Taylor Swift's self-titled debut CD, released October 24, 2006
Photo courtesy of Big Machine Records

October 19, 2006--Days away from the October 24 release of her self-titled debut album, 16-year-old Taylor Swift stands on the edge of stardom. And she might just have a broken computer to thank for it.

"I learned to play guitar when this guy came over to fix my computer," Taylor tells GACTV.com. "He saw that I had (an acoustic) in the corner, and he goes, 'Do you know how to play that? You want me to teach you some chords?’

I was like, ‘Yeah, sure!’ So he taught me three chords."

Three chords. As Hall of Fame songwriter Harlan Howard once famously noted, if you know three chords – you’re well on your way to writing country music. To complete the equation, all you need is the truth. And the truth, as Taylor’s mother Andrea says, is something the teenager has been seeking since she was old enough to ask a question.

"I remember Scott (Taylor’s father) coming home from work and I would just be mentally exhausted," says Andrea. "From day one, Taylor was always trying to figure out how other people thought and what they were doing and why they were doing it. That was probably an early telltale sign that she had the makings of a songwriter."

Already armed with an acute curiosity for the human condition and a gift for writing poetry (she won a national contest in 4th grade), it did not take long for Taylor to put her newfound knowledge of the guitar neck to good use. Within minutes of memorizing those first three chords, the 12-year-old applied the truth as she knew it to music. Before she had laid her head on her pillow that night, she had written her first song...and changed the course of her young life.