Taylor Swift Switched to a New Genre and to a New Backstory

9 years ago Liv Carter 4
Taylor Swift performs at New Year's Eve 2015 in New York City. (Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty)
Taylor Swift performs at New Year’s Eve 2015 in New York City.
(Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty)

When Taylor Swift officially moved over to pop music, she made some other changes too. She moved her main residence from Nashville to New York City and apparently some people made a big deal out of that.

In a recent interview with Billboard, Swift was asked about this reaction. “There has been so much talk about you moving to New York, but people forget that you grew up in Pennsylvania, just a few hours away,” the interviewer stated. And her response reveals yet another change she made – a whole different backstory than the one Nashville heard for years.

Oh, yeah — people have no idea! I summered at the Jersey Shore every year. When I first discovered that I was in love with performing, I wanted to be in theater. So growing up, New York City was where I would come for auditions. I was 10, but I was as tall as a 16-year-old, and then you’d have a 22-year-old who could play 10, and they’d get the role. Then I started taking voice lessons in the city, so my mom and I would drive two hours and have these adventures.

Well, yeah. The reason “people have no idea” is because you never mentioned it before.

When she was focusing on the country music market, the story went that she grew up on a farm in PA, started writing songs, made numerous trips to Nashville because she wanted to play country music, picked up a development and publishing deal, and was discovered by Scott Borchetta at the Bluebird Cafe.*

As evidenced by this 2007 interview, which is pretty representative for her PR at the time, no mention was made of musical theater, auditioning in New York City, or taking voice lessons there. Oh, and “summer” was never used as a verb.

In certain sections of daytime television, a popular phrase is that you should “own your story,” and, much in contrast with most material on daytime talk shows, I wholeheartedly agree.

If you can’t be honest about who you were, how is your audience supposed to believe you are honest about who you are?

The point? Don’t hide your story. You are who you are, and that’s just fine. If you feel the need to re-write your own history depending on which group you speak to, you are most definitely not “owning your story.” You are pretending to be who you think you should be to be accepted.

Which I believe is quite the opposite of the advice Swift has been giving to her young, and mostly female, audience.

 

* Also not mentioned in that backstory was her family’s significant investment resulting in those deals and “discovery.” It’s amazing how easy it is to get a deal sometimes, when you show up with your own investor…

 

Liv Carter

Liv Carter

Liv is a career coach for creatives, and the people who work with them.
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Liv Carter

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