When she was just 14, Taylor Swift’s family moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville to help their daughter’s dreams of being a country music star come true. She began playing open mics and new artist showcases around Music City, eventually getting signed to Big Machine. She immediately got to work on her debut album with producer Nathan Chapman and co-writers like Robert Ellis Orrall, Angelo Petraglia, and Liz Rose. The result was Taylor Swift, a ferocious and prodigious debut that put Swift immediately on the map. Her first single “Tim McGraw” set a high bar: She singled out one of the biggest country music stars of all time as a source of nostalgia for the most romantic times with a lover. “Teardrops on My Guitar” found her further fine-tuning her ballad skills, making a perfectly weepy breakup song that you didn’t need to be in high school to understand deeply. But Swift was just as adept at making upbeat radio hits like her influences like Faith Hill and The Chicks. “Picture to Burn” and “Should’ve Said No” are sharp, funny, and vicious kiss-offs, the type of biting breakup postmortem that she would come to perfect over the next two decades. Meanwhile, the bubblegum country-pop of “Our Song” is a distinctly down-home love song, with its playful imagery and infectious, instantly memorizable chorus. Taylor Swift made clear that the world had more than a teeny-bopper star on its hands. Swift immediately categorized herself among the greats by picking up her guitar and singing confidently and directly from the heart.