Taylor Swift takes a moment to relax at the Music Row office of her record label, Big Machine. She’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact that later today she’ll be heading for Omaha, Neb., to kick off a stint opening for country mega-band Rascal Flatts. “It’s crazy,” she says. “This time last year, I was going to one of their concerts.” Since the evening Big Machine head Scott Borchetta heard her sing at the Bluebird Café and decided she’d be perfect for his startup label, things have been moving quickly for Swift. The Pennsylvania native’s “Tim McGraw” single recently hit the Billboard country Top 20, and her self-titled album debuted Oct. 24. She wrote or co-wrote the smart, catchy pop-country gems found on Taylor Swift, so it’s no surprise to find that she exudes drive and determination. The Scene spoke with Swift about songwriting, high school and, of course, boys. Scene: You came up with “Tim McGraw” at school, didn’t you? Swift: That is correct. I was in freshman year, and I came up with this song idea in math class. I was just sitting there and started singing to myself, “When you hear Tim McGraw, I hope you think my favorite song.…” I was dating this guy who was about to go off to college, and I knew we were gonna break up, so I started thinking about all the things that I knew were gonna remind him of me. Being a music nut, the first thing that came to my mind was that my favorite song was a Tim McGraw song. Scene: Which song was it? Swift: My favorite Tim McGraw song is called “Can’t Tell Me Nothin.’ ” It’s about how a lot of people will warn you not to do stuff, but you’re gonna have to figure it out yourself by making your own mistakes, no matter what advice anybody gives you. I think that’s cool, because when I was younger I had a lot of people tell me I couldn’t do this. Scene: Did you do a lot of songwriting in class? Swift: I did. If my teachers did a random notebook check, they would have been very alarmed. (laughs) Scene: Most teenage girls would be mortified if their diaries were published, but releasing an album full of personal songs is pretty much the same thing. Does that worry you? Swift: Not really. I’ve always tried to be comfortable with who I am. I tried to incorporate as much personality and stuff that’s true to me as I possibly could into the album. For instance, the photography in the album package isn’t all promo shots, some are just snapshots. Also, I encoded secret messages into every single lyric [on the lyric sheet]. That sounds really difficult, but it’s not complicated. All the letters are lower-case, except for random capitalized letters throughout the song. If you put them all together, at the end of the song it’ll spell out a message. Like there’s one song on the album called “Should’ve Said No,” about this guy who cheated on me—and he definitely shouldn’t have, because I write songs. If you decode the secret message, it’ll tell you exactly who should’ve said no. (laughs) Scene: Do you expect any response from this young man? Swift: I don’t really care about hearing back from the people that I wrote the songs about. When I write a song about someone, that’s their moment in time for me. That’s how I like to remember them. Scene: Are you still going to high school? Swift: I’m doing homeschooling now. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on a lot. I went to two years of high school. I went to two proms. It was fun, but I’m having the time of my life right now. Scene: But if you don’t go to high school, you don’t meet guys, they don’t break your heart, and then you don’t have anything to write about. Swift: That’s a very interesting point. (laughs) In the last six months, I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with a guy who wasn’t in a meet-and-greet line or on the radio or in an interview or something, and I’ve been writing songs just fine. But that point has not been addressed before. Touché on that one.
