Taylor Swift
Fearless (Big Machine)
Pop singer-songwriter Natalie Shay told us about her love for a Taylor Swift gem...
Natalie Shay: I like a lot of albums and a lot of albums have shaped me and maybe even I prefer them to this one. Who really knows? But this album meant so much to me, it changed the entire direction of my life.
When I first heard "Love Story‘’ on the radio, I asked my mum who this was and if I could have the CD please. Fearless by Taylor Swift, I think, was the birth place of an entire generation of singer-songwriter guitar girls between the ages now of maybe 25-30.
Taylor continues to inspire new writers, but this album in particular blew me away. It was songs written about feelings and situations that were similar to mine, by a girl who was not much older than me when she wrote them. It showed me the way I could channel emotions and feelings into lyrics, and how turning pain into a song or documenting a state of mind in a lyric is the best kind of therapy I’ve ever found.
I taught myself chords on the acoustic guitar to this album. I had an ‘easy guitar chords‘ song book for the Fearless album. Had pictures of Taylor in it. I had been playing classical guitar from the age of 5 and this was my entry into singing and playing at the same time. Learning to play to this album meant I started writing and performing my own music in a similar genre. I realized it was my purpose in life and now here we are. What an amazing, honest album. So relatable, so raw, so good.
Natalie Shay's single "sorry for u" is out now.
Photo by Liam Maxwell.
