When she returned home to Pennsylvania, she would feel so refreshed and inspired that she became even more determined to make her dream come true. She wanted to become a country music singer. But for that to happen, she realised she would need to convince her family to move hundreds of miles away from home. Easier said than done for a child of 11, but Taylor can be a pushy customer.
It was actually a singer, not a signpost, who pointed Taylor in the direction of Nashville, Tennessee. As we have seen, one of her earliest country music heroes was the singer Faith Hill. It was only when Hill, who was born in Mississippi in 1967, moved to Nashville that her musical career took off. The heart of country music, Nashville has almost become a byword for that genre.
Known as ‘Music City, USA’, Nashville’s proud musical heritage has been strong since the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet it was during the following century that things really took off in the city. A weekly country music concert, the Grand Ole Opry, was launched in 1925. Over the following decades, so many music labels opened offices in the city that a particular area, just southwest of Downtown Nashville, became known as ‘Music Row’. You could scarcely walk a few yards in the area without bumping into an important figure from the music industry, energetically going about their endeavour.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the city had spawned its own musical genre. Known as ‘the Nashville sound’, this was a combination of country and folk with a hint of pop fun, and it produced some memorably catchy tunes. Decca Records, RCA Records and Columbia Records were the key promoters of this style, which would go on to influence so many, including Taylor. Brenda Lee, Jim Reeves and Dottie West were among the trailblazers. Elvis Presley was also a key figure. Although launched from Nashville and influenced by country, Presley made rock ’n’ roll the flavour of the times.
More recently, the likes of Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks have put country, and Nashville, back on the musical map. By the time Taylor, at 11, was falling ever deeper in love with country music, the city was once more the thriving heart of the movement. Taylor decided that if Faith Hill’s career had taken off when she moved to Nashville, then that was where she needed to go, too. She recalled later how ‘a little bell’ went off in her head, making her decide that she simply had to move there herself. She had felt for a while that Wyomissing was ‘about the most random place in the world for a country singer to come from’. Something had to change.
So she embarked on a relentless, pushy campaign, regularly asking her parents: ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, can we move to Nashville?’ Naturally, Andrea and Scott were surprised and nonplussed at first. They had built such a strong and comfortable family home in Pennsylvania, together with their gorgeous holiday home on the coast, that they were understandably a little shaken at the thought of upping sticks to the heart of Tennessee.
Taylor, though, was fierce and focused. Indeed, if there are two themes that run throughout her life, it is determination and a willingness to be persistent and take risks. Those qualities are particularly pronounced in this chapter. In the face of initial opposition to her Nashville plan, Taylor was determined. She continued to plead with them to make the move that she believed would make her dream come true. She particularly put pressure on Andrea, perhaps hoping that her mother – a determined woman herself – would at least relate to her drive. Andrea eventually gave in – partially. She would sanction a one-off trip as an initial step. Taylor’s mother said that she was particularly impressed by the fact that her daughter never mentioned fame as the thing she hoped to find in Nashville. Unlike the hopefuls who pop up on our screens during reality television contests to state pleadingly that being famous is all they have ever wanted, Taylor took a different angle. Instead, she only said that she wanted to be there to work alongside the artists whom she loved and respected, and that one day, hopefully, she would be able to move people herself in the way they had moved her. As Andrea explained: ‘It was about moving to a place where she could write with people she could learn from.’
Taylor had a double reason to be delighted with Andrea’s movement on the Nashville question. She had been experiencing unpleasant bullying from classmates at school. Unfortunately for her, a number of factors in her life were enough to make classmates jealous of her – her comfortable home life and wealthy parents, to name two. To add to their thinly veiled envy, she was beginning to be written about in the media. This press attention was a mixed blessing for Taylor. While it was flattering and helpful for her career, it tended to prompt spikes in the teasing and shunning she was suffering. When one of her national-anthem renditions was reported in a local newspaper, she knew that the following day would be ‘a bad day at school for me’.
In addition, her love of country music was also causing her to be picked on. Like many children who take an interest in music beyond the most mainstream of genres, she found that she would be teased for daring to be different. Her classmates were, said Taylor, ‘going to sleepovers and breaking into their parents’ liquor cabinets on the weekend’, whereas she was focusing solely on music. It made her stand out. They even teased her over her sore fingers, which had been worn down by hours of guitar practice. Andrea had taped Taylor’s fingers up for her. To the bullies, this was another reason to mark Taylor down as a ‘weirdo’. One day, a group of girls whom she had been friendly with for some time decided to shun her. As she sat down to join their table at lunch, they suddenly all got up and moved to a different table. On other occasions, schoolmates would shout unpleasant remarks at her. Andrea became accustomed to helping Taylor get over these ‘awful’ incidents. ‘I’d have to pick her up off the floor,’ she said. For her mother, the knowledge that her daughter was in such pain was torturous.
Taylor was, she realised, ‘uncool’ thanks to her individuality. Under the pressure of the teasing and ostracism, Taylor went against her individualist nature and took steps to try to blend in with her classmates. Here, though, she learned a valuable lesson. She discovered that the harder she tried to fit in with the in-crowd at school, the more their respect for her declined. ‘So I found that trying to be like everyone else doesn’t work,’ she said.
On one especially hurtful day, she suggested to some girls she knew that they all meet up together for a visit to the local shopping mall. To Taylor, this seemed like a fun thing to do, so she was disappointed when they all said they had other plans. She chose to go with Andrea instead. When she and her mother walked into the mall, she saw that the group of friends was indeed there. ‘I remember what happened … like it was yesterday,’ Andrea told Elle Girl. ‘Taylor and I walked into a store and these six little girls who had all claimed to be “really busy” were there together.’
Taylor felt enormously shocked and hurt. Andrea gathered her up and they drove to a different mall far away and did their shopping there. Remembering that horrible day, Taylor said the memory of it is ‘one of those painful ones you’ll never fully get over’. She was grateful for Andrea’s lead that day. By travelling to a different shopping mall and having a fun time there, they had given as good a response as they could to those who had spurned her. The King of Prussia mall was a 90-minute drive away, but the trip felt well worth it.
Taylor was not entirely socially isolated, though. She had made friends with a girl called Brittany Maack when they were both mere toddlers, and that friendship continued to blossom during and beyond her childhood. ‘We were more sisters than friends,’ Maack told the Reading Eagle. ‘Taylor’s family was my family.’ Yet this bond was not enough to paper over the cracks of hurt that Taylor felt when kids bullied her. Lots of kids found her ‘annoying’ and ‘uncool’. Among her offences to coolness was the fact that she was not interested in getting drunk. She knew they thought her weird, but she in turn found 12-year-olds getting drunk at parties weird. Once, during a mass sleepover at a friend’s house, it was suggested they decamp to the house of a guy they knew who had access to some beer. Where her friends were excited, Taylor was appalled. She felt like phoning Andrea and asking her to take her home.
With