Few modern artists have been able to touch their fans on such a visceral level as Taylor Swift. As evidenced by the massive success of her Eras tour, Swift’s knack for writing about personal relationships has left an indelible mark on listeners everywhere, almost like they are getting a peek into her personal life every time she plays one of her songs. Although Swift is pulling from real-life experiences more often than not, she initially got it all from this singer-songwriter.
Then again, Swift’s brand of pop music shouldn’t be limited to strictly one genre. Long before she was known as one of the most successful artists in the world, Swift had already turned in time in Nashville as an up-and-coming country artist, taking the basic love songs from her childhood and turning them into works of art on tracks like ‘Teardrops on My Guitar’.
During the promotional cycle for the album Red, though, something began to change, with Swift slowly changing directions to include various pop styles, from the massive beat drops in the middle of ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ to the 1990s pop flair of ‘22’. Once she hit the album 1989, she had gotten to a place where she could take her brand of songwriting into the pop realm, working with artists like Jack Antonoff to create sprawling epics like ‘Style’ and ‘Wildest Dreams’.
While Swift has been known to write her own songs throughout her career, Carole King was already paving the way for women in popular music decades before Swift picked up a guitar. Before coming out with her masterpieces, King’s creative partnership with Gerry Goffin yielded some of the greatest pop songs of the 1960s, operating as a songwriting institution when working in New York.
Once she decided to go off alone, though, Tapestry turned her into a star overnight, featuring the most openhearted songs she would ever put to tape. Even though a handful of tracks like ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ had already been hit by other artists, the emotional resonance in those performances proved the adage that no one does a song justice quite like its writer.
When listening to her music for the first time, Swift thought that she had found a musical friend. Years later, when inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Swift said that King stands alone as one of the best in the business, saying, “I was raised by two of her biggest fans who taught me the basic truths of life as they saw it. That you should treat people the way you want to be treated, that you must believe that you can achieve anything you want in life and that Carole King is the greatest songwriter of all time”.
Even though Swift has always delved into her emotions when writing her classic material, it’s easy to see where her love for King comes from. Just like in Tapestry, Swift holds nothing back regarding raw emotional intensity, making sure that her listener knows all the details of her heartache, even if it might bring up some awful memories. It might not be easy to lay out one’s feelings like this, but much like King, Swift knows that she will emerge a stronger person for documenting her feelings rather than bottling them inside.
