That time a 16-year-old Taylor Swift played at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh
It was a routine weekday in the fall of 2006. The Nintendo Wii was opening new doors for gaming consoles and consumers flipped out for the Motorola Razr flip phone. Raleigh's skyline was still anchored by Two Hannover Square and Triangle sports fans continued to savor the Carolina Hurricanes' Stanley Cup victory.
The students at Athens Drive High School that day harbored dreams and aspirations, but they had a lot of blank space in front of them.
Including Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift was 16 when she played at Athens Drive High School
Yes, years before Swift became synonymous with celebrity idolatry and ‘Swiftie’ entered the American lexicon, a largely unknown, 16-year-old would-be country singer – THE T. Swift – played a stripped-down, yet compelling set for an audience of other teens, some of them older than her.
Swift, who sits squarely atop of the pop culture pyramid in 2023, came with a bassist, drummer and lead guitarist to Athens Drive in a van, played a show, and hopped right back in to return to the airport.
It all happened right down the road from the WRAL Studios. Yet neither WRAL nor any of the other Triangle news outlets covered the concert. In fact, barely any record of the performance or her appearance exists. It was an era before YouTube or smartphones. In that year's edition of the Athens Drive yearbook, a single photo shows Swift surrounded by young ladies in powder puff football shirts who earned a pretty cool story to tell at parties.
If anyone tells you they went to Athens Drive when this happened, that may be true. But if they tell you they attended the show, they're probably lying. It's estimated 100 to 150 people came and fanfare was minimal, aside from some promotion from country radio station WQDR, who helped organize the show.
Not even Swift was exempt from humble beginnings.
'Their jaws usually drop'
WQDR program director Mike Biddle met Swift that day as he helped put the concert together with the record label. Swift's mother, Andrea, still traveled with her at that point.
"She was just a new artist, a new face," Biddle said. "We felt confident in her ability to be a future impactful artist in the format."
WQDR would organize concerts for up-and-coming artists, and Swift fit the bill at the time. The show happened after school, meaning most students had already gone home for the day.
“It is a story I do tell often to people," Biddle said. "Back in the day we did this thing where she played in a high school auditorium and their jaws usually drop."
"I think about all the kids who opted not to stick around,” Biddle said.
'No one showed up'
One of those kids who did stick around was Alex Kaiser. Kaiser is a certified Swiftie now, but said winning the contest was more a measure of school spirit and getting bragging rights over a local rival school. Athens was one of several schools in the running to host the concert through a spirit contest coordinated through WQDR. Students had to cast the most votes for their school, either by phone or online, to earn the right to get the concert.
Kaiser remembered calling the number to vote each morning the week of the show.
"It was between Athens Drive and Apex, and we hated Apex," Kaiser said. "We were like 'we gotta beat Apex.'"
"We felt so many people would be so excited that we won a country concert, but no one showed up. And by no one I mean the auditorium wasn't even half-full."
Those who did show up felt a unique connection to Swift, seeing as that she was practically their age.
"She's one of us. She's this pubescent teenager up on stage, but she was gorgeous and tall, and she had on her cowboy boots," said Kaiser.
The cheerleading squad, most of whom were adamant about Swift's appearance, got to take pictures and meet Swift afterwards.
So did Josh Boatwright, who helped arrange the sound equipment on stage. Boatwright said he, like most, didn't have any clue who Swift was but loved country music and appreciated the personal touches Swift put into the show. He's since become a big fan and saw her in Atlanta during the most recent 'Eras' tour.
"We were told that morning it was happening," Boatwright said. "All day we really had no clue as to what was going on. Up until that day I had never heard of her."
Boatwright said Swift played every song on her first album and gave backstories, an early glimpse of her commitment to songwriting. Although her future was as unknown as that of the students who watched her, Swift's ambition and showmanship was impressive.
"She went through every song on the album and gave us inside details on all of her songs," Boatwright said. "She spent a lot of time with us to make sure everybody had a quality experience.”
Blair Presnell was on the Athens cheerleading team and wrote a cheer for the contest to encourage others to vote. She even changed outfits that day in hopes of impressing Swift. It worked well enough to get her autograph.
"I remember I was obsessed with that 'Tim McGraw' song," Presnell said. "I can remember calling WQDR and telling the cheerleading team and them coming to the school and coaching them through the cheer."
At the time, Swift was not very well-known outside of some devoted country music fans. She was opening for big country acts like Rascal Flatts at the time with "Tim McGraw" in rotation as her first radio single from her self-titled debut album, which came out in October of that year. The date the concert actually happened is fuzzy in the minds of most attendees, but Presnell believes it was before the record came out on Oct. 24.
"I think she was just too new and everyone was like 'who is this at our school?,'" Presnell said.
Swift capped her set with a cover of Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' and that especially impressed the crowd.
"When that happened, I definitely thought there was something there, man," said Biddle, who hung out backstage with Swift at one of her later Raleigh concerts.
"I remember some of my friends being like 'that's when I fell in love,'" Kaiser said of hearing the cover. "Now, you're like 'duh, of course she could do that.'"
As of this writing, Swift's summer stadium tour has been projected to surpass $1 billion in ticket sales with U.S. dates left in Miami, New Orleans and Indianapolis. An average resale ticket to one of Swift’s concerts costs roughly $1,619.
Since her low-key, early Raleigh appearance, she's played the City of Oaks at bigger venues, including tour stops at PNC Arena in 2010, 2013 and 2015.
It wasn't unheard of for Swift to play in front of high school audiences early on. In 2009, a high school in Virginia had approximately 800 students send in more than 19,000 text messages to win a Verizon Wireless concert that led to a show from Swift. In 2007, Swift performed in front of students at Woodlake High School in Woodlake, Ca.
"She joked that she had never been to a homecoming before because of her lifestyle," said Alex Moore, who was in the photo featured in the yearbook. "We joked that she should come back and stay for the week and obviously she didn't take us up on it. Being high school seniors, we thought we were all that."
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce combine worlds
In 2023, Swift is her own enterprise and the biggest music star in the world with a cascading effect on everything she touches. For instance, Swift was seen at the two most recent Kansas City Chiefs games to cheer for tight end Travis Kelce with dating rumors swirling between the two since the summer. Kelce's jersey sales saw a near 400% jump after the two were seen together following the Sept. 24 game against Chicago. Kelce, already a two-time Super Bowl champion and recognized as one of the greatest tight ends of all-time, gained more than 900,000 Instagram followers as a result.
The last two weeks have featured an interesting cross mix of chatter across social media as Swift resurfaced to top of the zeitgeist. She was seen jumping out of her seat when Kelce caught a touchdown pass on Sept. 24, causing two of America's most zealous subcultures of Swifties and NFL fans to collide. Swift was there with Kelce's mother, Donna Kelce.
How it ends between Swift and her rumored partner remains to be seen, but in an age when the public's investment in new music is limited, it's clear that Swift is high-stepping into the end zone of the public consciousness with Kelce throwing a few downfield blocks. Swift is maybe the only figure who could trump the news cycle on an NFL Sunday and not have to move the goalposts. On NBC's Sunday Night Football, cameras would routinely cut to Swift in her luxury suite at MetLife Stadium before heading to commercial break, during which viewers saw ads for her concert film scheduled to come out in theaters later this month.
But on a fall weekday, some eager youngsters got a taste of Swift at her most vulnerable and open with a world full of possibility in front of them.
It's a tale some Athens Drive folks will remember all too well.
WRAL senior multiplatform producer Jessica Patrick contributed to this story.
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