If you look back at music history, there are many examples of songs that musicians are known to have written about other stars. In a lot of cases, a famous song paid tribute to another star, as is the case with tracks like “Candle in the Wind”, “I’ll Be Missing You”, and “Man on the Moon”. Since all of those songs cast a star who’d passed in a really positive light, it is safe to assume the subject of the track would have enjoyed them. On the other hand, there have been many cases in which a celebrity wasn’t happy a fellow star wrote a song about them, including the vast majority of diss tracks.
Of course, every adult should already know that life often isn’t as black and white as it may seem on the surface. With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that some stars who’ve had a positive song written about them may have mixed feelings about that. For example, there is a country music legend who was apprehensive when Taylor Swift brought them up in a notable song.
The Song In Question
In 2006, Taylor Swift released her debut self-titled album. Even though Swift’s debut album certainly isn’t her best album, it featured several notable songs including “Picture to Burn”, Teardrop on My Guitar”, and “Our Song”. In addition to all of those tracks, the album's first song and debut single was titled “Tim McGraw”.
Written when Taylor Swift was still in high school, “Tim McGraw” was inspired by her knowledge that she and her boyfriend would break up when he left for college. Wanting to feel like her boyfriend would be reminded of her once he left, Swift thought about the things that he was likely to closely associate with her. Since Swift was a big fan of Tim McGraw’s music and her boyfriend at that time knew that, she quickly concluded that the country legend would bring her to her boyfriend’s mind once he was gone.
Since Taylor Swift had such strong feelings about her relationship coming to an end at that time, she has since revealed that she wrote “Tim McGraw” in just twenty minutes. With that in mind, it amazing to think about how successful “Tim McGraw” wound up being. After all, Swift won a CMT Music Award for Breakthrough Video of the Year due to the song and it came close to topping the US Hot Country Songs chart.
McGraw’s Reaction
In the years since Taylor Swift released her song “Tim McGraw”, the country legend who inspired it has been nothing but supportive of her. For example, when the song came up during a 2021 interview that appeared on Apple Music’s YouTube channel, McGraw talked about being impressed by the tune. However, during that same interview, McGraw admitted that the song made him “a little apprehensive”.
"I thought, have I gotten to that age now to where they're singing songs about me? Does that mean I've jumped the shark a bit? Is everything still cool? And then I realized that somebody had told me that she was in her seventh-grade math class when she wrote the song, so it made me feel a little bit better about that because she was so young writing it. So I didn't feel like I was that terribly old."
At another point in that same conversation, Tim McGraw expressed how much he respects Taylor Swift. Furthermore, McGraw spoke about how impressed he was when she was the opening act for a tour he headlined with the woman he has built a family with, Faith Hill. "It was incredible. It was just her and her guitar and one other person. Just two people, her and another guy playing. And I just think she's one of the greatest artists to come along in a long time.”
Less Complimentary Songs
Over the years, the press has spent far too much time obsessing over every relationship that Taylor Swift has been a part of while she was in the public eye. After all, there is nothing wrong with a young person dating several people as they try to find the right partner. Furthermore, it is extremely obvious that if Swift was a man, the press wouldn’t care about her dating life as much.
Of course, there is one reason why it makes sense that Swift’s love life has garnered so much attention, she has written so many songs about her exes. Unfortunately for those exes, a lot of those songs were written to call them out for one reason or another. With that in mind, it seems very safe to assume that Swift’s exes were more apprehensive about Swift’s tunes about them than Tim McGraw ever was.