When the world first met Taylor Swift, she was a shy, wide-eyed little thing who belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a Philadelphia 76ers game. She sang in children’s theater productions and aspired to be an actress, but when she picked up the guitar at age 12, her focus shifted to writing music. Soon, her songs were featured on the soundtracks to movies like High School Musical and Country Strong. As she’s continued to release studio albums, her songs have delved into her family life, her romantic moments huge and small, and even her controversies, both personal and professional.
Her parents moved her from Reading, Pennsylvania to Nashville in order to help her pursue a career in country music, and she worked as an intern for a record label in order to pay for singing lessons. As she grew up, she began traveling to New York City for vocal and acting lessons, but after auditioning for several Broadway shows without landing anything, Swift decided she wanted to be a songwriter instead of a singer. She started making regular trips to Nashville, where she would write with talented up-and-coming country musicians, including Shania Twain and Faith Hill.
She signed with Big Machine Records at the age of 15, a deal that gave her ownership of her master recordings. It was a move that would prove incredibly wise, as she’d build her biggest success to date with the label.
On her fourth album, Red, Swift worked with producers like Max Martin and Shellback — who’d become two of her most important collaborators — to expand her sound and explore new genres. The resulting album was a critical and commercial smash, breaking records left and right. It also launched her first major tour, which eventually became the highest grossing in history when it wrapped in 2022.
The follow-up to RED, this is the first of her records to fully embrace pop and R&B, and it’s also one of the most critically acclaimed of her career. It’s a bold statement of purpose, and it pushed the boundaries of her creative abilities in ways that would continue to evolve over the next decade.
Swift’s sequencing genius strikes again on this tender song, which serves as a cleansing shower after the emotional roller coaster of Red. It’s a perfect example of her ability to capture that moment when nervousness melts into relief — an emotion that she would revisit again on 1989, Reputation and Lover.
She takes a break from traditional country on this ode to the soldiers and frontline health-care workers who have made sacrifices for their families and their communities. Swift stretches outside of her usual range of vocal sounds on this track, deploying an Imogen Heap-style yawp that works beautifully here. The resulting song is a powerful reminder that sometimes we can’t take our loved ones for granted.
