Dancing around, shaking your booty, hanging with your friends and running around the neighborhood – those are the kinds of things you liked to do when you were younger.
You also dreamed of adulthood, thought about the cool car you might someday have and made big plans. You were just a kid then, but, as in the new book “There’s Nothing Like This” by Keven Evers, you saw your future.
Songwriter Angelo Petraglia was in a panic.
It was 2003, he had an appointment with a new songwriter and didn’t quite know how to relate to her. Her name had been floating around Nashville for a while – she’d gotten a decent deal with RCA Records – but Petraglia’s problem was that this girl, Taylor Swift, was 13 years old and what did he know about middle school teenagers?
It didn’t take long, Evers says, for Swift to school any of her co-writers.
From the start, she “demonstrated strategic thinking…” Mature beyond her years, Swift knew where she was, where she needed to be, why and how success would happen. Youth wasn’t a problem; she had “cohesive vision. She understood her audience. And she knew it.”
By 2004, the Nashville music industry was going through change. Record labels consolidated or closed, and most that were left preferred to sign male singers. Few were interested in a teenager. The country music audience, it was believed, didn’t include teen girls.
Swift proved that belief wrong with a calculated risk and faith in a new record label that hadn’t yet launched. Says Evers, she had “promotional instincts,” she liked marketing and understood that differentiation was important, and she was willing to use social media – a new thing then – to interact with fans. She was authentic and told her own story well.
Still, there were ups and downs. Swift remained laser-focused, but mistakes were made in her early years.
“Celebrity is a tricky business to be in,” says Evers, and Swift steadfastly course-corrected, banking on her fans, herself and the vision she’d always held.
Yes, indeed, “There’s Nothing Like This” is a business book in which the title actually explains its subject and itself. It’s not like other business books you’ve read recently. For one thing, this one’s going to take some effort.
In a big way, this book seems more like just another discography or tale about Nashville or stardom, but look between the lines. Evers is subtle in showing how Swift’s practices fall into the realm of business. Once you spot one of two of those points, you almost can’t miss the rest.
No, there aren’t any overt lessons, bullet-points or charts here, no end-of-chapter synopses and no final wrap-up at books’ end. Instead, you’re taught by story, and it’s a good one, superbly impressive, lively and perfectly entertaining.
Swifties, of course, will want this book, regardless of its genre, but more business-minded readers will need to remember that the lessons in “There’s Nothing Like This” are embedded and worth the search. Try this book. Don’t just “shake it off.”
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s reviews of business books are read in publications throughout the U.S. and Canada.