Her de facto manager Kirk was so impressed with her continued progress that he arranged for her to record some tracks at the studio owned by his older brother Ronnie. Among the songs she recorded were cover versions of those by some of her favourite artists, including: ‘Here You Come Again’ (Dolly Parton); ‘One Way Ticket’ (LeAnn Rimes); ‘There’s Your Trouble’ (Dixie Chicks) and more. She loved being in a recording studio, standing at the microphone with her headphones on, and when she saw the banks of controls at the mixing desk she wondered what they all did; but, most of all, she felt as if she was becoming a professional artist, much like her heroes.
Those heroes influenced her in different ways. She had taken inspiration and guidance from three different stars, as she would later explain during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. ‘I saw that Shania Twain brought this independence, this crossover appeal; I saw that Faith Hill brought this classic old-school glamour and beauty and grace; and I saw that the Dixie Chicks brought this complete “We don’t care what you think” quirkiness. I loved what all of those women were able to do and what they were able to bring to country music.’ She was being inspired as a musician and a female; this was girl power, but with a country drawl.
Her existence was proving exciting on the road, and her family life was pleasant and comfortable, too. Her parents’ hard work in business had paid off and delivered a wonderful life for the Swifts. The family’s new six-bedroom home was a comfortable and enviable building in a grand location, at 78 Grandview Boulevard, Reading, Pennsylvania, 19609. It had, according to reports, an elevator and an inside pool, complete with hot tub. The classical-revival building was large and spacious, measuring 5,050 square feet. A later listing of the property described a ‘bright study’, where Taylor would play guitar. When it hit the market in the summer of 2013, it was listed at $799,500. Back then, she was given the attic. Given the stature of the house, this effectively meant she had an entire floor to herself, comprising three rooms, including one bedroom. It was almost as if she had her own apartment at the age of 11. Indeed, when her friends and colleagues from the theatre group visited the house there was a lot of shock and a fair amount of envy among them as they saw the splendour she lived in. The theatre group included kids from a broad range of social backgrounds – some of them barely knew that people could live in such luxury.
Taylor had it good, and did her best to shrug off the envious glances. In the summer, the family would move to their gorgeous holiday home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. Americans flock there on vacation from several east-coast regions and beyond. The New York Times describes the area as featuring ‘block after block of gleaming McMansions and elegant shops’, and it is among the richest towns in the United States. It has now gained wider recognition thanks to its place on the trashy and fun reality television show Jersey Shore. For Taylor, it proved to be a pivotal part of her upbringing: ‘That’s where most of my childhood memories were formed,’ she has said.
Taylor – who once told Sea Ray magazine that she had ‘lived in a life jacket’ since the age of four – loved this seaside resort, where the family first bought property the year she turned two. She found Stone Harbor ‘magical’ and loved to swim in the sea as well as take part in water-sports, including jet-skiing and sailing, even though, in general, she was not a natural at sport. Sometimes they would see a dolphin and it felt so wonderfully life-affirming to be near such natural beauty. ‘There were so many places to explore, whether it was finding a new island in the inlet or walking to 96th Street for ice cream,’ she said. As she entered Springer’s, the ice-cream place she so loved, she would be struck by indecision. As she gazed upwards at the long list of flavours, it was so hard to choose just one. However, cookies ‘n’ cream became a flavour she would regularly settle upon. The outlet, run proudly by the Humphreys family, was a firm favourite for Taylor. She also enjoyed visiting an Italian restaurant on the same street, where she would devour Caesar salad and pizza. She says that, thanks to the Swifts’ long summers in Stone Harbor, ‘I could not have had a cooler childhood.’
The family’s home was opposite a bird sanctuary, meaning that Taylor could enjoy the sights of our feathered friends without even leaving the house. She would just open her window, put her binoculars to her eyes and delight in the birds. Some days she did little else but this, so entranced was she by them. On other days she got up to mischief, chiefly at the annual boat parade that she watched on Independence Day. ‘We used to all gather together on the dock when the boat parades would go by on 4 July and we’d shoot water balloons at them,’ she told Philly.com. She also found renewed creative inspiration during these summers, though. Many artists feel that being near water is a magical, creative experience, and it certainly seemed to work for Taylor. ‘I was allowed to be kind of weird and quirky and imaginative as a kid, and that was my favourite part of living at the Shore,’ she said.
Some of this creative energy showed itself in the form of musical experiments and literary endeavours, including the aforementioned novel. She was moved to write it because she was missing her friends. Putting them on the page made her feel closer to them. ‘I would send them back chapters of it,’ she said. However, some of it was more domestically orientated. Taylor showed early signs of being a homemaker. She took over the room above the garage and turned it into her own private den, a sanctuary in which she could reign. ‘I painted the whole room different colours and used to spend all day in there, just doing nothing but sitting in my little club,’ she said, ‘because it was mine.’
There was one thing – or, to be precise, one person – that she could not consider hers, however badly she wanted to. A boy who lived next door to the Swifts’ holiday home had captured her imagination. He would spend a lot of time in the Swift household, as his parents were friends with Taylor’s parents. Soon, she felt strong yearnings for them to become an item. In fact, she decided she wanted to marry him. While Taylor wished that he would ask her out, he instead would tell her at agonising length about other girls he had his sights set on. The rejection she felt over this unrequited crush was the creative spark that led to one of her first songs. ‘I felt, well, invisible,’ she said. ‘Obviously. So I wrote that song about it.’ As we shall see, this made it onto her first album, albeit as a bonus track. She also wrote a second track, called ‘Smoky Black Nights’. She describes that song, about life at the Shore, as ‘a little demo I made when I was 11’.
Despite this heartbreak and the sad song that it spawned, she was relaxing and having lots of fun, but her hunger for new opportunities to perform in front of an audience did not dissipate during the summer breaks. She found fine venues on Third Avenue and 98th Street. ‘I used to sing karaoke at Henny’s and play acoustic shows for hours on end at Coffee Talk, a little café on 98th Street,’ she said. ‘I used to drag my parents into those places all the time, and all of their friends would show up and put dollars in my tip jar.’ She played really long sets on occasion, and would run out of songs after a while. Not wanting to leave the spotlight, she would make up new songs on the spot. Live performances, dolphins, pranks and an unrequited crush: these were idyllic summers for the Swifts, and Taylor truly basked in the fun and drama of it all.
By now, she had also improved at guitar playing. She had been given her first guitar, an electric, when she was eight years of age. However, she had initially abandoned her attempts to learn the instrument, as she felt baffled and discouraged by it. Much later, a man came to fix the family’s computer one day. Seeing the guitar, he offered to show Taylor a few chords. She quickly grew in confidence with the instrument, and the man returned to teach her some more chords. Soon, Andrea noted, Taylor was practising so much that the strings would crack her fingers. ‘She was driven beyond anything I had ever witnessed,’ her mother observed. The determination of her ancestors, particularly on her mother’s side, was really burning brightly in Taylor.
She began to like the idea of playing on a different type of guitar: an acoustic 12-string. When a teacher told her that she would never be able to master such an instrument, there was only one thing Taylor wanted to do – prove him wrong. ‘I actually learned on a 12-string, purely because some guy told me that I’d never be able to play it,