next album could have sounded like anything. She was still writing sturdy acoustic style material like the future number three country hit Begin Again. Or by Combination Contrast, the album's lead track, State of Grace, sounded like arena rock in the style of U2. Swift's longtime producer, the versatile Nathan Chapman, produced both of these songs. But it was while he and Swift were working on what became the album's title track, simply titled Red, That they realized even though the song sounded good with banjos on it, and that it had the bones and chord changes of country music, it still needed something extra. It needed the kind of punch that was the specialty of a makeup of big top 40 pop hits. In other words, it needed a lift, a soar. So Chapman and Swift agreed that Big Machine label president Scott Borchetta should call in the biggest pop hitmaker of the past 50, 15 years, Karl Martin Sandberg, aka Max Martin. Max Martin had already defined multiple eras of pop. As we discussed in our Britney Spears episode, Martin was largely responsible for the teen pop boom of the late 90s. He wrote and produced for Spears, Backstreet Boys and NSync. Half a decade after that wave died out, Max came back with another wave of potent pop production, defined by artists like Pink, a revived Britney and Katy Perry, and kicked off by Kelly Clarkson's seminal Since youe Been Gone.
- [27:50]
Taylor Swift
But since you've been gone, I can't breathe.
- [27:55]
Chris Melanfi
For the first time by the early Tens, Max and his stable of Stockholm songwriters were at the top of their game, having produced a wave of hits for everyone from Usher to Adam Lambert to Avril Lavigne. The knock on Martin was that many of his hits sounded like they could be sung by anybody. Indeed, that was what made his brand of Martin maximalist pop, such a chart juggernaut. But in Taylor Swift, Max Martin met a formidable songwriter in her own right whose personality infused her compositions. Swift, Martin and his co songwriter Johann Schuster better known as Shellback, wound up writing three songs together for for the Red album. Martin and Shellback also produced them. I KNEW you WERE Trouble was a classic Swift Romana clef a kiss and tell song about it is widely rumored her relationship with One Direction singer Harry Styles, but this kiss and tell sounded like no Swift song in history to date.
- [29:15]
Taylor Swift
Cause I knew you were trouble when.
- [29:18]
Chris Melanfi
You all Martin and Shellback threw everything at the track. As Vulture critic Nate Jones aptly put it quote from Kelly Clarkson verses to a roller coaster chorus to a dubstep breakdown. It shouldn't hang together, but it. Then the thumping 22, a kind of sequel to Swift's earlier hit 15, celebrating a year she called the favorite of her adulthood, was similarly eclectic. Over Taylor's guitar strumming, Martin and Shellback layered dance pop beats and swirling production on her vocals. But the standout of the Swift Martin Shellback tracks was one they wrote together after a conversation about Swift's many breakups. Taylor described one particular relationship to the two producers as break up, get back together, break up, get back together. Just ugh, the worst. Max Martin suggested they write about it, and he encouraged Taylor to make the verses conversational, as much talking as singing.
- [30:57]
Taylor Swift
We hadn't seen each other in a month when you said you needed.
- [31:03]
Chris Melanfi
What Martin, Shellback and Swift ultimately delivered sounded like what critic Ann Powers would later call pop punk, a fist pumping, snarky girl power anthem with a very wordy title, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Sonically, it was totally new for Swift, yet lyrically, it couldn't have sounded more like Taylor, and it would become her first ever number one pop hit. We Are Never ever Getting back Together arrived as the first single from Red in August of 2012, the Summer of huge lovelorn pop hits like Call Me maybe and Somebody that I Used to Know, it entered the Hot 100 at number 72, fueled by just two days of airplay, the fastest a Swift single had ever been adopted by Top 40 Radio 1. With week later, after selling a stunning 623,000 downloads, a record for a female artist never, ever hurtled from number 72 to number one. Within a few weeks, the Red Album would arrive to 1.2 million copies sold in its first week, 200,000 more than speak now had opened to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, the nation's number one song made Taylor Swift even bigger than she'd been before. And how did country radio, the format that had broken Taylor Swift, feel about her poppiest song to date. At first, they were excited, many country program directors told Billboard magazine Swift was important to their format and had connected them with an impassioned young fan base. To ensure country acceptance, Big Machine put out a remix of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together just for country radio. It replaced Max Martin and Shellback's synthesizers and and drum machines with mandolin, steel guitar and snare drums.
- [33:42]
Taylor Swift
I'm really gonna miss you picking fights and me falling for it screaming that I'm right and you would hide away and find your peace of mind with some indie record that's much cooler than.
- [33:52]
Chris Melanfi
Mine out of the box in late August 2012, never ever made a big splash on hot country songs, all the way up at number 13, one of the highest debuts in the chart's history. But it appeared the country audience wasn't as enamored as programmers were hoping. A week later, rather than climbing into the top 10, the song fell on the country chart to number 19. By mid October, a month after Never Ever had finished its three week run at number number one on the Hot 100, the song had never topped its number 13 country debut and it had slipped out of the top 20 entirely. It was Swift's first ever officially promoted single not to reach the top 10 in country airplay. This was when Billboard gave Swift's song an unexpected lifeline. In the issue dated October 20, 2012, the magazine announced a controversial change to its genre charts, R and B, Latin and Country, turning them into miniature versions of the Hot 100. This was driven by the industry's wholesale shift to digital consumption, both downloads and streams. Now, as long as a song qualified for one of those formats, its position on the Hot 100 would determine its ranking on the genre chart. And so because we are Never Ever getting back Together technically qualified as a country song and still ranked high on the Hot 100. On the rebooted Hot Country Songs, it shot from 21 all the way to number one. It wound up spending 10 weeks at one on the revamped country chart, even though country radio wasn't playing it all that much.
- [36:02]
Taylor Swift
I used to think that we were forever ever and I used to say never sing.
- [36:14]
Chris Melanfi
No matter what the charts said. Country radio was now being much more choosy about which Swift songs it would play. Her follow up single, the Max Martin Shellback production I KNEW you Were Trouble, was a number two pop hit that Billboard defined as ineligible for the hot country chart since since so few country stations were playing it. Other tracks from the Red Album, like Begin Again and the Title Track were embraced by country audiences and did make the country airplay top 10. But but organically, as the songs from Red took their turns on the charts, it couldn't help but feel like Swift was quietly, gradually breaking up with the genre that had launched her career. However, she did give country music one more for the road. In the spring of 2013, Swift appeared on Highway Don't Care, a duet with Tim McGraw. It was from Tim McGraw's new album and one of the most acclaimed country singles of the year. Highway Don't Care reached number four on Billboard's main digital fueled hot country songs chart and on the country airplay chart, which tracked the songs country radio stations were actually playing, it reached number one. Tim McGraw, the veteran country superstar that Taylor Swift. Swift had named her very first single after way back in 2006 when she was 16 years old. He gave her one last victory lap on the country charts. It would be Swift's last country airplay number one song, and after 2013, no solo Taylor Swift song would appear in the country top 10 for the rest of the decade. If you're a follower of pop music, you probably know where the story goes from here. In 2014, Taylor Swift announced her next project would be her, quote, first documented official pop album, in her words. She went back into the studio with Max Martin, this time as her executive co producer, as well as other new collaborators like Indy and power pop producer Jack Antonoff. The album would be called 1989 after the year of her birth, symbolizing her genre, rebirth and the album. Yeah, it did okay. Taylor Swift spent the rest of the 2010s as one of the biggest artists in pop. The 1989 album, which by the way, opened to 1.3 million in sales. Even Bigger Than Red generated three Hot 100 number one hits, including Shake it Off, The witty follow up single, a satire of her string of well chronicled romances, Blank space.
- [40:27]
Taylor Swift
Baby and I'll write your name and.
- [40:31]
Chris Melanfi
Her beef song against Katy Perry, bad Blood. Taylor wound up in a new round of beefs with her old nemesis, Kanye West. Oof. Recapping that drama would take a whole other podcast episode. And so she of course course referenced KANYE in her 2017 chart topper, look what you made me do.
- [41:00]
Taylor Swift
I don't like your little games, don't like your tilted stage.
- [41:08]
Chris Melanfi
Taylor kind of started rapping herself on hits like Ready for It. And she went deep into digital pop on kinetic hits like Delicate. Taylor also came out as an unabashed LGBTQ supporter, finally moving past her fear of being too political like her friends and forebears, the Chicks and She sang about it on her 2019 BoP. You need to calm down. Country radio stations would play these pop songs very sparingly, usually not at all. But the country audience never quite forgot Swift's country heyday, as these stations continued to play her old hits in recurrent rotation. And when Taylor occasionally recorded something quieter and more contemplative, country stations embraced it. New Year's Day, a piano ballad that closed her otherwise hip hop fuel 2017 album reputation cracked the country top 40. As a songwriter, Swift also penned songs for other country acts, including Better man for the group Little Big Town and Babe for country duo Sugarland. The Sugarland hit featured vocals from Taylor herself, bringing her momentarily back to the country top 10 in 2018. How could you do this B? You really blew this B and in 2019, a tender bass Swift wrote and performed with the Chicks. Soon you'll get better brought both her and the trio briefly back to the country charts. It was the chick's first country hit in more than a dozen years. Speaking of featured guests, Swift has a long standing concert tradition of surprising her fans by bringing out very starry visitors from whatever city she's touring. The last time Taylor played Nashville, she brought out Faith hill and Tim McGraw to sing. Well, naturally, Tim McGraw. But of course, Swift has not been able to tour since 2019 thanks to the COVID 19 pandemic. While she was locked down at home in 2020, the ever industrious singer songwriter made very good use of her time. She recorded two albums in a single year, a radical change from her normal schedule of a new album every two years. Titled Folklore and Evermore, the two discs were yet another sonic departure for Swift, awash in the rustic sounds of Americana and indie pop. And perhaps by happenstance, each album generated a song that would bring Taylor back to country radio on her own for the first time since the early tens. From Folklore, the song Betty reached the country radio top 40 and the hot country charts top 10.
- [45:26]
Taylor Swift
Betty I know where it all went wrong. Your favorite song was playing from the far side of the gym.
- [45:37]
Chris Melanfi
And from Evermore, the song no body, no crime, Swift's collaboration with the LA sister trio Haim, also made the Hot country top 10. It was still riding the country airplay chart just a couple of weeks ago. This gradual, quiet return to country music without trying hard at all to sound country has, one might say, brought Taylor's career full circle. It makes her new re recording of her 2008 album Fearless that much more poignant. Fearless. Taylor's version arrived less than a week before we finished this episode of Hit Parade and it's rare that we play a song from the current number one album in the country. Actually, as I record this, it hasn't even been announced yet, but I am quite confident that by the end of this weekend, Billboard will reveal that Taylor Swift's re recording of Fearless is the new number one album in America. I mean, why wouldn't it be? Literally every album Swift has released since the original Fearless has topped the charts.
- [47:02]
Taylor Swift
You sit in class next to redhead named Abigail and soon enough you're best friends.
- [47:12]
Chris Melanfi
Taylor Swift is now nearly a decade and a half past when she wrote and recorded these songs and she's more than twice the age she sings about in Theater 15, a song that she's now recreated in her early 30s. In the song's lyrics, Taylor talks about the wisdom that comes with age. Quote when all you wanted was to be wanted. Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know. Now maybe the adult Taylor is telling the kid Taylor, the one who marched up and down Nashville's Music Row trying to fulfill her dream that she would indeed do that and so much more. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Asha Saludra. Asha is also my producer for our monthly Hip Parade the Bridge episodes, available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I talked to Rolling Stone journalist Brittany Spanos, a self proclaimed Swift who helps me go deep on Taylor Swift lore. To sign up for Slate plus and hear that show and all our shows the day they're released, visit slate.com hitparadeplus June Thomas is the Senior Managing Producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to here Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanvy.
- [49:31]
Taylor Swift
Supposed to be I didn't know who I was supposed to be at 15.