Frederick Breedon IV, Getty Images
When the Dixie Chicks' 'Cowboy Take Me Away' reached the top of the charts at the end of 1999, Taylor Swift was just turning ten, and dreaming of hearing her own songs on the radio someday. Fast forward almost 12 years, and the now-21-year-old is selling out stadiums and racking up awards -- a modern-day success story that is owed, at least in part, to the hugely popular Dixie Chicks tune.
"Everybody who plays an instrument remembers that first song they ever learned on guitar," Taylor said during a recent show in Newark, N.J. (quote via VH1.com). "I feel so lucky because my very first memory of the first song I ever wanted to learn to play on guitar was this beautiful, gorgeous song by the Dixie Chicks called 'Cowboy Take Me Away.' Does anybody know the words to that song?," she asked the sold-out crowd at the Prudential Center.
The songbird quickly gave credit to the tune's writer, who brought her own seven-year-old twin daughters to the concert. "I happen to be looking at Martie Maguire, who wrote that song," the Pennsylvania native gushed from the stage. "The amazing, amazing fiddle player for the Dixie Chicks. She's here tonight." (Watch Below)
Taylor may have used the single as inspiration for her own career goals, but it took the singer-songwriter six more years before she heard her own music on the airwaves -- an experience that she says was definitely worth the wait. "I was 16, and the Big 98 [WSIX] in Nashville played 'Tim McGraw' in a song challenge one evening," Taylor recalls to the Boot of the first time she heard herself on the radio. "My high school friends and I all sat in my convertible with the top down
