Now we know Taylor Swift as a multi-grammy winner, four-time billboard artist of the year and stadium touring artist. The artist’s humble first album is often forgotten, consigned to the depths of the back catalogue of her career. But her debut album, self-titled Taylor Swift (released in 2006) explains how the country-star turned pop-icon came to dominate the music industry for over 10 years.
Critics tend to see Swift’s career through the lens of change. The debut album features country fiddles, banjos, twangy guitars and a litany of references to pick up trucks and blue jeans. By the time we got her latest and sixth album, Reputation, late last year, she had been transformed into an urban performer using layered synthy choruses and vo-coded reverbs. At some point in her career Swift swapped literal bright-eyed innocence – “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night” with something altogether more adult – “I just wanna be, drinkin’ on a beach, with you all over me.”
