Taylor Swift Revealed the Early Song She Can’t ‘Connect to’ Anymore
Taylor Swift has been writing songs for years. She has grown as a writer and prides herself on the way she uses her lyrics to reveal herself to listeners. While Swift said she tries not to cringe at her past, she once admitted that she no longer feels connected to some songs. She shared why she has little in common with the version of herself who wrote one of her earliest songs.
Taylor Swift said she didn’t feel all that connected to 1 song
In 2006, Swift released her debut single, “Tim McGraw.” In the song, she asks a former boyfriend to remember her every time he hears a song by Tim McGraw. Less than 10 years after she released the song, Swift said she couldn’t quite connect with the emotions she expressed in it.
“‘Tim McGraw,’ that song I don’t really connect to as much,” she told NPR in 2014. “I connect to it in the form of nostalgia, but that was a song about a first love.”
While she still writes about love and heartbreak, she approaches them from a different perspective as she ages.
“I’m in a very different place in my life right now, and I think you can only hope to grow so much, emotionally, that you can’t necessarily connect to wide-eyed 15-year-old ideas of love anymore.”
She shared her goals while working on an album
While Swift no longer felt like the version of herself who wrote her first album, she said she always has the same goal in mind while working on new music.
“I wrote my first album when I was 14 and 15, so now we’re going on 10 years of making albums right now,” she said. “The formula has never changed, in that I try to make an album that best represents the last two years of my life. People have essentially gotten to read my diary for the last 10 years.”
It could be painful to write about her personal life, but she felt it was important to share parts of herself with fans.
“I still write personal songs, and sometimes people like to put a very irritating, negative, spin on that — as if I’m oversharing, as if it’s too much information — when this has been the way I’ve lived my life and run my career the entire time,” she said. “So I do think it’s really important that I continue to give people an insight into what my life is actually like, even though it comes at a higher cost now.”
This honesty has paid off for her. Swift’s listeners feel quite close with her, making them one of the most devoted fan bases in existence.
Tim McGraw shared how he felt about the Taylor Swift song
While Swift’s song was about Tim McGraw’s music, not the singer himself, he said he felt a bit of trepidation when he heard about it. It made him feel old.
“Well, when I first heard ‘Tim McGraw’ by Taylor Swift, I mean, I thought it was a good song. I was a little apprehensive about it when I first heard it,” he said, per Billboard. “Then I thought, ‘Have I gotten to that age now to where they’re singing songs about me? Does that mean I’ve jumped the shark a bit? Is everything still cool?’”
Ultimately, he felt less concerned when he learned Swift was only 16 when she wrote the song. He is now a big fan of her music.
“I’m a big fan of Taylor’s. I think that she has just such a unique way of connecting with her audience and her songwriting ability and her intuition is just so incredible,” he said. “And I just think she’s one of the greatest artists to come along in a long time.”
