Taylor Swift has reflected on her “country roots” in a new interview. Find all the details below.
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In a career-spanning conversation with Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. for the institution’s Icon Sessions series, Swift looked back on the start of her career in Nashville.
“I love my country roots more and more the further along this path I get and I want to honour them more and more,” Swift said. “I feel more tied to them, more loyal to them … The people that shaped who I am as an artist and as a writer, that all happened in Nashville,” she added.
Swift went on to name the musicians that influenced her early on, saying: “I had heard that Faith Hill got discovered at the Bluebird Cafe. I started learning about the Bluebird Cafe, made it a personal life goal to get to perform there.”
The singer then looked back on her self-titled debut album and her first single, ‘Tim McGraw’, saying: “If I look back at the song ‘Tim McGraw,’ there are actually sort of hints at everything that was gonna happen in the next 20 years.”
Coincidentally, this year marks 20 years since the release of her debut, and in recent months she’s been delving back into country with the release of ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’, which she recorded especially for the soundtrack of the new Toy Story film.
Fans have been speculating that new music is on the way after Swift was recently spotted leaving Electric Lady Studios in New York following a nine-hour overnight recording session. She was with Haim‘s Alana and Danielle Haim.
Swift’s last album was 2025′S ‘The Life of a Showgirl‘, which was inspired by her experience on her record-breaking ‘Eras’ tour. It soon became the best-selling album of that year in the UK – making Swift the first artist to have the top seller in consecutive years for different albums since ABBA in 1977.
Since the album’s release, Swift has become the youngest female artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, invited Graham Norton, Lewis Capaldi, and Cillian Murphy for her ‘Opalite’ music video, and filed to trademark her own voice and image after growing concerns about AI.
