{"id":576690,"date":"2026-04-02T04:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T04:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576690\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T04:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T04:53:14","slug":"what-was-she-like-before-she-was-famous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576690\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was She Like Before She Was Famous?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2006 Week<\/a> continues here with a collection of stories from people who knew Taylor Swift during her first year on the music scene.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tExplore\t\t<\/p>\n

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See latest videos, charts and news<\/p>\n

\n\tWise beyond her years. Smart as a whip. An extraordinary talent.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you ask industry insiders who crossed paths with Taylor Swift<\/a> back in 2006 \u2013 the year she released her self-titled debut album \u2013 many of the same phrases come up again and again. All of them are descriptors you\u2019d generally expect to hear of the person who, in 20 years, would be the biggest artist in the world, and all of them are traits she\u2019s continued to exhibit over time not only as an experienced musician but as a person.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s more striking than the ways she\u2019s remained exactly the same since then, however, are the ways that, two decades ago, Swift was just like any other teenage girl.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor instance? \u201cTaylor did not know how to peel shrimp,\u201d country radio coach John Shomby tells Billboard, laughing fondly at the memory of meeting her for the first time in 2006.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt had been the evening before Swift was slated to play for listeners of WGH-FM, which Shomby oversaw at the time as Max Media\u2019s operations manager, and she and her fledgling team at label Big Machine had requested to go out to dinner with him at Bubba\u2019s in Virginia Beach. Shomby remembers a driven young artist who asked endless questions, was forthright about her ambition to have a No. 1 song someday and \u2014 aside from some concern that her parents selling their Christmas tree farm back home to support her pursuit of a music career in Nashville might end up in vain \u2014 was strikingly confident, self-assured and accomplished. There was seemingly nothing she couldn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

\n\tUntil the server set her food down at the table. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe thought the shrimp was gonna be these little round things that you get in Pennsylvania, where she grew up, at TGI Fridays or something like that,\u201d Shomby says, smiling. \u201cThen they walked in with this big plate of shrimp that were the size of her hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe mimes how her famous blue eyes widened at the sight. \u201cShe went, \u2018Oh, my. How do you eat these things?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShomby\u2019s wife, Marilyn, went about teaching Swift which parts of the shrimp to peel, eat and avoid, and just like that, the cuisine was the latest of many challenges she had conquered. The next day, she would play debut single \u201cTim McGraw\u201d for Shomby\u2019s team at the station, and afterward, when he told her that the performance had convinced the team to add the song to their on-air rotations, Shomby says: \u201cYou\u2019d think we gave her a million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was how Swift spent much of her first year out \u2013 traveling the country, meeting different radio executives and, if she was lucky, getting them to play her music. Oftentimes, she succeeded. If the quality of her early songs didn\u2019t win people over, her natural charm usually did. And if not, she didn\u2019t react with any trace of embarrassment or self-doubt \u2013 it was simply on to the next.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s how Big Machine\u2019s former west coast promoter Rick Barker, who became Swift\u2019s manager for two years after she signed to the label and accompanied her on those radio visits, remembers it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe didn\u2019t know any better,\u201d he says, citing one time when they\u2019d planned a big visit to a station and ordered several pizzas for the occasion, just for three people to show up. \u201cYou would have thought there were 300. She went up, shook hands, looked them in the eyes and played her heart out in the conference room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe would just always say things like, \u2018Do you think they like me? Do you think they\u2019re gonna add my record?\u2019\u201d Barker continues, remembering how their downtime between tour-bus strategy meetings was filled with talk of Swift\u2019s crushes, MySpace posts and Grey\u2019s Anatomy DVD marathons. \u201cI said, \u2018Taylor, I\u2019ll [always] be 100% honest with you, as long as you show me you can handle it. If not, I\u2019ll just blow smoke \u2026 and tell you how good you are. She goes, \u2018No, I want to know. I want to know what I can do better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift was also down to try anything. WGN Radio 720\u2019s Lisa Dent, who conducted one of the singer\u2019s very first major radio interviews in 2006 while working at Chicago\u2019s WUSN, says Swift had no hesitations about spending all day on the air speaking unscripted to countless listeners (most of whom likely had no idea who she was), or about taking a microphone out to Michigan Avenue and asking strangers whether they were Cubs or Sox fans for a segment of the broadcast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe\u2019s always been fearless,\u201d Dent says incredulously, inadvertently referencing the title of Swift\u2019s massively successful 2008 sophomore record. \u201cShe engages people, and she does that by listening intently \u2013 even at that age, you would feel like you were the only person in the room when she made eye contact [with you]. That\u2019s just a part of her DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAudacy vp of country programming Tim Roberts, who met Swift when she stopped through Detroit on her radio tour, has similar memories. Again, her team had asked to meet for dinner \u2013 this time dining at P.F. Changs \u2013 and again, she requested to play her music for on-air consideration. Perplexed, Roberts offered to ask the waitstaff if they had a CD player they could borrow.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe goes, \u2018No, I want to play you the songs on my guitar,\u201d he recalls. \u201cLet\u2019s just go out to the parking lot, and I\u2019ll sit in the back of your truck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Taylor<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTaylor Swift sings the National Anthem as the Detroit Lions host the Miami Dolphins in a Thanksgiving Day game on Nov. 23, 2006, in Detroit. (Photo by Al Messerschmidt\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNFL<\/p>\n

\n\tOutside, she ran through \u201cTim McGraw\u201d and two other tracks that would become singles from her debut album: \u201cTeardrops on My Guitar\u201d and \u201cShould\u2019ve Said No.\u201d When she was done, Swift \u2013 snapping back into teen-girl mode, so to speak \u2013 requested to see 8 Mile, the famous namesake and setting of one of her favorite movies she couldn\u2019t stop gushing about over dinner. (Later, when opening for Rascal Flatts in Detroit, she\u2019d play an acoustic-guitar cover <\/a>of leading man Eminem\u2019s \u201cLose Yourself.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tRoberts obligingly took Swift to visit the stretch of road, and \u201cafter she left,\u2029I looked at my wife, and I go, \u2018Every song she played to me sounded like a No. 1 hit. Maybe it\u2019s just because we spent so much time with her.\u2019 And my wife\u2019s like, \u2018No, absolutely. They\u2019re all No. 1s.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey were almost right. The first two tracks Swift played would reach No. 2 on the Hot Country Songs <\/a>chart, after which \u201cShould\u2019ve Said No\u201d became one of Swift\u2019s nine No. 1s on the chart to date.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard not to notice how certain parts of these memories foreshadow future hallmarks of Swift\u2019s career. In Roberts\u2019 story, she didn\u2019t have a stage on which to perform \u2013 so she made her own, evidently spotting his truck at some point before dinner and remembering it later that evening to create an essential opportunity using only what she had at her disposal. That\u2019s not so surprising for someone who would later turn her inability to buy back her own masters into a billion-dollar profit through a series of \u201cTaylor\u2019s Version\u201d releases and her historic Eras Tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there\u2019s Shomby\u2019s anecdote from the seafood restaurant, which included how \u201call these guys started looking over\u201d at the tall, blonde and traditionally beautiful young girl he\u2019d walked in with, \u201cbut she was completely oblivious.\u201d Instead, she was solely focused on making a good impression with the radio executives \u2013 a symbolic counter to how the public would later label her \u201cboy crazy\u201d in dismissal of her talent, meanwhile her career was always the real love of her life (a title fianc\u00e9 Travis Kelce now shares, of course).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd in Dent\u2019s tale, Swift, after finishing for the day at the Chicago station, taught the radio personality how to take one of those newfangled \u201cselfies.\u201d \u201cThat was the first time I\u2019d seen that done,\u201d Dent says, chuckling. \u201cThere had to be somebody else in the room, but she took control and said, \u2018No, let\u2019s do this.\u2019 It was, I think, an early sign of her controlling her image.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are also specific calling cards linking each story. Every person, for instance, volunteers \u2013 all unprompted \u2013 that 16-year-old Swift followed up each visit with a handwritten thank-you note. (For Dent, Swift went to a nearby stationary store, bought supplies and created a custom piece of colored-pencil art that she then personally delivered to WUSN the next day.) Everyone also remarked on Swift\u2019s \u201cscary good\u201d memory, with Shomby saying, \u201cShe knows everybody\u2019s name and everybody\u2019s wife or husband\u2019s name, and their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen she played here at Nissan Stadium [in 2019], a bunch of us were backstage,\u201d he continues. \u201cShe comes, we\u2019re getting ready to take a picture, and she looks over, and there\u2019s a bowl of shrimp over there. She looks at me and goes, \u2018This is kind of ironic, isn\u2019t it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd of course, there\u2019s Andrea. In the periphery of each story from Shomby, Barker, Dent and Roberts, a calm, supportive figure is present in the form of Taylor\u2019s mother, who accompanied her daughter on every step of the radio tour and on most of her journey after that. She served as a constant, protective force (at one point drawing the line that Taylor must wear a coat if she was going to insist on signing autographs for fans lined up in a snowstorm in Utah, Barker remembers). But she also always let the younger Swift take the reins.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou could tell that she wasn\u2019t, like, a momager,\u201d says Shomby. \u201cTaylor did her thing. Taylor was Taylor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the heart of all these stories is an almost supernaturally determined young girl that was both ravenous for success and deeply interested in forging real connections with the people who could help make that happen. As her star has risen and exploded over time, many have been unable \u2013 or unwilling \u2013 to reconcile one with the other. She\u2019s been called calculated, manipulative, disingenuous. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut ask the people who knew her from the start, and they\u2019ll tell you something different.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen she would start winning awards, and people would mock her facial expression or her surprise, it really offended me,\u201d says Dent, whose now-adult son Liam has an autographed poster from Swift \u2013 one of his earliest playmates from times spent backstage with her after that initial radio visit \u2013 calling him her \u201cfavorite boy.\u201d \u201cThat was not fake. It wasn\u2019t put on. That was genuine surprise and gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRoberts stresses that Swift wasn\u2019t just kind in the moment \u2013 she also always remembered who\u2019d helped her and found ways to pay it forward. A few years after meeting at P.F. Changs, she played Palace of Auburn Hills on her Fearless Tour, where a member of her team found Roberts in the crowd mid-show and escorted his party to the end of the stage. Moments later, his face was on the big screens.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[She] says, \u2018This is the song I started my career with, and these people are 100% responsible for me being what I am today,\u2019\u201d Roberts recalls her saying before launching into \u201cTim McGraw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are also those who attempt to explain away Swift\u2019s success by pointing to her upper-class upbringing or her uber-supportive parents. While certainly helpful, those things are infinitesimal in the long run, argues Barker. After he left his management post with Swift to spend more time with his family \u2013 later funneling his experience with her into his book, Music Business for Parents \u2013 he started consulting for Sony, where he really got to see, by contrast, just how rare Swift was at 16.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll these oil dads from Texas were showing up with a blank check and a teenage daughter, thinking that was the magic secret,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it were that easy, there would have been a thousand Taylor Swifts.\u201d<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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