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Taylor Swift · S3 E7
The Fan Machine
The early Swifties, MySpace, and how she builds a direct relationship with her audience before social media makes it the norm.
Taylor Swift is sitting on her bedroom floor at two in the morning, leaving individual comments on her fans' MySpace pages. She is the biggest-selling artist of the year, and she is replying to teenagers one by one.
"Sparks Fly" -- Taylor Swift, official music video (2011). Made entirely from live concert footage of the Speak Now Tour. This song exists as a single because fans demanded it: Taylor had been playing it live for years before she recorded it, and the audience campaign to release it was one of the first examples of a fanbase directly influencing an artist's release strategy.
Sparks Fly
Written when Taylor is sixteen and performed live for years before Speak Now, "Sparks Fly" is the song fans will into existence. They record it on their phones and upload it to YouTube, where it accumulates millions of views as a fan-recorded live track. The demand becomes so loud that Taylor records a studio version specifically because the fans ask her to. Listen for the energy difference between "Sparks Fly" and other Speak Now tracks. It sounds more urgent, more raw, like it belongs on a stage rather than in a studio. Nathan Chapman and Taylor mix the track to preserve the live energy that made fans campaign for it in the first place.
The Strategy That Isn't a Strategy
The music industry in 2008 treats fans as customers. Taylor treats them as friends, and the difference is not a marketing plan. She is nineteen, lonely on the road, and the people who show up to her concerts understand her music better than anyone else in her life. She comments on fans' MySpace pages, responds to their messages, and learns their names. At meet-and-greets, she spends so long with each person that her team regularly runs overtime.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Taylor Swift invent in 2014 that no major artist had ever done before?
“My fans are not a demographic. They are the people who show up. I know what that costs, because I used to be the person who showed up for somebody else.”
— Taylor Swift, Rolling Stone, February 2009
Bonus Listening
"Enchanted" -- about the electric feeling of meeting someone for the first time and not being able to stop thinking about them. Swifties have a special relationship with this song: Adam Young of Owl City recorded a full response track, and the fandom debate over its hidden message became one of the earliest Swiftie community moments.
"Sparks Fly" has an unusual origin story for a Taylor Swift single. What makes it different from every other song she has officially released?
She has the Grammys, the fans, and the cultural moment. But the Fearless era ends, and what comes next will prove whether she is a country artist who got lucky or a songwriter who can do it again from scratch. Next season: she writes Speak Now entirely alone, with no co-writers, and the industry holds its breath.
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