Wonder if she’ll be breaking this one out on the Eras tour?
These days Taylor Swift is a massive pop superstar, selling out stadiums around the world on her Eras tour and making headlines wherever she goes for her relationship with star Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
But of course at one point, Taylor was actually a country singer.
Now even her country music leaned pop, but compared to some of the sh*t on today’s country radio, “Tim McGraw” was basically stone cold country.
And of course one of the artists who helped Taylor get her start in country music was the late, great Toby Keith.
In 2005, Toby had left his former label, DreamWorks Records, and founded his own record label, Show Dog Nashville. The move resulted in the closing of DreamWorks, but it provided Toby with the infrastructure to not only release his own music but also sign artists like Randy Houser, Trace Adkins and Joe Nichols.
And it was that infrastructure that helped Borchetta get his own record label off the ground.
When DreamWorks shuttered and was merged into Universal Music Nashville, Borchetta left to start his own label, Big Machine Label Group. The label was founded as a joint venture between Big Machine and Show Dog Nashville, with the two labels to be “sister companies” and Big Machine using Show Dog’s entire promotions staff.
And the first artist signed to Big Machine? Taylor Swift.
Obviously the partnership between Big Machine and Show Dog didn’t last, with the labels splitting in 2006 and Toby retaining equity in Big Machine for the investment he had made.
But if it wasn’t for Show Dog, Big Machine wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground when it did, and wouldn’t have been able to sign Taylor Swift to her first record deal.
Back in 2005, Taylor even talked about signing to Toby Keith’s label:
“You’re in the room with him and you can feel it. There’s a power there. You’re just like, ‘Oh my God.’
I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I won’t see him and be like, ‘Oh my God that’s Toby Keith.'”
And in 2008, even after Toby and Big Machine had parted ways, Taylor was still paying tribute to the Big Dog Daddy.
A recently-resurfaced video posted to Reddit shows Taylor and her friend and then-touring partner Kellie Pickler taking the stage together to perform one of Toby’s biggest hits, “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue.”
They seem to be having a great time together, and even change up the lyrics a little in a nod to Kellie’s then-single, “Red High Heels.”
“We’ll put a red high heel in your ass, it’s the American way”
It’s hard to imagine Taylor’s going to be covering this song again any time soon. She’s long since moved on from her “country” days. And she’s also been more outspoken about politics over the past couple years, publicly supporting Joe Biden during the 2020 election, so you’ve gotta think she probably doesn’t feel the same way about this song’s lyrics as she did back when she was still a teenager…
