The Highs and Lows of Taylor Swift | Documentary

Taylor Swift needs no introduction. She is one of the most influential and fascinating women of the 21st century. But what makes her so special? In this documentary, we take a close look at the Taylor Swift story. From the origins of her confidence to the depths of despair. How did she change as a person? What are her goals? And what does it mean to be popular in the age of social media? Taylor Swift's life story reads like a fairy tale. Named after singer-songwriter James Taylor, it was clear from day one that music is her destiny. At age nine, she started taking vocal and acting lessons in New York City. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, she grew up on a Christmas tree farm, attended a Montessori school, and sang in the local church choir. Three years later, a computer repairman from Berks County saw the dusty guitar in the corner of the room and showed Taylor three chords. It wasn't long before she wrote her first song. This is a song I wrote yesterday. And it's about a girl who's just different. And I really like it because it's just so happy. So this is called Lucky You. Inspired by Shania Twain and Emmylou Harris, she decided she wanted to become a country singer. Faith Hill was her idol. I remember my first big musical role model. It was Faith Hill. According to an interview with Vogue, Taylor Swift wrote a novel one summer when a dead shark washed up on the shore and she was too scared to go in the water and have fun like any other teenager. In fact, Ancestry.com claims she is related to Emily Dickinson, the famous poet. After watching a documentary about her role model Faith Hill, an 11-year-old Taylor Swift traveled to Nashville with her mother and submitted a bunch of karaoke tapes to major record labels. Needless to say, she didn't get accepted right away. But Taylor has always been smart about what kind of music she makes. With the help of a family friend who worked in the music business, she got to model for Abercrombie and Fitch as part of their Rising Stars campaign. She then landed an artist developmental deal at RCA Records and her family moved to Nashville full-time to support her burgeoning career. Both of her parents have a background in finance and found new jobs in the country music capital of the world. While some say Taylor's parents pressured her into a music career and needed her to do well, Swift says all her parents ever had to offer was support. And my parents were unbelievable. I'll never forget how they did that. Mother Andrea Swift nurtured her dream of becoming a star from a young age. She told Entertainment Weekly, there would always be an escape hatch into normal life if the music thing wasn't something she wanted to pursue. But music is all that Taylor ever wanted to pursue. If she wasn't a singer-songwriter, she says, she would be in advertising. Coming up with slogans and marketing concepts is the same as coming up with hooks and songs. Luckily for us, she never had to find out whether that's true. Among others, the young Taylor Swift wrote some hit songs for Tom McGraw, the Dixie Chicks, Little Big Town and Liz Rose. Swift has always been a talented songwriter, but what defines her success is her work ethic. In the year she spent working for Sony ATV, Taylor perfected her craft. But at this stage in her career, she still lacked confidence in her abilities. While some of her work went on to top the charts when performed by other bands, she kept many songs to herself, hoping to start her solo career soon. But her label didn't want her to record her own music and wouldn't commit to a full album until she was 18. So Taylor made a bold move and walked out on RCA by not renewing her contract. But what many don't know is that Taylor left not out of courage, but out of fear. She was afraid that she was running out of time, that her contract did not allow her to capture her teenage years authentically in an album. Taylor dreamed big, and this was her biggest fear, that she couldn't make those dreams a reality. After leaving RCA, she went on her first tour and started a video diary on YouTube, where you can see her being her charming, awkward, funny self. Fans loved her. Campaigning for various awards, she also made some funny videos for MTV to get fans voting for her. By 2006, Taylor Swift had caught the attention of record executive Scott Borchetta and became the first signee of Big Machine Records. Her father also purchased a 3% stake in the brand new company. In hindsight, this was a fateful moment. But Big Machine promised her exactly what she wanted, to release her first album at the tender age of 16. The New York Times calls her self-titled debut album a small masterpiece of pop-minded country, both wide-eyed and cynical. What made it so special was Taylor's uncanny songwriting ability, combined with the sheer authenticity of her angsty, love-torn vocals. What followed were her first Grammy nomination, along with numerous awards. Taylor Swift also became one of the first true YouTube celebrities. She shared a lot of her life with her fans early on and came up with creative videos that would have made her a star, even without her talent as a musician. From time to time, she posted challenges for her most dedicated fans, which led to some pretty amazing moments. To accommodate her touring schedule, Swift finished her last years of high school at a Christian private academy that supported remote learning and homeschooling. But that doesn't mean she didn't get the typical teenage experience. She writes about it all the time. Taylor Swift is a storyteller. Her songs are never as vacuous as the industry standard. The topics remain largely the same, love and heartbreak. But in Taylor Swift's songs, there is always a narrative, something that invites the listener to envision themselves as a character in the story. I'm excited about telling the beginnings of stories. On stage, she united different art forms to underline the emotional impact of her stories. She allowed herself to be more expressive and turned her live performances into an intimate experience between her and her fans. Taylor Swift matured into a smart businesswoman. At 18 years, her name was now a brand. But that doesn't mean she stopped enjoying her life in the limelight or her connection with the fans. Her 2008 album, Fearless, reflects her confidence in overcoming challenges of love, life and her personal insecurities. She had courage and resilience enough to live out the life she dreamed of. But her toughest challenges were all still ahead of her. At the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, Taylor Swift won her first big prize on an international stage. As she received her award for Best Female Video, Kanye West got up on the stage and interrupted her speech. He grabbed her microphone and said Beyoncé should have won. I'm really happy for you. I'm gonna let you finish. But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. Kanye had done this before. Every time he won at the VMAs, he gave his award away to the artists he thought were more deserving of them. But this year, he had no award to give away. So he crashed Taylor's speech and stole her moment. This scandal received so much media attention, even the president had his opinion. The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award. Why would he do that? He's a jackass. It's hard to imagine what went through Taylor's mind the moment it happened. But despite her emotions, she stayed calm and professional. Beyoncé won Video of the Year later that night and gave Taylor a chance to finish her speech. Kanye apologized in a blog post, but took it down hours later. He then made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he delivered a theatrical apology. Undeterred, Swift went on to win four Grammys with her album Fearless, her most surreal career moment to date. At age 20, she was the youngest person to win Album of the Year. But because of her young age, people now criticized her, claiming Taylor Swift's songwriting was only good because she worked with co-writers. To silence the doubters, Taylor wrote all 17 tracks on her third record, Speak Now, by herself. She also co-produced every song and directed parts of the music videos. The album was a huge success. Debuting at number one on Billboard 200, again she won numerous awards, and this tendency became a habit. The unstoppable Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift never shied away from hard work. Constant improvement was the only way forward. With every new release and every public appearance, she had to prove herself to the media, to other celebrities, and to her fans. In her first acting role in the 2009 movie Valentine's Day, critics complimented her potential, but said she lacked experience and that she needed a skilled director to tamper down and channel her enthusiasm. When she appeared in an episode of CSI, the role of a rebellious teenager suited her better. In the span of six months, the country starlet learned how to be a celebrity. At TV appearances, she established herself as a funny and likable character. Entertainment Weekly described her as one of the season's best Saturday Night Live hosts. She helped the rest of the cast nail their punchlines and appeared very camera friendly. USA Today wrote that the criticism of 2010 made her a better songwriter and live performer. During this time, she experimented with her sound, moving away from country pop, more toward alternative rock and bubblegum pop. She even went so far as to incorporate a 26-piece orchestra into one of her songs. Her label Big Machine was very happy with the way her career was going. You know, I mean, I'm always going to root for her. You know, she's brilliant. We've had a historic run, so... To honour her achievement, Scott Borchetta presented her with a plaque. Taylor's 2012 album Red was another mainstream success. and became the soundtrack of a generation. As one of the most prolific songwriters of the 21st century and one of the biggest stars in the world, she now worked with Elton John, Florida Georgia Line, Ed Sheeran and Shania Twain. Swift also wrote two songs for the Hunger Games movie and worked with a variety of other musicians on shared projects. During her second world tour, Things were going well for the young star, but as she reached more and more people with her music, she also made new enemies. The long-standing feud with her frenemy Katy Perry, for example, is said to have started once Perry got into a relationship with John Mayer in 2012, just two years after he and Taylor had broke up. I do the right thing. So you did the phone call and it was a shutdown. It was a full shutdown and then she writes a song about me and I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. That's how you want to deal with it? Karma. Due to the public portrayal of her dating life, Swift says she became a national lightning rod for slut shaming. At the time, it seemed like everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of Taylor dates too much, stemming from the fact that none of her relationships survived the three-month mark. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she points out that there are slideshows of every guy she ever hugged on a red carpet or met for lunch or wrote a song with, when really she only dated two people in the past three years. To make matters worse, her old nemesis Kanye West tried to rekindle their conflict by rescinding his apology in a 2013 article of the New York Times saying peer pressure forced him to apologize and that it was a backhanded apology like a backhanded compliment. According to Kanye, his jumping on the stage and interrupting Taylor's speech only led him to awesome truth and awesomeness. In response to this, Taylor took a diplomatic approach. In fact, she didn't feel that the two could have a meaningful interaction until he had some kind of respect for her. She didn't take the bait and focused instead on her new album. Music is everything to Taylor Swift. It is her mirror, her voice, her window to the world. Over the years, she has used her songs to express herself to hundreds of millions of fans. In songs like Blank Space and Shake It Off, she accepted the popular narrative of her as a serial dater, even if she did not feel that was true. That way, she reclaimed the narrative and portrayed herself as a strong, independent woman. One of her biggest challenges during this time was that she was a role model. Far surpassing Faith Hill in influence and fame, there was an enormous pressure to be the kind of person she herself would look up to. Because she knew what it's like to have that role model. But at 24, maybe she wasn't always ready to be that role model. In Welcome to New York, Taylor Swift celebrates the city's diversity and vibrance. You can tell it was a new chapter in her life, a notion reflected also in the unique style of her fifth studio album. 1989, named after the year Taylor was born, marked her clear-cut transition to pop. She has always been smart about what kind of music she makes. Some fans criticized her for breaking with her country roots for the sake of commercial appeal. Here's what Taylor had to say about it. Learned to treat people with kindness and respect from country music. I love you so much. There are intricate conspiracy theories woven around her reason to go pop. That it was a carefully crafted business strategy to stand out as a country singer and have better chances before switching to the mainstream market where most aspiring artists crash and burn. Many people also credit the owner of her label, Scott Borchetta, with laying out her strategy to success. When it was actually Taylor who leveraged various platforms from social media to live performances to connect with her fans and build her brand. What these people don't know is that Taylor Swift was a hardcore country fan during middle school and was actually bullied for it. When she released her first album, she was still in high school. Her peers hated her for her success. Doing something everyone told her was impossible. Taylor's change of styles was a gradual shift. For example, her album Red closed with the country ballad Begin Again, paying homage to her humble beginnings and keeping the door to the past open despite her musical evolution. Of course, everything she does, she does for a reason. Taylor Swift is a smart woman. Performing with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Madonna and Paul McCartney, she expanded her audience from predominantly young women to just about everyone. Despite the fact that her music was still geared toward her younger fans, at this point, Taylor Swift was already America's favorite musician. Everyone loved her. But that soon changed. The next couple of years would be the most challenging times of her life. When Kanye West won a Vanguard Award in 2015, he called Taylor. Despite their history, they had an hour-long conversation in which Kanye asked her to present the award to him at the ceremony. Swift agreed, and MTV advertised what was supposed to be a wholesome callback to what happened at the 2009 VMAs. But when Kanye grabbed the microphone, he made it look like MTV organized this, when it was him that called Taylor, that asked her to do it for him. Taylor doesn't like Kanye. Not because of anything he did, or their personal differences, but because he is disingenuous. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she even called him two-faced. Kanye tried to revive the conflict several times, but Taylor's response reflects maturity. Maturity has never been an issue for Taylor Swift. And while she says she had a lot of catching up to do, growing as a person in her 20s, her lyrics reflect exactly this maturity. From March 2015 to May 2016, Taylor Swift dated Calvin Harris, her longest relationship so far. But their busy careers and conflicting schedules forced them to break up after 14 months. Taylor Swift is not a fan of modern music streaming. While it helped her build an international audience, she felt that the ad-based free streaming undermined the value of her music. Why should anyone buy her album if they can listen to it for free on Spotify? Disappointed by the low royalties and knowing what's bad for her must be 10 times worse for small, independent artists, she pulled her music from Spotify. Seven months later, in June of 2015, Apple Music decided to offer a three-month free trial. The problem was that during this free trial, they were not going to pay their artists for any streams on their music. Taylor was furious, shocked, and disappointed. She announced that her latest album, 1989, would not be available on Apple Music because of this. Following the discussion she sparked, Apple revised their policy and decided to pay artists for streams during the trial period. Following this success, she also spoke out about how she wished the Pringles can had a wider opening and demanded that Chipotle stop charging extra for guacamole. But Taylor was very aware that there were more important things to address. In 2013, at a meet-and-greet event in Denver, Colorado, former radio DJ David Meller had molested the then 24-year-old, groping her buttocks. Swift first spoke about it in 2015. I was in a courtroom in Denver, Colorado. Honestly, I was there for a sexual assault case and this day a year ago was the day that the jury decided in my favor and said that they believed me. The case, her mere presence in the courtroom, made her feel uneasy and degraded. She never wanted to see this man again and there he was, looking at her like she'd done something wrong. The focus of the trial wasn't on the despicable act of sexual assault itself, but on her. How she reacted, why she stood so close to him and why she didn't react quicker, more directly. Swift won the case with seven witnesses and a photo. But she didn't feel good about it. But that's not even the worst part. When the trial was over and Meller paid the symbolic $1 settlement in form of a Sacagawea coin, people weren't talking about what a courageous example she had made for young women facing sexual harassment. People were talking about how she was going on about something that happened four years ago, only so she could play the victim again. In the final chapter of what seems like a desperate attempt to siphon clicks and media attention off her name, Kanye West released a song in which he claimed he made that bitch famous. Referring to Taylor Swift. At least he had the courtesy to call her before the release to ask if it was okay with her. However, according to Taylor, he read her every line but I made that bitch famous. And he didn't call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release the song on her Twitter account. She declined and objected to its strong misogynistic message. Kim Kardashian, Kanye's wife at the time, taped the phone call as a backup. They later released it heavily edited. They made it look like Taylor was okay with the song when she was really not. But most fans didn't think so far as that she might have been trying to appease a man who made her uncomfortable so that he didn't get even more vicious. Or that the whole thing was an elaborate scheme to frame her as a two-faced lying snake when she made her actual opinion known to the public. Nobody wanted to hear her opinion. Once again, she was just playing the victim. The backlash against her was so bad, eventually she just disappeared. In March of 2016, Swift took a well-deserved break from her career. During her 17 month hiatus, she enjoyed spending more time with friends and loved ones. But with songwriting as her coping mechanism, it was also hard for her not to go back to the recording studio and sing her troubles away. Taylor's friends saw how exhausted she was and encouraged her to focus on herself for a while, gain a fresh perspective. Then, when she finally broke her silence in August 2017, she came back stronger than ever. After uploading Cryptic Snake videos on Instagram, Swift burst back onto the scene with her comeback album, Reputation. Her darkest, most confident work yet. After 10 years in the limelight, Reputation served as a personal and artistic reinvention for Swift. Incorporating elements of synth-pop, hip-hop and EDM, it's considered her most experimental album, proving her versatility as an artist. She sings about her tumultuous relationship with the media and responds directly to her critics, effectively reclaiming her voice in a situation where everything she said or did was used against her. The album got billions of streams and Taylor Swift emerged from her biggest challenge with a stronger, more self-assured identity. But times didn't get any easier. Following Donald Trump's election into the White House, the political climate in the United States was tense. Protests on both sides and a highly polarized media landscape challenged Swift's policy, which until now had been to avoid controversial topics like politics in interviews and in her songwriting. She preferred to talk about her music. And who can blame her, after what happened with the Dixie Chicks? One of Taylor's favorite bands growing up, and one she later wrote songs for as a teenager, spoke up about their feelings regarding President Bush and the Iraq War at a concert in 2003, which didn't sit well with their largely conservative audience. But now Taylor was accused of being a racist. Swift was the subject of dozens of articles on alternative right and neo-Nazi websites, where white supremacist bloggers called her a pure Aryan goddess and secretly a Nazi. That's when Taylor knew she had to make her opinions known and discuss her political ideology or either side could make her a silent proxy for their propaganda. In 2018, Swift spoke out in support of LGBTQ rights and equal rights for women and people of color. She also encouraged her fans to vote for whoever best reflects their opinions. Talking about Marsha Blackburn, who ran for Senate in her home state of Tennessee, she said After all the controversies surrounding her name, Taylor Swift defied her fear of losing popularity and influence to stand up for her values. In her 2019 album Lover, she is unapologetic about her opinions. Of course, she still uses narrative storytelling to get her point across, but not every song is about newfound love or a breakup. It feels like she finally freed herself from the pressure, like she has become indifferent to other people's opinions. She speaks on cultural issues like gender inequality and critiques the double standards of the entertainment industry. Another heartfelt topic was her mother's cancer diagnosis. But perhaps the most notable development had to do with her relationship with Joe Alwyn. For the first time, Taylor talked about nurturing a long-standing relationship, fighting for love, and celebrating love in all its complexities. A big inspiration behind the mellower, brighter tracks on the album was the music of Ed Sheeran. Ed and Taylor are good friends. She appreciates Ed's sober advice and honest manner of speaking. But just as her most devastating career moment pulled the rug out from under her feet, Ed Sheeran's support was nowhere to be seen. Taylor Swift had been signed to Big Machine Records for 13 years. When the young talent met Scott Borchetta in 2005 and he offered her a contract, she was happy. 13 years later, she regrets her mistake. She quickly became the label's most successful signee. By the time Borchetta sold the company in 2019, Variety reports that Taylor's music made up 80% of its revenue. He thought her success had peaked and sold Big Machine for $300 million to record executive Scooter Braun. For years, Taylor had been trying to buy back the rights to her music, but was never given a fair deal. Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced. Scooter Braun now wanted her to sign an NDA so she couldn't talk about him and Borchetta without getting into legal trouble. Of course, Taylor didn't sign the NDA. For example, Braun was involved in Kanye West's Famous, which some media outlets say almost ended her career. They then blocked her from performing her older songs and didn't allow the use of old footage for the Netflix documentary about her life. Big Machine accused Swift of owing millions of dollars and multiple assets to the label. However, Swift's representatives then released evidence that Big Machine owed Taylor Swift nearly $8 million in unpaid royalties. That didn't help though. Every album she made before 2019 was now lost. A defining defeat for the 29-year-old. In July 2020, Taylor Swift released her subdued, isolated pandemic album Folklore. This time she didn't write about her personal life and instead focused on interesting stories told from other people's perspectives. She distanced herself from the spotlight and allowed her music to shine on its own. A deliberate step away from the pop star image she had in the media, back to the average girl who just sits in her bedroom, guitar in hand, writing songs. The Folklore companion piece, Evermore, was released just six months later. They were now the only studio productions that Taylor owned. Her betrayal at the hands of Borschetta and Big Machine still gnawed at her. But through her most difficult time, her family, her friends and her fans kept her going forward. Katy Perry openly supported her in her fight against Big Machine and Ed Sheeran, while not taking any sides officially, said he'd been talking to her directly, supporting her like he always had. In the end, it was Kelly Clarkson that gave her hope. Since Taylor still had the rights to all the melodies and lyrics, just not the master recordings of her old songs, Kelly suggested that she should re-record them all. And you put out a tweet, I thought this was pretty nice, you said, hey Taylor, just a thought you should go in and re-record all the songs that you don't own the masters on, exactly how you did them but put brand new art and some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions, I'd buy all the new versions just to prove a point. And so, in April 2021, we got our first Taylor's version, a smooth new edition of the album Fearless. Fans now streamed the new versions and bought the new albums. I mean, one thing about this album that's really special to me is that it's the first one that I will own. Partners seeking to license one of her songs no longer came to Big Machine, but directly to her, to Taylor Swift. The world took something away from her, and she just built it right back up. Her music empire, bigger than ever, finally belonged to her. When asked for one piece of advice she would give to an aspiring singer-songwriter, Taylor said, Try your best to own your own work. It's something that nobody told me about early on. And also, if at all possible, start writing your own songs. Maybe 13 really is her lucky number. From her biggest defeat, Taylor Swift wrestled her way to victory, reclaiming what's hers and inspiring millions in the process. Taylor Swift found her calling. She dreamed big and made it even bigger. With a mix of talent, hard work and dedication, she climbed to the top of the entertainment industry. She has come to understand the paradox of her popularity and found a way to deal with it by being her true, authentic self. Iconic singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks said she didn't give Taylor any advice about being famous because she doesn't need it. She doesn't take anything for granted or tie her self-image to public opinion. She does not deceive the public. From the country girl just trying to find her way in the world, she turned into a trailblazer of the 21st century. Taylor Swift is what every celebrity should be. Fearless, authentic, in short, a role model. But she wouldn't have this overwhelming courage to be herself and put her reputation on the line for her version of the story if it weren't for all the challenges she had to overcome. The liars, the bullies, the injustice and the ignorance. She's pop, she's pretty, she's just herself. She's strong and independent, grateful and kind. And for all that the fans love her almost as much as she loves the fans.