Taylor Swift - Who I've Always Been (2005)

Taylor Alison Swift was born on 13 December 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania, and was named after singer-songwriter James Taylor. She spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm that her father had purchased from one of his clients in his former job as a stockbroker, eventually moving to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where she attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School. At the age of nine, she became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions, travelling regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons. She later shifted her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain's songs, and spent weekends performing at local festivals and events. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, she felt sure that she needed to move to Nashville to pursue a career in music, so when she was eleven she traveled with her mother to visit Nashville record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and The Chicks karaoke covers, but these were rejected as the market was already flooded with singers with the same idea. When she was around 12 years old, computer repairman and local musician Ronnie Cremer taught her to play guitar, and also helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading her to write 'Lucky You', and in 2003 Swift and her parents started working with New York-based talent manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, she modelled for Abercrombie & Fitch as part of their "Rising Stars" campaign, and she had an original song included on a Maybelline compilation CD. After performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase, the 13 year old singer was given an artist development deal and began making frequent trips to Nashville with her mother. 

When in Nashville she worked with experienced Music Row songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally, and the Warren Brothers, and formed a lasting working relationship with Liz Rose. They began meeting for two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school, and the fruits of these sessions were recorded as demos and burned to CD to give out to talent agents. Two volumes of her acoustic demos were recorded in 2003, and the following year, when she was 14, she became the youngest artist to be signed by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house, although she soon left the Sony-owned RCA Records due to the label's lack of care. At an industry showcase at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe 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, and she became one of the label's first signings, while her father purchased a three-percent stake in the company for an estimated $120,000. She had been writing and recording tracks for a couple of years before starting work on her debut album with Producer Nathan Chapman, and 13 of these recordings were burned to a CD in 2005, with four of the songs later being re-recorded for the 'Taylor Swift' album. All the songs on this disc are full band recordings, and the music is universally excellent, so much so that she could easily have released this disc as a country/pop album in 2005. For this post I've removed three of the songs which did eventually appear on her first album, to make room for some others from the same year which were not included on the disc. One that I did leave on was 'Teardrops On My Guitar', which she'd written with Liz Rose about her unrequited love for high school classmate Drew Hardwick, name-checking him in the lyrics, but she also recorded a version with a more general appeal by replacing 'Drew' with 'you', and I've included that version here. This album give us a taste of Swift's musical direction in this early part of her career, and it shows what a precocious talent she was, considering that these recordings were made when she was just 15 or 16 years old.  

Track listing

01 I'm Only Me When I'm With You
02 Teardrops On My Guitar
03 I'd Lie
04 Sweet Tea and God's Graces
05 Better Off 
06 What Do You Say
07 Brought Up That Way
08 Welcome Distraction
09 Dark Blue Tennessee
10 R-E-V-E-N-G-E
11 Nevermind
12 Thirteen Blocks
13 Making Up For Lost Love 
14 Need You Now
15 We Were Happy
16 This is Really Happening
17 Who I've Always Been