[Guitar followed by cheers]
[Music: Taylor Swift, You Belong With Me]
Narrator: Welcome to Drew Taylor’s Short Rise to Fame. This
is the incredible story of a young girl who dared to fight for her dreams.
Drew: I always wanted to be a professional singer.
N: From as soon as she could lift a guitar Drew was hooked
on her music and dreamed of a life on stage.
D: I got my first guitar when I was twelve years old and I
haven’t stopped playing since. At school I was always picked on for being the
short kid and I didn’t do much sport and if you didn’t do much sport you
weren’t cool so I used to sneak off and play music instead.
N: Join us through this documentary as we witness how she
became such a huge pop sensation and discover what truly inspired her to be where
she is today.
[Music: Taylor Swift, Love Story]
Young Drew: I love Christmas, and merry Christmas to you
too!
N: Drew grew up in a small town in Hertfordshire and lived
in a house with her mum, her dad and her younger sister. Though she had many
good friends at school Drew was often bullied because she was not only small
but she wanted to do something that people thought was impossible.
Lucy: Drew and I have been friends for years; we met on the
first day of secondary school and it became obvious quite quickly that music
was such a big part of her life, so when the auditions came around we were both
incredibly excited on that day and I remember staying outside just waiting for
her and I could hear her sing and it was just amazing. When it finished she came
out and she was practically crying and she just wrapped her arms around my neck
and she just shouted “I’m through!” I knew that was the start of her life.
[Music: Taylor Swift, Fifteen]
N: A month after winning the X-factor drew released her
debut single.
N: Inspired by her own personal experience of secondary
school she wrote the song Fifteen.
Meg: So when was the last time you were here?
D: The last time I was here was when I was about sixteen and
I was here to film a music video for Fifteen, which was my first single. That
was pretty exciting because my own school allowed me to shoot it and that made
the whole experience a lot more real for me, it allowed me to connect with all
of my memories of school.
[Music: Gabrielle Aplin, Waking Up With You]
M: So what else inspired you?
D: I listened to a lot of folk and indie and country music,
people like Gabrielle Aplin, Ben Howard, Ed Sheeran and people like that really
inspired me.
M: Why were they so important to you?
D: I think because they wrote about life and that kind of
got me through what I was going through. And they really inspired me to get my
inspiration from life as well.
N: As time passed more and more people were falling in love
with the young country singer and being inspired by her remarkable self-confidence.
Patrice: {French accent} When I first saw her I did not know
what to make of her. I was quite apathetic and not particularly interested. But
then she began to sing and I thought no this is different from the person I met
before; she was vibrant and alive, expressing everything that she held inside
her for her music. That is what makes her special. Her first audition was
something special; it was like a moment in a movie or the television. I could
not believe it, it was a once in a lifetime moment for someone in my career.
She was exceptional.
[Music: Taylor Swift, Fearless]
P: Her music video,
Fearless, I think epitomises the lack of fear; lack of inhibition she has when
she is singing. It changes her, she is different beyond recognition.
N: Three years after her first audition, Drew released her
most recent single Fearless; inspired by an old romance and her everlasting
love of music.
End
