Athens Oracle <![CDATA[Athens Oracle]]> en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:29:32 GMT 15 <![CDATA[Taylor Swift goes from small town girl to big time star]]> By Megan Carroll

Photo Courtesy of Big Machine Records
Taylor Swift poses on the set of the music video for her hit song 'Teardrops on My Guitar'

            Many remember when Taylor Swift came and performed at Athens two years ago.  Now she has gone from a small name artist to a mega-pop star with two platinum albums and eight hit songs.             “She sings about a lot of things I feel or have felt in my life or love life,” said Sharon Bui, senior.  “She sings about things that actually have happened to me.”             Having relatable songs is one reason why Swift has over 1,000,000 friends on Myspace alone.  She is aware of this and tries to write songs that her fans will like and that are relevant to their lives.             “I didn’t want to write songs about being on the road and being in hotels and missing your family and missing your friends,” said Swift in an interview with Great American Country Music (GACM). “When I was like 14 or 15 and I would hear those things on an album...being alone, living out of a suitcase... and I was always like, ‘Ugh, skip!’ I’m inspired by boys and love. Those are my favorite things to write about, and I don’t think that that is limited to high school. I’d rather write songs about how I’m feeling and the relationship side of things.”             These types of songs have been seen on her new album, Fearless , which was released last year.  Fearless has some similarities to her debut album with the fact that she has once again written or co-written all of the songs.  Her inspiration for songs is from events that happened to her.             “I think I’m very fascinated by the differences between reality and fairy tales,” Swift said to GACM. “When we’re little, we read these books and we see cartoons and the bad guy is always wearing black. You always know who he is. But in real life, the bad guy can be incredibly charming and have a great smile and perfect hair. He says things that make you laugh and he’s sweet and he’s funny, but you don’t realize that he’s going to cause you a lot of pain.”             ‘White Horse,’ is a hit song about realizing how the perfect guy just might not be Prince Charming.  ‘Fifteen,’ another hit song, is relevant to freshmen because the lyrics are feelings being felt by most girls at that time in their life.              Swift’s lyrics seem to be what make her so popular.  She is a country artist, but she does not write typical country songs.             “I’m not a big country music fan and I don’t really listen to other country musicians, but her music is so good that you just forget that it’s country,” said Lauren Evans, senior.  “It’s not just about losing their dogs, jobs, trucks and alcohol.  She writes songs that actually relate to me.” ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:15:55 GMT