Flashback: Taylor Swift Meets Tim McGraw
Years before Taylor Swift topped the pop charts, won the CMA Entertainer of the Year award and appeared on Time‘s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, the then 16-year-old made her debut with a poignant ode to love in the time of Tim McGraw, singing of a summer affair soundtracked by the “Just to See You Smile” country star.
Here, watch Swift perform the song at the 2007 ACM Awards. Emma Roberts gives the introduction – “She and I share a special bond tonight that no one else here has,” says Roberts, “we’re the only ones who have a 10:30 curfew” – before Swift takes over, singing and playing her 12-string guitar alone onstage. Transitioning into the song’s bridge, she then walks into the crowd and serenades McGraw and wife Faith Hill with the final chorus. Concluding with an introduction, she sticks out her hand and says “Hi, I’m Taylor.”
“The way I look at love is you have to follow it,” Swift told Rolling Stone in her 2012 cover story, “and fall hard, if you fall hard. You have to forget about what everyone else thinks. It has to be an us-against-the-world mentality. You have to make it work by prioritizing it, and by falling in love really fast, without thinking too hard. If I think too hard about a relationship I’ll talk myself out of it.”