Alex Torres first heard Taylor Swift at a middle school dance in Antioch, Illinois. “I instantly fell in love,” Torres says about “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “Our Song,” a pair of confessional country singles from Swift’s 2006 self-titled debut. “I thought they were so good.”
These early hits are emblematic of the artist’s instant appeal. The 17-year-old musician sang of gutting heartbreak and giddy first love with equal authority, describing school-age scenarios that are both ultra-specific and universally relatable, like watching your perfect but oblivious crush breeze past you in the hallway. In “Our Song,” Swift captured the frantic energy of a fledgling teen relationship in the late 2000s: hushed phone calls, illicit night-time rendezvous, joyrides in the front of a newly-licensed car. How could you not fall for her music?
