Watch 15-Year-Old Taylor Swift’s First TV Appearance, 20 Years Before ‘The Life of a Showgirl’

Were you there for Taylor Swift‘s first era? You were if you watched local Nashville news back in the early 2000s. Long before Swift, 35 — who announced her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, on August 12 — became the biggest pop star in the world, she was a high school kid with dreams of making it big. But even then, her talent caught people’s attention — like Terry Bulger of local station WSMV 4.

Swift, a student at Hendersonville High School, appeared in a segment in 2005, “when we thought her talent was special.” WSMV interviewed her and let her play, giving the world the first televised appearance of Taylor Swift.