Taylor Swift: The Whole Story. Chas Newkey-Burden

She began to hum a new melody in the lesson and then, Taylor said, it took her just a quarter of an hour to write the basic structure of the song. When she got home she smoothed it out and improved it a bit, adding some piano melody. Then she was ready to take it to a session with Rose.

      The song, which was originally going to be entitled ‘When You Think Tim McGraw’, is a bittersweet affair in which Taylor looks back on a real-life relationship she had with a boy, who is widely believed to be her ex-boyfriend Brandon Borello. The lyrics take the form of a letter written to her former partner. Borello was a senior when he dated Taylor, who was then still a freshman. This leads to the month of tears in September in the song when they were parted.

      Explaining what she felt was the power of the song, Taylor said: ‘It was reminiscent, and it was thinking about a relationship you had and then lost.’ She added: ‘I think one of the most powerful human emotions is what should have been and wasn’t. That was a really good song to start out on, just because a lot of people can relate to wanting what you can’t have.’ She knew what made a good song, intellectually as well as instinctively. ‘Tim McGraw’ would be track one on her debut album – and it had all started in a maths class.

      Taylor soon felt that she was on a roll. She told the Washington Post that she could ‘draw inspiration from anything’. She expanded on what this meant for her. ‘If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you sooooo mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.’

      Another early track she wrote was called ‘Lucky You’. ‘It was about this girl who dares to be different,’ she said. The autobiographical parallels are clear. ‘At that time I was describing myself,’ she added. Following that and ‘Tim McGraw’, she then wrote a song about a guy called Drew Hardwick, on whom she had a ‘huge crush’, but an unrequited one. Speaking to Country Standard Time, she added: ‘[He] would sit there every day talking to me about another girl: how beautiful she was, how nice and how smart and perfect she was.’ It was as if she was back in her younger years, with her unrequited crush of her summer holiday. Again, she would do her best to fake smiles for him as he told her all about other girls, and wonder if he knew that she would think about him all night.

      The song, which would namecheck Drew directly, would be called ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’. She began composing this track on her way home from school one day. Given its power, maturity and poise, it’s remarkable that the song was conjured out of this circumstance. In the song, she yearns for Drew’s flawless looks, which take her breath away. Taylor can only hope, with a slice of bitterness, that Drew’s perfect girl will look after him properly. The imagery of a guy being the song she sings in her car gives this track a universal appeal of the sort that drive-time radio shows adore. When the listener truly connects with Taylor’s lyrics and the emotions they describe, they will find themselves shedding a few teardrops, too.

      Her songs were proving to be rich little numbers. Word soon spread around town about this incredible kid who was writing with such aplomb and deftness. Soon, she would be contacted by the mighty Sony. They snapped her up as a songwriter to compose potential tracks for their existing artists. She agreed and duly became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the esteemed Sony/Tree publishing house. The significance and symbolism of this is stark: a girl in her mid-teens was signed by one of the world’s biggest record labels to compose songs for artists many years older than her.

      So came the bold move: Taylor decided to leave RCA and go in search of a label that would truly believe in her. This was a difficult decision and one she only reached after much soul-searching. What courage and self-belief it showed to reject a major label’s interest in her. However, the fault line between artist and label was significant: she felt she was ‘good to go’ right then. The label felt she needed time and development, not least because it was the country music market she wanted to move into – complete with its world-weary lyrics and ageing fanbase – rather than pop, which is far more geared for teenage stars.

      But Taylor was quite sure. ‘I figured, if they didn’t believe in me then, they weren’t ever going to believe in me,’ she said. She took a deep breath, walked away and continued to prepare for the day when she would make it big. She even spent ages practising her autograph, filling a notebook with her scrawl in preparation for the day when she would be famous enough to sign her name for fans. Even though the humble autograph would have been surpassed by the smartphone photograph as the favoured proof of a celebrity encounter by the time she made it big – particularly for Taylor’s generation – these signature rehearsals showed that she was determined to be an authentic star.

      Again, her courage was rewarded. The moment soon came that changed everything: enter Scott Borchetta, the man who would make her a queen. For him, the decision to sign her would be a no-brainer. ‘I fell in love with her,’ he said. ‘It’s really that simple.’ Born in the 1960s, Borchetta was always a competitive and driven soul. In middle school he competed in car races with friends. He found, he told Forbes later, that he had a ‘race devil’ inside him. After school he decided to try to make it in the music industry. He took a job in the mail room of his dad’s independent promotion company. He was not the first record company executive to have joined the industry via the mail room – the famed Simon Cowell took a similar route. Borchetta moved from California to Nashville and took a job working for the promotional department of Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM record label. He then ran his own independent promotions firm for a while before joining MCA Records.

      Then he joined Universal Music Group, under whose umbrella he launched DreamWorks Nashville. Here, he was part of one of the planet’s biggest record labels. However, in 2005, his division was closed down. He was looking for a new star to really launch his next label. Taylor, who would be the perfect person, crossed his path at the famous Nashville showcase, the Bluebird Café. This regular event was an exciting prospect for Taylor, who would get to play in front of an audience of local record industry talent hunters. The institution had its success stories, and none – prior to Taylor’s arrival – came bigger than Garth Brooks. He was spotted there in 1987 and signed up to Capitol Records. The rest is history.

      History would be made the night that Taylor showed up for her own slot. She carried her guitar onto the stage and performed an acoustic set. By now she was comfortable with live performance, but she was also aware that this was no usual audience. Somewhere out there, she hoped, would be a record label figure able to make her dreams come true. Borchetta, meanwhile, had turned up with a corresponding dream. He wanted to find a talent he could turn into an international star.