"Change" Song Meaning

Today's Taylor Swift song is the meaning of "Change" from her "Fearless" album.

I like this song because it has a pop type feel and is fun and makes me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. What is this song about?

It is about the beginning of her music career.  At first she worked with RCA records, but they wanted her to wait until she was 18 to start recording songs herself. "Basically, there were three things that were going to happen. Either they were going to drop me, or shelve me – that's kind of like putting me in cold storage – or give me a record deal. Of course, the only one of those that you want is the record deal. But they announced they were going to shelve me, and "monitor my progress" until I was 18".  She left the label, one of the biggest in the business.

She then caught Scott Borchetta of Dreamworks eye and signed a deal with his record label Big Machine Records.  The only problem was, she was the only artist on board.

"I wrote this song about being on a small record label, being a 16-year-old girl, and having a lot of odds stacked up against all of us, having a bunch of big companies on Music Row that had a lot more room in their buildings and a lot more employees than our 12. A lot of people, if given those odds, would say that’s not going to work."

"When you're at a record label that has 12 employees, you have to work harder to get on major tours. You have to work harder to get presenter slots or performer slots on award shows. There was this moment where I sat there and was like, 'When are we going to get a fighting chance? We're the smallest record label in Nashville, but we want this really bad.' I wrote the beginning to this song, and I thought someday things are going to be different. I finished the song the night that I won the Horizon Award at the CMA Awards and looked over and saw the president of my tiny, little record label crying."

The other labels "They might be bigger/But we’re faster and never scared/You can walk away, say we don’t need this/Because these things will change."  Things did change and Taylor and Big Machine Records succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Later the song was used during the Olympics during the daily highlight broadcast.

Click here for lyrics to the song, "Change."

Click here for the official music video to the song, "Change".