Taylor Swift Was Barefoot When She Met Shonda Rhimes

By Emma Chance | TV | April 22, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | TV | April 22, 2024 |

Believe it or not, there was a time way back when, before the rereleases and the double albums, that Taylor Swift had to campaign for her music to be used in popular shows, just like anyone else. Things were simpler then: she was still a country artist, critics didn’t get death threats for negative reviews of her music, she hadn’t met Jake Gyllenhaal yet … she could get away with things she couldn’t now.

Shonda Rhimes recalled the first time she met Swift in the recent PEOPLE magazine Grey’s Anatomy special issue. The year was 2008, and Grey’s was almost in its 5th season, in which Swift’s song “White Horse” would be used in a scene. But before that could happen, a young Swift had to audition for the famous showrunner.

“I remember she was an interesting artist,” Rhimes recalls of Swift coming to her office to perform another popular song, “Love Story,” from her then-hit album Fearless. “It’s so funny because, back then, she showed up in my office with bare feet. She went off and played ‘Love Story’ and was like, ‘I really love your show.’ I had no idea who she was. I was like, ‘This kid’s adorable. Like, I love this song.’ The song was really good.”

Now, Rimes says Swift serves as “kind of the voice of what that generation is in people’s heads.”

“You know what I mean? How they’re perpetually like the same emotional age somehow,” she said, giving me new material for therapy this week. “And in a good way,” she added (phew). “So I thought, yeah, her songs do become woven in because honestly, that’s what everybody’s listening to, but also they feel good and they work.”

Do we think she knows Swift has a cat named after her masterpiece’s titular character? She’d probably hate it.