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Taylor Swift pulls a sweater over her knees. She's seated on a black leather couch in the lobby of Big Machine Records in Nashville, and the office is a bit chilly for the short, frilly skirt she's wearing.
Despite the brisk temperature, this room holds distinctly warm memories for the 20-year-old singer. A handful of framed wall-hangings provide a mini-retrospective of her career, including a multiplatinum award for her last album, 2008's "Fearless." The Big Machine lobby is, in fact, a significant reminder of just how far she's traveled in her quick rise from unknown teen to global star.
When she was still a 16-year-old high school student, there was nothing on the walls in this room. Swift remembers sitting on the floor in the early summer of 2006, stuffing promotional CDs of her first single, "Tim McGraw," into envelopes destined for radio stations around the country.
"With every envelope that I would seal I would look at the address and the station on there and think, 'Please, please just listen to this one time,' " she recalls. "I would say a little message to each envelope: 'Please, whoever gets this, please listen to this.' There's no promise when you're putting out your first single that people are even going to listen to it."
Not only did the single get heard, it opened the door to sales of more than 4 million copies of her self-titled debut album, awash in songs about broken hearts and high school social dramas. Her sophomore set, "Fearless," did even better, selling 592,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, on its way to more than 6 million sales. Three of the songs reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- a rare feat for a country artist -- as she commanded multiple magazine covers and even a 2009 MTV Video Music Award nomination and win. When that VMA acceptance speech was infamously interrupted, fiery Kanye West controversy quickly supplanted the inspirational, dreams-really-do-come-true storyline in her career narrative.
Weeks after the VMA shocker, the Country Music Assn. (CMA) presented Swift four awards, including entertainer of the year. In January, she won four more times at the Grammy Awards, with "Fearless" claiming the all-genre album of the year trophy.
With every sector of the business jittery about the future of the album, the music industry's eyes and ears will be focused quite closely on Swift when Big Machine releases her third project, "Speak Now," on Oct. 25.
Being heard is no longer an issue. Now the questions are about being heard at the right time and the volume with which the public might react. An online leak forced Big Machine to rush-release the first single, "Mine," in August. It has since sold more than 1 million downloads. The title track, a quirky lyrical exercise that blends the dashed-wedding scenarios of "Runaway Bride" and "Friends in Low Places," debuted at No. 1 on iTunes by selling more than 85,600 downloads on its first day of release, Oct. 5.
" 'Speak Now' is the first thing we've put out that didn't leak, including an album cover," Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta says.
Taylor Swift Breaks Hot 100 Record with 'Speak Now' Single
Those leaks are a symptom of the anticipation that exists for the album. The label has shipped more than 2 million copies of the CD. No album has sold more than 1 million copies in its first week since Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III" crossed that threshold in June 2008. As album sales continue to slide, a big debut week for Swift would be an encouraging sign.
"It will do whatever the market will bear," Borchetta says, carefully avoiding a specific number. "When we have 2 million units in the field, you're not going to have a problem finding it."
The attention hasn't gone unnoticed by Swift, who does her best to distance herself from any expectations.
"I have a lot of anxiety about things on certain days, but I have anxiety because I care," she says. "It's not anxiety that's crippling. It's a five-minute conversation with myself about if a [sales] number really defines this piece of art that I've created and what that means, and what the number's going to be. I try to predict what it's going to be, and then I realize that I can't predict what it's going to be, and then I sit there and say something to myself like, 'Well, you're happy today. Enjoy this and be proud of the music that you've made.'"
LADIES FIRST
To date, Swift's music has been somewhat atypical for a country singer. The genre's radio stations primarily target adults 25-54. Her youth-based lyrics made her a hit with her teen peers, but the music tested poorly among 35-plus males, according to one country radio veteran. Oddly enough, however, even that portion of the audience still liked Swift's personality and the music's ability to help some families bridge generations.
"Adult females use country music radio to do two things," says Keith Hill, founder of the UnConsultant. "They use it for their own personal enjoyment, and in many cases, we see young women using CHR and hot AC products to stay in touch with their daughters."
Those daughters found Swift on multiple radio formats, and the singer now finds her boots aligned in both pop and country camps, an awkward balance in the current cultural landscape. Physical product still makes up more than 80% of country buyers' purchases, and in that context, the sales of "Mine" easily eclipsed all other country releases during the third quarter. It sold nearly 400,000 more copies than the quarter's No. 2 single, Sugarland's "Stuck Like Glue," which racked up 634,000 downloads.
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