Taylor Swift Reveals Her First-Ever Performance Was in Drag on "E True Hollywood Story"

How did making up stories about the animals that expired on her driveway inspire Taylor Swift to write songs? That's just one of many questions answered on tonight's E True Hollywood Story focusing on young Hollywood (tune in at 8 p.m.). Click above to watch the country-crossover star discuss her musical debut (a turn in drag when she was in second grade) and early days on her parents' Christmas tree farm.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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