Never scared

During the opening acts, I spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out who the apparent celebrity was in my section, a young redheaded woman who people kept flocking to for autographs and photos. During the "small club" portion of the show, her identity was revealed: Swift's friend Abigail, the one she wrote the song "Fifteen" about ("Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / we both cried"). She and her friends had front-row seats for the smaller stage, where Swift sang directly to Abigail the song she wrote about her.
--Dave Heaton, from a fascinating account in Pop Matters of a Taylor Swift show, watching her work the crowd and also work the theme of dreams versus reality, of perfection (what her voice isn't) versus emotional effect (her actual singing).

Nathan Chapman

She just shows up with unbelievable songs that she wrote, and then we just produce the songs. As a producer I'm not having to go out and look all over Music Row for a hit. She brings them in.

Good podcast interview* from early '09 with Taylor Swift's co-producer Nathan Chapman. Plays three of the four different mixes of "Teardrops On My Guitar" (album mix, country single, Top 40 single), explains the differences between them. Names his producer heroes as Mark Wright, Daniel Lanois, John Shanks, Buddy Miller, notes that Wright never himself plays on tracks whereas those other producers do. I like Chapman's sense that there are multiple ways to accomplish something and that different people have different talents and need to find the models that work for them.

( Started off producing demos )