So Taylor Swift started her career as a songwriter in Nashville, and the way that works is you write your songs and play them on a bar circuit and basically the active/rising stars’ A&R men* or often the stars themselves hit the circuit and if they think your song would work for them they buy and record it

Anyway, so on her first self-titled album, released when she was 16 so who knows when she wrote and performed them in bars, sung with a twang we know she didn’t grow up with, there are the songs

Tim McGraw, the first single which made her as a name at all, which had the stunning effect of being titled after the biggest country star at the time, with the refrain “when you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think of me”

Teardrops on My Guitar, a ballad of friendzoned longing from the perspective of a country guitarist, written so you could totally swap the genders without breaking meter

A Place In This World, about how she’s an unsure young woman on her own but sure things will go for the best, “I’m alone, on my own… oh I’m just a girl, tryina’ find a place in this world”

Also, I’m Only Me When I’m With You sounds a little different knowing what “Taylor Swift” went on to mean

And I know everything about you
I don’t wanna live without you

I’m only up when you’re not down
Don’t wanna fly if you’re still on the ground
It’s like no matter what I do
Well, you drive me crazy half the time
The other half I’m only trying
To let you know that what I feel is true
And I’m only me when I’m with you

Also, Fearless had a song, SuperStar, where she played the role of a girl with a huge crush on a country star

This is wrong but
I can’t help but feel like
There ain’t nothing more right babe
Misty morning comes again and I can’t
Help but wish I could see your face

And I knew from the first note played
I’d be breaking all my rules to see you
You smile that beautiful smile
And all the girls in the front row scream your name

So dim that spotlight, tell me things like
I can’t take my eyes off of you
I’m no one special, just another wide-eyed girl
Who’s desperately in love with you
Give me a photograph to hang on my wall
Superstar

I’m told it’s very well-arranged for a beginner guitarist, Also, the title is a Carpenters reference

*I just realized why Red felt so comfortingly familiar to me, and it’s because the instrumentation reminds me so much of what I heard at the Tuesday Spaceland residencies in LA a few years before it came out