Country superstar Taylor Swift has accomplished more by the ripe age of twenty than most artists do in a lifetime. Bridging the gap between country music and mainstream pop, Swift’s ambition, talent and luck have combined to make her the pop culture sensation that she is today. In this one hour special, Swift sits down exclusively with E! to share her story. The E! Entertainment Special: Taylor Swift also features interviews with Taylor’s mother, Andrea; high school best friend, Abigail, close friend Julianne Hough, musical inspirations Brad Paisley and Tim McGraw, record exec Scott Borchetta and many more. This in-depth look at the story behind the songstress airs on December 1st at 10:00 PM only on E!.
Swift’s determination was clear from early on. She tells E! how, by the age of eleven, she and her mother, Andrea, were regularly traveling to Nashville where she would march into the record labels on ‘Music Row’ and exclaim “Hi. I’m Taylor. I want a record deal. Call me.” Her persistence certainly paid off as Swift is now a bona fide country superstar. Katie Cook, host of CMT Insider, tells E! “You don’t get those kind of record sales anymore. I mean, not since Shania and Garth Brooks did we really see those kind of numbers.” When talking about her latest album, Speak Now, Swift tells E!, “I’ve had a lot of insanely, crazy, unexpected, wonderful, magical things happen to me in the last two years and a lot of them people saw me go through. But a lot of things I’ve gone through nobody knows about, and I’m writing about all those things on this album. I can’t wait for people to start unraveling the secrets and deciphering the stories for themselves.” Abigail Anderson, Swift’s best friend, knows the feeling of discovering the meaning behind a Taylor Swift song. She tells E! how Swift approached her with a song called ‘Fifteen’ and said “I have something I wanna play you.” The song was clearly about Anderson and her heartbreak. “It was really personal and I get questioned a lot. ‘Was that too much?’ No, because I feel like maybe one girl will listen to it and relate and that is enough for me. I love that.”
The E! Entertainment Special: Taylor Swift also examines the singer’s private life. While celebrities often try to keep their personal and professional lives separate, Swift has built a career on weaving her own stories and intimate feelings into her songs. Says Troy Tomlinson, CEO of Sony/ATV, “If you’re going to do Taylor Swift wrong as a boy, you will wind up in a song.” The E! Special features an exclusive sit-down interview with Stephen Barker Liles, a country artist who toured with Swift and later became the focus of the song, Hey Stephen, leading him to nervously ask, “okay what did I do?” Also examined in the E! Special is the now infamous VMA Awards show where Swift’s acceptance speech was hijacked by Kanye West. Speaking to E!, Tim McGraw recalls, “My first impression is you wanna go kick his ass.” Adds McGraw, “She’s gonna have a long career. She’s gonna do fine writing about the rest of her life.”
Her incredible story, in her own words – the E! Entertainment Special: Taylor Swift premieres on December 1st at 10:00 PM, ET/PT.
(Source: Comcast Entertainment Group)
